Read these 23 Fingernail art Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Body Art tips and hundreds of other topics.
For accents on dry polished nails, instead of using fine paint brushes or airbrushes, try different colors of gel pens. You may have to test several brands and even colors within brands to see which ones are opaque on top of nail color, but once the colors dry, a clear topcoat will lock the colors in and you can do many unique designs with them. If you make a mistake, you can wipe it off with a damp tissue and start over without smearing.
French manicures are designed to make your nail look like it's natural, with maybe a light coat of clear polish. In reality, it is a white polish applied to the white part of the nail, and then, a pale "wash" is applied to the entire nail, covering the white also.
Nails are greatly affected by the vitamins, herbs, and healthy food you eat, plus the healthy water you drink. If all nutritional needs are being served, your nails can grow 1/8 inch a week, or 1/2 inch a month.
If you want to have fun with nail art, you need a good variety of colors, just like an artist's palette. Try a couple of blues, greens, a yellow, some red, a black, white and cream, gold and silver. Use little brushes, toothpicks, and craft sticks for application.
Your manicure will not look professional if your cuticles are cracked, ripped, and bleeding. In the winter, use hand and nail creams to keep your skin and cuticles in good condition. You can use cuticle remover creams and gels, and the little cuticle remover "v" stick you can get at the drug store. Be careful; the "v" is very sharp and can cut. Remove only the cuticle part of the skin.
If you have a base coat, two layers of color with time to dry in between, and a final clear top coat, your manicure could last a week, unless you use your nails to open soda cans or for similar activities.
Your fingernails are made of layers, and if you start a zigzag filing over your nails, you will pull up the different layers, and you will end up with shredded nails. File going in the same direction with the board. If you file toward the tip, then keep all your strokes in the same direction.
The base coat provides a surface for the nail color to adhere to. It provides a thicker base of polish, and more protection for the nail, and it helps to keep the nail from becoming stained by the color of the polish. The sandwiching technique of base coat, color, and topcoat increases the time your manicure will last.
If you are air drying your polish, wait a good 30 minutes before smushing your hands around. Even then, the polish will still be "soft." Try to do your manicure when you know you won't have anything pressing within an hour.
Don't start biting if one of your long, beautiful nails breaks totally off. You can get one false nail and wear it until your nail grows out, trim the nails on one hand and leave the other hand of nails a little longer, or file all your nails down and start from scratch.
If you pick at your nails, try having a little nail set within your grasp. That way, if you get the urge, you can file, clean, or buff your nails, or work on the cuticle. Turn that energy into something good, and your nails will look better.
Depending on your job, your age, your lifestyle, your nails can be pretty much a personal choice. However, some industries require short nails for sanitary purposes. If you work with infants and toddlers, it is advisable to keep your nails shorter. If you use a computer in your job or personal life, long nails can sometimes get caught in the keys.
Biting nails is not an addiction--you will not suffer withdrawal symptoms if you quit. It's more of an obsessive/compulsive behavior. For instance, if the nail starts to shred, the nail biter usually can't leave that nail alone until the shredding part is gone. If a hangnail starts, the nail biter will keep picking at it. A non-nail biter will just fix the problem.
Nails come in all different shapes and sizes. Some fingers have a very long nail bed; others are wide and shorter, giving the illusion of a shorter nail. You can't do much about where your nail starts to grow on your hand, but you can shape the nail as it grows. When the nails are shorter, follow the natural line of the finger tip, so you will have a rounded nail.
To do your own fingernail art, you need some very fine, detailed brushes, thinner than the regular polish brush. Keep a little cup of polish remover to clean the brush after a color.
You also need some mini craft sticks or toothpicks, so you can drag color, and you can use them to help position decals or jewels or other art on the nail.
You can find French Manicure kits at Walmart and other large stores. They contain a white polish, a neutral color polish, and sometimes peel lines, which you lay down on your nail, apply the polish right up to the line, let the polish set for a minute, and peel off the peel line. You will be left with white polish on the tip of your nail, and the line where it grows out of the nail bed will be very neat and clean. You then apply the neutral color polish over the whole nail. This will bring the white down to a natural shade.
You can purchase nail tips, apply them with glue, and sand a small portion of your nail and the tip together to make a fine dust, and add more glue. You can use an entire nail and glue that over your own nail, or get extensions, such as acrylics, gels, nail wraps. You can have all of these treatments professionally done, or after watching your manicurist for a while, you can probably do it yourself. Buy your supplies at a local beauty salon outlet or at your local drugstore.
If you want to grow your nails out, use a base coat and a clear polish, or a skin-colored polish. The idea is to keep your nails out of your mouth, so be conservative and keep the polish low-key until your nails look better.
This nail look brings back those glam days of early Madonna..Glue on some thin nail shaped pieces of lace to your manicure and coat them carefully with clear polish.
You can get artificial nails applied with airbrush designs on them, have airbrush designs added to your artificial nails, or have airbrush designs applied to your own nails. Airbrush designs are basically the same artistic technique used in decorating cars or tee-shirts. The brush that applies the paint is controlled with a little air compressor and the air compressor pushes the paint out in a mist, that then is controlled by various tips to get different effects. Stencils are sometimes used.
A manicure can cost $15 to $75, depending on the manicurist and the demand on his or her time.
As seasons change, your nails can take a beating. Try putting on hand cream or nail and cuticle cream, and then putting on a pair of hand or nail gloves--thin cotton gloves designed to be worn through the night.
Guru Spotlight |
Patricia Walters-Fischer |