All of a sudden I have become obsessed with the state of my nails. I’m not sure why really. Perhaps it is subconsciously due to the fact that I am forever seeing well groomed older women with pristine polish on their finger tips… er maybe that’s just Grandma Kathy. Perhaps,then, it is because age, time, and years of submerging my hands in water for hours and hours of shampooing (lest you not forget my real job of being a stylist), have left my nails brittle and sad.
I find myself at war with them constantly. Unless you have the superfluous funds to go out and get an actually manicure (preferably shellac) every couple of weeks, how do you tame the ragged edges and ink (hair color) stained nail beds?
For instance, when do you polish? Early in the day? In the evening while watching your favorite shows? Will the sheets leave print marks if they aren’t fully dry!? There are so many things to consider and steps to be taken. You must first use the restroom, make sure you have everything you need for the next hour readily available to you, prep all of the polishes (base coat, color, and top coat) and then proceed to clip, file, buff, rinse, and then, finally polish whats left of your nails into submission.
Color selection is also tricky. I recently got shellac for a wedding and ended up with a lovely coral color polish… lovely yes, my style, not so much. I realized a week later that had the woman at the nail salon clipped my already preposterously long nails back to where they belong, the color would have looked much less… invasive. However, no harm no foul, it looked nice for the big day and that is all that mattered.
Taking off shellac on your own is a game changer. It takes forever. Soaking the polish, scraping it all off, which never works the first time around, and then buffing your nails until they resemble something of their original color; it is like scraping paint off a car I swear. I am not patient enough for all of this. I tend to cheat and then try to polish over the scrappy bits of base coat left on my nail bed… this only leads to the most shoddy looking manicure that has ever existed, leaving me frustrated and annoyed. I will then remove and re-polish my nail color three times over the course of the next two days (I should just go to the nail salon and have them fix it for me, but as hinted at before, this girl doesn’t have the time [money] for that). I even went so far as to make my own matte coat because I thought it would help things. It kind of worked until I realized I put too much corn starch into the clear coat and it got all thick and funny looking… next time I will know better (or I will just buy the Butter London version… because it is amazing, and I don’t have to make it).
I realize nails are just nails. They are technically just hardened protein growing form your fingertips, but you guys, looking down and seeing pretty polished nails instead of flaky witch claws is a game changer. So then I ask you, what will the color be?
xx
