Can multiple adhesives be mixed together?
The lash industry never ceases to amaze me. One one side, you have some incredible lash art out there that introduces new products and techniques that we can all learn from. But on the other side, there are a lot of people handing out bad information.
Today I want to address something that a colleague shared with me that just blew my mind. She told me that an educator / supplier in our industry told hundreds of lash artists that it’s perfect safe to mix multiple adhesives together.
The idea behind this is… by mixing multiple adhesives within this particular educators line, you can customize your adhesive to create a better performing adhesive. Essentially a super adhesive.
When I heard this, I immediately screamed on the inside because the idea of lash artists playing chemists has lawsuit written all over it. But then I took a step back and thought, “maybe I should have an open mind and try to understand where this person is coming from.”
So I looked at my own adhesive ingredients and considered what would happen if I mixed them together. I mean, they contain the same ingredients - only in varying amounts. If these two different adhesives were mixed together, would it be a huge deal? I can’t really say because this isn’t something I’ve tried but if the person who shared this information has adhesives that all contain the same ingredients in varying amounts, I can see where they would think it’s ok to mix their line of adhesives.
However, when I think back to the other adhesives I used to carry, they didn’t all contain the same exact ingredients. One of them contained a totally different type of cyanoacrylate than the others and could have been extremely dangerous and toxic to clients had I mixed them.
What if someone took the information this educator shared and applied it to a different brand, not realizing that this person was talking about their adhesives? It could potentially be a huge disaster for the lash artist, their clients and their business.
So, I want to be crystal clear when I say this. As much as I respect educators within our industry and lash artists, it is never ok to mix adhesives.
To back this up, let me explain why.
First of all, who are we to think that all of a sudden we’re chemists? The manufacturers of the products we use have in house chemists and they have formulated our adhesives they way they have for a reason. Because they work. And while some work better for others, they all include a precise amount of ingredients, that when mixed together, perform in a way to help us do our jobs.
When we start mixing adhesives, it becomes impossible to know how much of which ingredient is contained in the adhesive and can cause the adhesive to be unstable. And no offense when I say this… But I know that most lash artists have no idea what the ingredients are in the adhesives their using or their purpose. So that in and of itself is a recipe for disaster.
The second reason why adhesives should not be mixed is for the reason I mentioned earlier. Liability. I’m not a lawyer but common sense tells me that if a client has a severe reaction from an adhesive concoction that was mixed by a lash artist, you’d be hard pressed to hold the supplier or manufacturer accountable because you used the product in a way it wasn’t designed to be used. If I’m not mistaken, most insurance policies wouldn’t cover this either if a claim was made.
The third reason why adhesives should never be mixed is because you can’t provide clients with an appropriate material safety data sheet (MSDS) for the new creation. California is known to be one of the most strict states when it comes to sanitation and guidelines in the beauty industry. Here, if a client requests the MSDS, you are required to provide it.
It is impossible to provide an MSDS if you’ve mixed together multiple adhesives. You won’t know the percentages of each ingredient within your adhesive if you’re mixing multiple adhesives together.
Again, I have respect for our industry and the people in it however, I’ve noticed a lot of people have become far too comfortable intentionally or unintentionally sharing information that can be incredibly damaging to the lives of lash artists that are just trying to earn an honest living and build a successful business - all in the name of selling their products or trying to present themselves as being on the cutting edge of the industry. It’s extremely dangerous for lash artists, especially those that are new.
I want to see us all win. I want to see even more great things happen in our industry. And I believe the way to do that is by being responsible and sharing information with lash artists that I know to be true.
Mixing multiple adhesives together to create a customized super adhesive is not the move. Instead, find an adhesive that is compatible with your environment and that you can easily work with at your current skill level. It’s really that simple.
