You have a dinner date, a speaking engagement, or job interview. You want your nails to look their best! After all, the care of your nails give a clue to the extent of your grooming habits. Then again, you want to upgrade, don’t you? You want your nails to look their best everyday. Here’s my nail care regimen for professional well-manicured nails.
Soak nails for 10 minutes in a solution of mild hand soap. Remove hands, rinse and dry. Apply cuticle remover as directed on package. With cuticle stick, push back cuticles gently. Then with a cuticle nipper, [I] cut the dead, excess cuticle around my nail. This part can be a little tricky because you don’t want to cut into the live portion of your nail bed. Also, this technique is best if you allow a manicurist to show you how to do it first. Note: As an extra precaution, after cutting back my cuticles, I’m careful to keep my hands extra clean for a day or two, to make sure I don’t have any open areas where I cut off my cuticles. Next, very, very lightly buff your nail with a fine grit emery board. Many times these emery baords will indicate 400/600 grit and many are the pink emery boards. Check the grit to make sure it’s fine-it’ll usually say so. By lightly buffing the top of your nail, your nail will be smoother and the polish will actually lie “flatter” on the nail surface and give a flawless shine. “Shape” nails with a nail clipper, forgo the emery board. Shaping your nails with a nail clipper by cutting only one or two clips across the top of the nail, allows them to grow in stronger. Remember, your nails grow from the base-at the back of the nail-up to the nail tip, in layers. As you ‘shape’ your nail with the clipper you’re cutting back the single ragged layers and gradually allowing all the layers to “catch-up” to one length. For the first month or so, you may have the same amount of breakage and see little improvement. But as your nails grow out and you continue to “strengthen” your nails by cutting all the layers to one length as they grow in, by 2-3 months, maximum, you should see significant improvement. Follow with a good quality base coat, then 1-2 coats of a good nail polish, then seal with a durable top coat. Alternately, you can use a no polish and nail buffer, (these are also called chamois [pronounced shammy]) buffer with nail cream. You apply the cream (or powder) to the buffer and buff the nail to a healthy shine. Both the buffer and cream are readily available as a set in drugstores or on Amazon. A treatment for give your hands and nails is a paraffin wax bath. The wax is melted in a warmer to a set temperature and your hands are dipped in. Paraffin wax is very inexpensive (about $1.69/ 2 pounds) and will make your hands softer and will impart essential oils to your nails to make them healthier.
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