Weddingbee Blog

Hey hive, what’s up? I know I’m very married now (firmly in my second year) and my recaps are over, but I still have a few more posts for you before I really say goodbye. The other day, for example, I was painting my nails and it occurred to me: I have a lot of knowledge and experience on the subject. Maybe I ought to share! Consider this post to be a culmination of my personal experiences, articles read in magazines and books, internet research, tutorial-watching, and learned-from mistakes. (Hint: that means this post is pretty long.)

You see: I may be terrible at makeup and just so-so with hair-styling, but I’m really, really good at painting nails. I’ve been doing it since age 11. I think my mom let me do it because she thought it’d curb my nail-biting habit. (But it didn’t.) I’ve painted friends’ nails for proms, weddings, etc. Swimmers on rival teams in high school used to call me ’the nail polish girl’ because my toes were always painted up wild for the meets. I’m the girl who hates to spend $5 on an eyeliner pencil (let alone $20+), but I own probably $300 worth of nail polish. I have curbed the habit (for the sake of practicality and storage space) in recent years, but I used to pick up a snazzy new color every time I went to the store.

If I had a beauty shrine, it’d look like this.

It’s a surprising skill for someone like me, who can’t keep their fingernails out from between their teeth. But then again, a constant nail biter like myself ought to have stellar polishing skills: I’m always chipping the polish off with my teeth and needing to repaint, after all. But look! I quit for a week:

The picture above is my hand with a week-old manicure. I am proud because I went all week without biting any of it off. This is a huge deal for me, first time ever. Now I’m in to day 3 of week 2, and trying to lengthen my record (and my nails)! And yes, that *is* how long my nails are after a week of no biting. They were very, very short last week. (I have a really bad habit, I know.)

As a disclaimer, please know that I am not a professional nail technician. I’ve never taken a class in cosmetics or nail care. I am just sharing my personal experience from nearly 2 decades as a nail polish junkie. Please feel free to share your own tips in the comments!

Now here’s what’s in my bag of tricks.

Buy polish for the color you like.

Brand–in my opinion–does not matter enough to spend the extra. Sure, it matters a little. Your fancy $16 bottle might be a little more durable than the 99 cent bargain bin product. But it’s not enough to matter, in my opinion. It all wears for similar amounts of time if you prepare and paint your nails properly in the first place. It is true that some of the cheaper polishes might stain or yellow your nails. But that’s only if you don’t follow my next tip.

Use base coat and top coat, every time you paint your nails.

I don’t care if the color bottle says “complete manicure” or “base/top coat included!” It isn’t, and/or the quality and wear you’ll get from it isn’t the same as applying these products separately. Never skip the separate base and top coats. Base coat is going to help the polish stick to your nails, AND it’ll protect your nails from possible discoloration by the nail polish. Top coat will seal the finish and keep your manicure shiny. Base coat is also good for another little trick I’ll get to in a sec. I think the brand of this stuff matters a little more than the brand of your colored polish. You probably don’t want the cheapest base/top coat out there—especially since the base coat goes directly on your nails and its ingredients can affect their health. I usually have good results with L’oreal and Sally Hanson stuff—these are a middle-of-the-road price in the drugstores: usually about 4 bucks a pop.

Make your own colors.

I ’made’ each of these.

If you can’t find that perfect musty pink champagne color to match your wedding colors, or a sultry reddish tone to spice up your lingerie (you dirty girl), make it! You can totally mix up nail polish colors to make your own custom shade. I sometimes look through my nail polish and find colors I’ll probably never wear again–I’m sick of ’em! So I’ll add a little yellow to that boring pink. Or a little white to that too-bright teal. And bam. A fancy new shade, wearable again. Say you want to add some red to your too-pale pink shade. Just take the brushes out and set them on a protected surface like a piece of cardboard. Then, if your pale pink’s bottle is pretty full, dump some of it out into a paper cup. (It’ll dry, then you can throw it away. You need to make room for the new color.) You can then carefully pour some of the red into the pale pink, replace the brush/cap, and shake the hell out of it until a new color appears. Experiment until you have what you want. Easy.

Get the lid off that stuck bottle!

