Home Manicure

Easy Manicure

For a fine finale to a perfect at-home spa, follow these six steps to perfect nails:

  1. Remove all nail polish and wash your hands
  2. File your nails with an emery board
  3. Soak your hands for 5 minutes or so in a bowl of warm water softened with a few drops of rosewater
  4. Using an orangewood stick, clean under your nails, and push back your cuticles with a towel
  5. Apply moisturizer: Let it penetrate before applying any nail polish
  6. To soften cuticles, take a Vitamin E capsule, poke it with a pin and massage droplets of the oil into your cuticle area

How to Give Yourself a Professional Manicure

A fresh manicure helps you look clean and put-together. But professional manicures can be expensive and time-consuming. Why go when it's cheaper and looks just as great when you do it yourself?

Remove any old nail polish. Use nail polish remover and cotton balls. Some kinds of nail polish remover may dry the areas on your nails and around them. You may wish to find one that doesn't do this as much, but do not be concerned unless you have a severe allergic reaction. Unless you use it once a month or less, don't use a nail polish remover with acetone in it. Though acetone will make removing the nail polish easier, it can damage the nails themselves.

Cut and file nails. Use nail clippers and trim your nails. Don't cut them too short, you should be able to see at least a little of the white tip still, all the way across. Using a nail file, file the nail and create a smooth and clean shape. Gently drag the file across the nail, rather than pushing it. Excessive force or sawing back and forth will weaken the nails and cause them to break. Pivot the hand with the file through each stroke to make a smooth curve rather than angles. Do not file them too short: just clean up any points or roughness left by the clippers.

Buff nails. Using a white block of a stick-type nail buffer, or a pad-type nail buffer and buffing powder, buff the surface of the nail a little bit to even out the surface and to smooth out ridges. Remember not to buff too much: you're grinding at the nail; thinning it too much will weaken it.

Soak nails. Get a bowl or stopper the sink and fill it with warm (not hot!) water and a few drops of soap or rosewater. Soak your hands only for a few minutes. The water and soap will help to loosen dirt, dead skin, and any dust left over from filing and buffing, and soften cuticles. If you have dry skin or fragile nails you should NOT soak them, only rinse them. Use a nail brush to gently clean your nails and the skin around them. Gently scrape under your nails if necessary to remove dirt (scraping too much will remove a white powder which was actually part of the nail itself, weakening it).

Cuticles: Dry nails and apply a cuticle cream. Using a cuticle pusher, also called an orange stick, gently push back the cuticle. Do not force them back. NEVER cut your cuticles. Even if the equipment is sterile, removing the cuticle can cause infection and leaves the then-less-protected margin of the skin vulnerable. You can also push back your cuticles with a towel. Wipe off the excess cream with a tissue or towel in the direction that you pushed (you don't want to pull the cuticles back to where they were!).

Apply moisturizer. Take a lotion, hand cream or other moisturizer and massage it into your hands. If you have very dry skin use an intensive lotion, if not, any lotion will do. Be sure to rub it into and around your nails and let it penetrate in for 30 minutes or longer.

Prepare! Nail polish/lacquer will not stick to nails with moisturizer on them, so take a Q-tip dipped in nail polish remover and quickly wipe the nails to remove the lotion. Wipe excess remover off promptly to mitigate nail damage. Cover the nail with a base coat or nail hardener. This will even out and ridges and unevenness that may still be on the nail, serve as a primer for the polish, help the polish to last longer, and keep the colour from staining your nails.

Polish! Pick a nail polish that you really like. (Consider what it will go with, too, if you plan to keep it on for a while.) Shake it well before opening in case some parts have settled out. Begin painting nails using a thin coat. Dip the brush into the bottle of polish and as you remove it, gently swirl the brush around the inside rim of the bottle to remove excess polish. Slowly paint a vertical stripe down the center of your nail, followed by another stripe on either side of the first. Try to paint all the way to the edge, but it's better to leave a small margin (less noticeable as it's curved downward and partly covered by skin) than paint the skin on the side (noticeable as a spot on a uniform surface that should not be painted at all). Try not to move your nails too much or the polish may smudge. Wait 10 to 15 minutes for the polish to dry. If you apply a second coat too soon, it will only smudge the first coat. After the first coat has dried apply a second coat.

Top coat. Finish with a clear top coat for a hard, smooth, scratch-absorbing, chip and flake-resistant shield particularly important for designs that don't cover the entire nail, as well as adding shine.