Ok I know, I know...valentines day was last week. But I wanted to paint my nails for Valentine's Day and I never got around to it so I did it last night. I vowed to try to get better at girly stuff (like painting my nails) and in high school I used to be good at painting them. I've painted them a couple times with solid colors recently and it went fairly well so I decided to try something more difficult. My solid color manicure typically lasts for 6-7 days but we'll see how long this lasts (I'll post an update later this week).
1. The night before I want to paint them, I remove my old nail polish with Acetone. The acetone makes it go WAY faster than nail polish remover but it does dry your nails out so after i'm done I wash my hands and then rub some Vitamin E all over my nails and sleep like that.
2. Cut and file nails. I try to shape them to match my natural nail contour (mostly I just want them even length and smooth shape). This is probably the hardest part for me.
3. Paint the base coat. First I use Chip Skip by OPI which removes the oil from your nail bed to help the manicure last longer. Then I use a base coat. Then do two light coats of base polish - it's important to do two LIGHT coats (thick coats cause bubbles) and to let it fully dry between coats. If you are watching tv while doing it, I recommend waiting until the next commercial break before starting the next coat. If you are only doing a solid color then put top coat on after the second coat is fully dry.
4. As promised, I decided to do something new - I decided to try to paint the tips a different color (kind of like a french manicure except not white). I've never done this before and I didn't practice - i just took the brush and tried to paint across the tip. I think it came out pretty decent (I was especially worried about my left hand since I am left handed)
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5. Finally, I used my new Migi nail art pens to draw a couple of simple hearts on my nails in white. My hand was shaking so bad while I was trying to do this but I'm still pretty impressed with myself for how they came out overall. After the migi I just applied a nice thick top coat layer and then tried not to mess them up, LOL.
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