Thursday, 30 January 2014

Nail pampering and French manicure

Most women have a thing for nail polish and painting their nails in pretty colours. I’m lucky when it comes to my nails – they’re extremely hard and rarely breaks, which means I can easily grow them out very long. Caring about your nails is important. You can’t just slap a coat of nail polish on them and expect them to look immaculate every time. Even if your nails are fine, you need to think about the cuticles and the skin around your nails as well.


Every time I put new nail polish on I go through a little session of nail and hand pampering, so that I’ll achieve best possible result. I start by removing my old nail polish with a moisturising nail polish remover. After that, I rinse my hands in warm water and then use the lovely hand exfoliator 'Satin Hands' by Mary Kay, infused with crushed peach stones to scrub dead skin away. I also make sure to scrub a bit extra on the top of my nails to get rid of the cuticles.

I rinse the exfoliator off with warm water, and then moisturise my hands and nails with some kind of thick cream – right now I’m using the olive body buttor from The Body Shop, and it’s just amazing!

I wait a while before applying nail polish, just to make sure the body butter is proper soaked up by my skin. This week I’ve chosen to go for a classic French manicure with two nail polishes from Essie; Allure and Blanc. In the below picture I’ve applied one coat of the nail polish Allure to start with.

If I’m only using Allure I usually put two coats on – this makes your nails nice and white. However, when applying the white nail polish to my tips as well I start by just applying one coat of Allure. I wait until it’s dry and then I carefully apply Blanc to my tips, in small brush strokes upwards rather than sideways (it’s easier to get it even this way, plus you don't end up with nail polish on your skin). Once the white tips are dry I apply another coat of allure on top of it all to make my nail base whiter, and also to make the contrast of the nail and the tips a bit more subtle.

And this is the result. Not too bad for a home manicure, I would say.
Do you find it difficult to do your own French manicure?

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