Manicure 101: Preparation

Obviously, the first step has to be preparation of the cuticle area and your nail. Here you can see the products that I use to get ready for a manicure.

Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover: There are a lot of products like this on the market, but they all seem to be either much, much too strong or to do absolutely nothing. This product from Sally Hansen strikes the perfect middle ground Simply apply a small bead on your cuticle bed and it does its job while you push back cuticles and run your nail over the cuticle. Simply rinse off to find perfect cuticles!

Cuticle Trimmer: While you shouldn’t cut your cuticles themselves (they help protect you quite and bit and cutting them is just asking for an infection), I like to use this along the sides of my nails in case of a hang nail. I have two different versions, the trimmer and the nipper.

Emery board: Yes, I know. There are a lot of people that swear by the crystal or glass nail files instead. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I have found that those files take forever to work and don’t cut down on the issues I have with splitting nails. I like to use one that is coarse and either fine or medium on the other side.

Nail Buffer: I like to smooth out my ridges just a little so I can avoid needing a separate ridge filler. The blocks or boards typically come with 4 sides, #1 is a fine/medium nail file and #4 really buffs your nails to a shiny finish. I only use #2 and #3. The goal is to lightly smooth out the ridges without overly thinning out the nail, but you want to leave behind a little rough surface so that your polish has something to grab on to. If you over buff the polish will peel off very quickly. So, #2 and #3 only!

My full manicure and pedicure guide

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