Painting Nails Tips And Tricks – Transform Your Mani…

I love painting my nails.

I am assuming that if you have landed on this article then you do too.

Finding the best Painting Nails Tips And Tricks will help you love painting your nails even more.

The best thing about painting your own nails is that you are in complete control of the design, style, and effects that you want to create.

As a certified Nail Technician, I am always on the lookout for the very best and latest tips, tricks and techniques to not only apply to my very own nails, but to use on my clients. It’s great to discuss these with colleagues in the Salon, and you’ll be surprised at how effective and handy some of these are.

I also appreciate that these are the tips that I just wished I had known at the start of my career, when I was relatively inexperienced and wanted to learn more about designing my own and my clients’ nails.

The truth is, I didn’t use to love painting my nails. In fact, at the beginning I actually found it quite painful. That was until I learnt how to achieve better looking nails, and even more importantly, how to salvage a bad paint job.

As such, I’d love to be able to bring to you today some of the many things that I have learnt during my career. This Painting Nails Tips and Tricks article will look to do just that. Hopefully, it will be effective for you regardless of whether you are a complete beginner, or even a nail professional yourself.

So if you are tired of your manicures always looking sub-par, if you are struggling to paint your nails even just on solid color or if you always end up with the majority of paint on your skin rather than your nails, then let’s get started.

Painting Nail Tips For Better Looking Nails

First, start off with clean (polish free) naked nails. Its always best to push your cuticles back to get a little more space to work with.

You don’t need anything fancy to do this, just apply a little bit of Moisturizing Oil to your fingers to soften the skin then you can use your fingernail or a Cuticle Pusher to push your proximal nail fold-back. But be very gentle this shouldn’t hurt if it’s hurting you’re probably hitting live tissue and this could cause damage, so you do not want to do this.

Never use a Cuticle Nippers to do this because it actually creates hang nails. By using your fingernail or a Cuticle Pusher, you can then use a scraper to take off all of the dead skin on top of the nail. You actually can never see this stuff so you definitely have to scrape away at it. You’ll find that there’s a lot of dead skin which can be a major reason why your nail polish doesn’t stay on very long.

Then go ahead and thoroughly wash your hands to remove the oils and any loose skin and debris.

Another tip is to wash your hands in a cool water to help lower the temperature of your hands.

For me, polish bubbles appear most often if my hands are warm, so rinsing them in cool water just for just a few seconds cools them down and will help prevent those dreaded bubbles.

This next tip is great if you want a really long wearing manicure. Even though you washed your hands and your nails may appear oil free, residue might be hanging out still. So I like to use Rubbing Alcohol Wipes and just gently rub across my nail plates. This will dry your nails out and remove oils so that the Polish really grips the nail.

Now onto Filing (which may or may not be required depending on the length of your nails).

If you file your nails by placing a finger out, and filing across back and forth aggressively, you might notice that your nails are constantly breaking and you’re getting your nails caught on things. When you go back and forth with a file its going to crosshatch the tiny little fibers of your nails which is going to make them jagged.  Even though
it’s not visible it’s going to be way less likely to break if you go in one direction, so ensure you do this when filing.

The most important tip is to use a good Base Coat; invest in one that is both beneficial to your natural nails and provides a good base for color polish. This one is my holy grail base coat it’s by Maxus and it has amino acids and tea tree oil to strengthen and nourish the nails. It dries with a slightly rubberized finish creating the perfect canvas to apply a color polish to. I’ve gone through several bottles of this stuff and I will wear it even if I’m not doing a full manicure because it protects my nails so well and I see a major improvement and how they look and I swear it makes them grow faster.

The tip is to pick a color polish with a brush that best fits your nail.

If you use a brush that’s too big you can’t get around getting polish all over your skin and if you use one that’s too small it’s going to take forever to cover your entire nail.

So if you have smaller nails I recommend using polishes with a smaller brush like China Glaze, Essie and Zoya

And for bigger nail beds I recommend OPI or Maxus. Those have great wider brushes.

