Nail Care Routine // Turn Your Nails Into Jewels

Hi dolls!

Today I want to share my nail care routine with you.

I'm slightly obsessed with nails, there are just so many ways to express yourself by simply adding a bold color or a fancy design! It's amazing.
But beware, the best manicure is nothing when you have unhealthy nails, so it's super important to take care of them.
I won't say healthy and beautiful natural nails will change your life completely, but I'm sure, once you've discovered what beautiful jewels you have there, you'll feel like you're running on sunshine (or walking, if you're as lazy as I am).

So, let's take each other by the hand and go on a little nail care adventure.
Aren't you exited? I am.

First, I'll share with you my holy grail nail care products. These are the things I'm loving for months and highly recommend.

 

 

Starting with the polishes from left to right

• OPI "Nail Envy" Nail Strengthener
• Essie "Grow Stronger" Base Coat
• Glisten & Glow "HK Girl" Top Coat
• OPI "Miami Beet" Nail Polish (just my color choice today, so not really part of the nail care)

The funny thing on the left, what looks like a little tooth pick with a rubber side, is a cuticle pusher and (surprise!) you use it to push back your cuticles.

Then we have a sand nail file in the background, I'm sure you recognized it, didn't you?

And right next to it we have my favorite skin care products ever, the Lush Lemony Flutter and Helping Hands.

 

 

So. If you want to start, make sure you already removed all of the nail polish you may have worn before. I recommend an acetone free nail polish remover, because the acetone can be quite damaging for your nails and cuticles.

When you've done that, look at your naked nails. What do you notice? Do they tend to break? Do they appear a bit yellow? Or do you have white spots on them?

Your nails want to tell you how they feel, it's important to listen to them.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to contact me - I'll help where I can.

Before you start to put anything on your nails, you have to push back your cuticles. It's not super important, but it will look more aesthetic plus, the skin around your nails won't burst open or get lacerated that easily.

It can help to hold your hands under warm water for a minute or two to soften the cuticles. They will be easier to push back.

And please, don't ever cut you cuticles. Never ever ever ever cut them. You'll just hurt yourself and I promise, they'll come back.

 

So now, we'll move on to the base coats.

 

Base coats are super duper important, they keep your nails strong and healthy and the polish you apply on top will glide on way better!

If you've got weak nails, the perfect base coat couple is OPI "Nail Envy" and Essie "Grow Stronger".

Apply one coat of the OPI, let it dry (what goes super fast) and add one coat of the Essie one.

By now, my nails are strong enough so I skip the nail strengthener and just use the "Grow Stronger" base coat.

 

Wait, did I Forget something? What about filing your nails?

Don't worry, this always is part three on my Nail-To-Do-List.

I figured out, that it's way easier to file your nails when they already have their protection coat on, they won't split and I feel like the weird sound of the file on the nails is not as bad then.

Now make sure you know what shape you like for your beauties. Square? Oval? Stiletto? There's so much space for possibilities!

I always had my nails square shaped (not talking about an awkward two months kitty claw experience last year) because that shape fits me the best.

To keep them in shape properly, I'd like to file them a bit everytime I do my nails, at least once a week.

If your nails tend to break, try filing them in one direction, that's what makes them beautiful.

I recommend sand nail files, even though they wear off pretty fast. But they are really sensitive and do a great job and that's what we want!

 

 

Here you see my nakies, freshly filed and covered with base coat.

I know, they're a bit yellow. That's something that can happen when you wear nail polish everyday, like I do. Fresh lemon juice can help to get off of the yellowness, I tried baking soda as well, but that didn't work for me.

 

When you've finished these steps, you can finally get to the fun part (if this wasn't already fun enough).

Choose a nail polish color of your choice.

I'm a pastel girl, but for fall I do like darker colors as well.

In my opinion, the bestest ever nail polish brand is OPI - and trust me, I've tried a lot!

They're super long lasting, they apply super easily and the color palette is amazing.

Today I took "Miami Beet", a gorgeous dark raspberry pink.

When you apply your nail polish, always go with two thin layers instead of one thick one. The thin layers will dry much faster and you won't make the experience of weird little bubbles appearing on your nails.

Try not to paint to the very outer edge of your nail. Your nails look longer when you keep a little space and you won't get the nail polish everwhere on your cuticles. Talking about that, it's always easier to apply the polish flawless right away then cleaning up afterwards, so don't paint your nails when you're in a hurry, when you're currently doing something like cooking or cleaning, or when a wild kitten tries to catch the nail polish brush. But if there still got a bit of polish on an unexpected place, just take a nail polish remover pen or a thin brush dipped in nail polish remover and clean it up.

 

Now we get to my favorite part, the top coat.
Top coat is not optional. If you thought that, I'm happy to tell you today how life changing a great top coat is. It really is. Trust me.
The right top coat will help your polish to dry immediatly, fix little damages, leaves and amazingly glossy finish and help your manicure to stay flawless for days!
And this is what I call: The Top Coat Difference.
I really really really love the HK Girl Top Coat by Glisten & Glow! It's the best I tried and it ticks all the boxes I mentioned above. I'm not exactly surre if you can get it anywhere else than their website, but they ship international and it's really worth it.

The last step is the moisturizing. For my cuticles, there's nothing better than the Lush Lemony Flutter and I use Lush Helping Hands for my whole hands - these two work wonders!

 

So here we have the completed manicure!
Of course you can always add more steps to this routine, go further with some outstanding nail art, but I wanted to keep it simple to really show you the basic important parts.

I hope this was helpful!
Stay tuned for a post about how to take a great picture of your nails - because, isn't it a shame when you put so much effort in your manicure and the picture just wouldn't show it?

Until next time, stay beautiful!

Love,

Alina