Manicure Tips and Tricks

Do you do your manicure yourself or you go to the salon?  I have to admit, I went to a salon maybe a couple times in my whole life.  I like doing it myself and there are a couple of reasons for that.

First, I prefer other people not to touch my hands with instruments.  I think this is the hygiene and trust issue.

Second, going to the salon requires scheduling an appointment, time spent in the salon, in short - another commitment that I don't need.

Lastly, my brain tells me that this is not really cost efficient spending money on the service like manicure, that lasts for one week, if I can do it myself and spend a fraction of the cost of the salon service.  I would rather spend on on great skin care products or prestigious brand cosmetics that will last me for awhile AND will give me the benefit that I would not be able to get without it.  So, if I can do my manicure myself, I do it.

There are some simple steps that are required in order to get good looking manicure.  

• Start with cleaning an old nail polish really well.  My trick to get rid of stubborn old nail polish around my cuticles I learned from Sammy of The Nailasaurus   An old tooth brush and nail polish remover.   Genius!
• Keep good care of your nails and cuticles with  Cuticle Oil from Boots No7
• Shape your nails with nail file (I prefer mine to be short) and push cuticles to make clean and neat surface for painting.
• Use base coat to protect your nails and make them stronger
• Use 3 strokes of the nail polish (start from the middle of the nail and then add other two on both sides).  I used my favorite red nail polish from Butter London in Box Pillar Red
• Finish it up with top coat to preserve your beautiful polish for as long as possible. 

Even though I was doing my manicure long enough, recently I learned a couple of more trick that improved the final look of my manicure.  According to professionals from Chanel:

• when your nails is ready for nail polish, roll the nail polish bottle between your hands to warm the formula for a smoother application (totally make sense to me)
• to make nails appear longer, leave a 1mm (or 1/32 of an inch) boarder around the cuticle and sides of the nail

That last tip about 1mm boarder sounded good, but HOW DO YOU DO THAT? Chanel experts did not explained their technique on this one.  This is when Sammy Nail Genius came to the rescue again: "Dip a small paintbrush — the teeniest one you can find — into a bottle of acetone or nail polish remover, and run it around your cuticle to clean up the edges and leave you with a nice crisp line."  Thank you, Sammy!  Yes, this is easy WHEN you know what to do.