Another common mistake you might be making is forgetting to remove some of the polish off of the brush before application or removing too much. Run the brush stem along the inside of the bottle to prevent polish from dripping, then remove polish off of one side of the brush. This will also help to prevent polish from pooling in your cuticles, even if you managed to stay within the lines

When it comes to the time to paint your nails do your dominant hand first but leave out your thumb. (Read More: How To Paint Your Nails With Your Left Hand – The Easiest Way…)

Here’s my favorite method for painting my nail: take a dot of polish and put the brush just above the cuticle of your nail (upper middle part of your nail), then push the polish all the way down to the very tip of your nail.  If there’s a little gap, that’s okay and is actually preferred at this point. It’s better to have a gap and not to go right to the edge at first, because you will almost certainly go over and risk flooding your cuticles.

To get rid of that little space between the cuticle and the polish – push a bit of polish up towards that area, without actually touching to to the cuticle, then drag it down the side of your nail and then repeat for the other side. This is foolproof, and it works every single time. With practice, this is what’s going to make your manicure look professional. Also, try to keep your strokes straight.

When you finish with your first coat,  you may see a little bit of patchiness. A lot of people go back in with some more polish, do not do this. Wait for it to completely dry – because if you need to, there is always time to do a second coat of the color polish to get the color fully opaque and create evenness.

If you try to take care of it before its completely dry, it will turn into a bit of a mess, and on top of that, it will never dry!

If you get any polish on your skin or a lot on your skin it’s okay. Try to remove the bulk of it immediately with a wooden stick but wipe off the wooden stick after each scrape.

And the secret weapon to take care of any loose polish- an Angled Eyeliner Brush.

Dip the brush into Nail Polish Remover and go around the edges of the Polish, you can perfect the Polish line with this and get any polish out of the sides of your nail. But remember to wipe off the brush often to prevent depositing color back onto the skin.

Just as important as your base coat is your top coat. In my experience, you can have a bad poor quality polish but sandwich it between a good base and top coat to make it look fantastic.

I also love the Maxus Topcoat because it dries super fast, it doesn’t dull over time and with the base coat, a manicure will last for a week or more with minimal chips.

Also make sure to cap the free edge of your nail by dragging the brush just along the tip to sill in the color and protect it. This is going to make the nail-polish stay on so much longer and prevent chips.

I highly recommend getting a fast drying top coat if you often smudge your nails.  You can
literally put this on top of polish even if it’s still kind of tacky and it’ll dry first to form a barrier, then dry the
layers underneath after about five minutes.

If you’re trying out nail art and you know it’s going to be messy take some clear liquid latex and put it around the cuticle of the nail. This is the easiest way to prevent nail polish from getting on the skin and it looks so clean and it’s really fun to peel off after you are done!

And lastly, always finish painting with some more oil. Carefully apply some of this on your nails even if there’s still a little wet to add a resilient surface (in case you brush them). It also helps to loosen up any polish you couldn’t get off your skin.

I’ll usually rub coconut oil into my nails for 10 to 15 minutes after I do my nails then they’re good to go.

Lastly, onto removing Nail Polish, which may be now or at a latter date. This is particularly useful if you have used a really dark color (Dark Red or Black).

To prevent the pigment from smearing onto the skin and the cuticle, take a really really thick hand cream (you can use any kind you want) and then put this all around the cuticle area and up above the skin – anywhere you think the Polish might get.

Then take some Nail Polish Remover and instead of wiping, press this down onto your nail. Hold down the nail polish and make sure that you remove it really really gently. You’ll see that your nail looks completely clean and you won’t even know you wore dark polish to begin with.

If you’re ever in a really bad situation where your nails are chipped, you can use a Nail Polish (either a clear, or colored one) to remove your painted nails’ polish.

Believe it or not, one of the best ways to remove polish is to use other polish to do so. If you’re in
a hurry, or are on the go, this is a great option. Its also very cost effective because you don’t then have to waste nail polish remover on an everyday basis. So if your nails look really bad and you want to clean them up this is the perfect way to do it.

Final Words.

So there you have it, some quick actionable tips to help you achieve a better, longer lasting, and more impressive manicure.

If I left out any tips you find helpful share them in the comments below.