Beautician fixes friend's chipped brake light with nail extension gel

Watch: Beautician repairs friends broken car brake light using nail extensions

A beautician whose friend had a chipped brake light on her car got it looking good as new - by using nail extension gels.

Jessie Bassam, from Birmingham, needed help with her Audi A1 after buying a replacement brake light which arrived with a small chip in the corner. Not wanting to discard the red light cover, she enlisted the help of nail technician Jaimie Butler in the hope she could patch it up.

Not only was Jaimie, 19, able to help, she got the spare part looking perfect by creating an acrylic 'extension' onto the brake light using a chemical 'monomer' mixed with nail extension gel. In a TikTok video of the fix which has now racked up nearly 9 million views, Jaimie carefully applies the gel extension mix to the corner of the brake light, before letting it dry and filing it perfectly into shape.

Explaining the process on TikTok, Jaimie said it involved a liquid called “monomer” mixed with a gel that matched the red of the light. She detailed how she covered the chip in a viral TikTok video. She also used a “nail form”, typically used to sculpt the nail; she opted to use it as a base that the monomer had something to stick to.

Jessie had purchased the tail light as an upgrade her existing one from an online car parts seller, but didn’t notice the damage until it was too late. She said: “Obviously, when I received them I was devastated, but I knew my nail tech could work her magic!” 'Determined' to fix the light instead of throwing it away, she asked for help from Jaimie, a nail technician from Stourbridge who graduated from beauty school in 2022 and now works from a nail studio in her own home.

Jaimie said she knew within five minutes of starting the process that the innovative fix would do the job on her friend's brake light. Since posting about it on TikTok, she'd recevied dozens of comments praising her as a 'genius', along with others saying it's inspired them to try similar maintenance hacks.

Click below to see the latest West Midlands headlines

Explaining the process on TikTok, Jaimie said it involved a liquid called “monomer” mixed with a gel that matched the red of the light. She also used a “nail form”, typically used to sculpt the nail; she opted to use it as a base that the monomer had something to stick to.

Jaimie said she thinks it's great that people might be recreating her method in the future. “You might as well give it a go,” she told Yahoo News UK. "It'll save you money in the long run." Bassam said it could have cost her up to £300.