At Home Manicure
hannah hennessy
Lock down? Fancy a break in between your gel manicure appointment? Work doesn’t allow you to wear gel? Here’s a little step by step routine for your at home manicure.
1.
cuticles
Pushing back your cuticles regularly stimulates nail growth, keeps cuticles at bay and makes for neat tidy nail beds.
For my and my clients nails i use Doris from Navy Professional. This tool is gentle enough for non-professionals to use. The smooth edge allows for gentle maintenance of the cuticles and with little to no pressure this too does all the work for you.
A rubber hoof stick from your local boots or a woodstick tipped with cotton wool will also work perfectly.
Leave any cutting or trimming of your cuticles to your manicurist to avoid any accidental damage to your nail beds or cuticles. You want to avoid cutting any living tissue and leaving your nails open to infection. Just stick with the push back.
Another useful tool which is gentle enough to use and pretty old is a pumice stone. This can be used as gentle exfoliator to lift any stubborn dead cuticle on your nail plate which may be in the way when you come to panting.
2. File
Unless your nails can take the length it’s best to keep your nails short and neat with rounded corners to avoid catching and tearing the nail low. A simple emery board will do perfectly.
3.Exfoliate
Remember to include the skin on your hands too. Exfoliating your skin, nails and nail beds helps to lift dead skin cells and helps to brighten. Removing dead skin cells allows for your next lot of products to soak in.
A few hand and nail exfoliants that I love are:
4. Adding moisture
Hand Masks, Moisturiser & Cuticle Oils.
Hands Masks: Weekly (make it a sunday treat)
Moisturisers & Oils: Daily (everytime you wash your hands)
Applying hand masks dont need to be time consuming. Weleda Skin food is a gorgeously rich thick cream that can be squeezed straight out of the tube and left to soak in whislst your watching telly. This step helps to lock in the moisture; add it to your weekly routine. I also love the Elim Ultra Mud, i apply with a brush and it can be used all over the body too.
Oil & Moisturise
This step is essential every day if you want to banish those hard bits of skin that catch on your jumpers. With all the extra hand washing, sanitising, cold weather and central heating your skin is zapped of moisture. So if your skin and nails are not what they used to be try with this first, replenish the moisture daily. I’ve listed a few products below.
5. Apply a Treatment base coat
Once your hands and nails have soaked in the moisture you can apply a nourishing base coat to add a little extra dose of vitamins and healthy sheen to the nails.
Firstly remove any oils from the nail bed before you paint. Use something nourishing and not stripping like dior Dissolvant Abricot.
There’s many great nourishing treatment base coats on the market. I love Biosculpture its what i use on my clients and from which i continue to see great results.
Lavender Base - great for damaged nails and a beautiful lilac hue.
Volcanic Base - perfect for healthy but thin nails which need strengthening.
Seaweed Calcium Base (pictured) - for dry brittle nails, increases the suppleness of hard nails.
Oxycoat - antioxidant for the nails and helps to stimulate nail growth. (an underdog if you ask me).