It happens. Polish gets on the threads, you close the bottle and later, you can’t unscrew the cap. I’ve had bottles sit for years with the caps stuck on. Loved the color, didn’t want to throw it away, couldn’t get it open. Then I discovered this trick. Put the bottle in the sink and run it under very hot water for a few minutes (or conserve energy, simmer it in a bowl of hot water). The water should be near scalding, but OMG, do not boil it. I have no clue what would happen if you boiled your nail polish, but it might explode or melt, causing a mess or worse: injury or fire. I doubt anything good could happen from boiling a bottle of polish, so be freaking careful if you use the stove. Anyway, soak it for a few minutes, maybe 5, being sure to submerge the cap. Then carefully (it’s hot!) get it out and dry it off. You should now be able to coax open the cap. (If you have a star jar-opening member of your household, have that person try it.) If it doesn’t work the first time, soak it again. I’ve never met a bottle I couldn’t open with a little (or a lot) of hot water therapy. Once you get it open, swipe the threads of the bottle and the inside of the cap with nail polish remover on a q-tip. (You don’t want it to happen again!) If the polish has been stuck shut for a while, you might need to use my next trick.

Thin out your too-thick polish.

It’s much easier to get a good, even mani or pedi if your polish is pretty liquidy. Your polish shouldn’t be water-thin and dripping all over the place, but it also should not leave those ’strings’ of sticky-ness as you pull the brush out of the bottle.

So if you have an older bottle of polish that has started to thicken up a bit, you can fix that! (I swear, some of the polishes I buy are too thick right from the store. Maybelline seems to be the thickest, in my personal experience.) Whatever you do, don’t pour nail polish remover into your polish!! This works in the short term, but it changes the chemical makeup of the polish. It won’t last as long on your fingers, and the color will break down in the bottle. Instead, base coat comes to the rescue! Pour a few drops (or several) of base coat into your thick polish and shake it up. Boom, thinner polish that’ll last.

Those are the tricks. Now here’s the process.

1. Rough up the surface, then wash up.

Use a fat buffing board on the finest side, and lightly buff your nails. You’re trying to very lightly rough up the surface to help prevent chipping. Focus on the tips of nails, but just give them a light buff all over. I should note that this process is probably not good for your nails (does it look like it’s good for them?!). But we’re not trying to make healthier nails here: we’re trying to make the polish last. Nail polish itself isn’t good for your nails, just like most makeup isn’t good for your face and most hair products aren’t good for your hair. Buff it really lightly. Don’t like, grind them down with sandpaper or anything. Some nail salons use a dremel-like tool; I think that’s too much. Just a delicate little buff will do. It’s going to look like this.

Ooo, my very short nails. Poor things. (This is actually ’long’ for me…you can see some of the ’white’ part! I’m proud of them!) Once they’re buffed, wash your hands with soap and water. You want to get the dust and dirt off, as well as any moisturizers, sweat or oil that may be on your nails. When your hands are clean, dry them thoroughly.

2. Apply the base coat.

Base coat should go on thin and dry quickly. You only need one coat of it.

3. Apply two coats of the color.

You should set aside some down time for this. I usually do it while reading for school, or while watching a movie. Something where I won’t be using my hands for at least an hour. Anyway, you want thin, even coats. Apply the first one and give it a good 10 minutes to dry—even if it seems dry right away. Have you ever painted your nails and had them dry with bubbles on them? That’s caused by painting on a second coat before the first coat’s dry. The air left in the first coat tries to escape, creating the bubbles. Same thing happens if you put your hands in ice water to speed drying (I’ve seen that bunk tip in a lot of women’s magazines–don’t do it!). Just BE PATIENT.

Applying nail polish takes practice—especially when using your non-dominant hand. All I can say is: be slow and steady, brace your arm against something (a table or counter top), and don’t let the polish brush linger in any spot on the nail–especially when doing the second coat. (This will dissolve the first coat and pull it along, causing uneven coloring on the nail.) Also, try your best not to get polish on your cuticles. Here’s a pic of my nails with base coat + 1 coat of color:

To achieve this, I started painting just below the cuticle line. Polish gummed up on your cuticle not only dries out your cuticles: it’s a sure tell of an amateur manicure. If you get some on there, try to remove it ASAP (like, before you even paint another nail) with a toothpick dipped in nail polish remover.

After you’ve given your first coat plenty of time to dry, repeat. You rarely need will more than 2 coats of polish. For every coat you apply, double your drying time. You let that first coat dry for 10 minutes, so let the second one dry for at least 20. Seriously. It might not really take that long, but if you don’t want those bubbles to appear, you’ll wait. Patience, remember?

Apply nail art.

If you’re using decals, gems, or glitter, now’s the time to apply it. Carefully stick these items on the nail when your last coat of color is partially dry. (So: it should still be sticky/pliable, but not totally wet.) Of course, read the directions that came with your nail art and follow those. But this is usually the right time to apply. Then you can wait until the color totally dries before painting top coat over everything. Oh, and if you have one of those nail art pens that allow you to ’draw’ on the nails, you should wait until the color is totally dry before doing that. Then (of course) wait for your drawings to dry (several minutes) before painting on your top coat.

Apply the top coat.

This is going to make your nails super shiny and seal the surface, keeping chips and cracks away. When your color is dry (see above: BE PATIENT!), paint on your top coat. This is when it becomes critically important to paint it on steadily and without pausing the brush on—or ’stabbing’ the brush into—your colored nails. You’ll soften the color and pick it up on the top-coat brush, making the color smear off on the top-coat brush. Not cool. So be steady, but be quick. If you have thick nails, try to swipe the top coat along the tips of them to seal it right up to the ends. Pro-manicurists do this, and it really lengthens the wear time of your mani. Once your top coat’s on, MORE PATIENCE. Give it a whole a half hour if at all possible. And then be delicate with them for as long as you can. (That is, don’t wear gloves (or socks) for a few hours if you can help it.)

Did I mention patience?

If you don’t wait for each coat to dry, it will take even longer for the finished product to dry. Ever paint your nails at 7 PM, go to bed at 11 and wake up with pillow/sheet marks pressed into your nails? It’s because you didn’t wait long enough between coats (and/or your coats were probably too thick). Even though the top layer seemed dry at bedtime, your previous coats weren’t dry before you applied the last coat. Thus, it was still pliable at bedtime and now you have a funky texture on your manicure. Patience between coats, girls. PATIENCE. There are products out there that are designed to make your polish dry faster. Usually it’s a greasy liquid you’d paint over the topcoat, supposedly to dry your nails in seconds. These are useful if you are in a time crunch, but the ones I have used usually dry it wrong. Again, this is how you get the bubbles in your nail polish. If the top layer dries before the under layers do, bubbles must escape. Same thing goes for sticking your fingers in ice water—a common ’quick dry’ trick I see in magazines. It can make your nails bubble up (and your fingers will be cold too!).

Clean up mistakes.

If you have polish on your skin—which I often do after using my fingers to correct cuticle mistakes—dip a Q-tip in some nail polish remover (being sure to tap off the extra so the remover won’t drip on your new manicure!) and swipe it over the affected skin. If you have a smudge or imperfection on a nail, it’s best to remove the polish on that nail and start the process over. Repairs rarely look right.

Re-apply top coat; repair chips.

I reapply the top coat every 3 days or so to keep the manicure shiny and sealed. Just paint it on while you’re watching TV and let it dry for 15 or 20. An instantly refreshed polish job is yours to behold! Also, if you use your color to repair a chip (I recommend applying smallish repairs with a toothpick dipped in polish, not the nail brush), be sure to reapply top coat to the entire nail after the repaired area has had 10 minutes to dry thoroughly.

Oh, and a word about at-home acrylics:

I have done acrylics (not press-ons, which only last a day or two: I’m talking about the kind they do in the salons) at home in the past. The process is pretty simple really. I watched some you tube videos so I’d know what to buy, I hit up a beauty supply store for the tools and nail tips, and I was able to apply pretty decent-looking acrylics at home. The key (much like painting on polish) is to keep them from going on too thick. That little dot of gel stuff the nail technician applies looks easy to spread and form, but it’s actually very tricky. It gets lumpy, it gets thick, it gets on your skin and is very hard to remove. Also, it REEKS. Not like nail polish. Like caustic, stinky, toxic chemicals that make you dizzy and linger in your home for days. The smell, amount of time and cleanup (and the cost of the supplies) makes this something that I prefer to have a salon professional do for me. (But since I do own the supplies, I have been known to do my own fills.) My advice for you if you’re considering doing your own acrylics? Watch a lot of online tutorials, practice regular polishing a lot (to become confident in your steady hands), and do it on a balcony, porch, near an open window, or somewhere that’ll keep the area well-ventilated. There is a reason nail salons have all those big vents and fans.

Some of my collection.

I really hope some of these tips will be helpful to you. Do I follow all of them every single time I paint my nails? No. But when I don’t, my polish doesn’t last. Time saved in the application process shortens the life of the mani/pedi. Skipping the base coat can lead to stained nail beds. Skipping the top coat makes it chip faster. One coat of color is rarely thick enough for a rich look and seems to chip/flake off nearly instantly. Put in the time to do it right, and your manicure ought to last days longer than it otherwise would. (Provided you don’t chew it off, nursing a habit like the one I’m trying desperately to drop.)

So there’s something we can file under “trivial stuff I know way too much about, but it comes in handy sometimes.” Are you a “whiz kid” with any cosmetic product?