Nail Files: Bare All Tag

I saw a post on Painted Nails & Baking Scales about the Nail Files: Bare All tag and I've been saving the idea for a dry spell on the blog (which I've hit already thanks to the Olympics!) so today you get to see my nails in their birthday suit.

That's my nails fresh from a polish removal session. My cuticles were growing out, I had a few hangnails and most of my nails needed a reshape. I've been biting the sides of my fingers again too :(

Here they are after some cuticle work and a bit of TLC. Still in rough condition, so I need to stop stress biting soon. Filing into the correct shape is getting easier but my main challenge has been learning to file into a shape that matches the nail bed, not the white tips. Before I was wearing polish every day, I thought it looked weird not to follow the white tip shape, but it made my painted nails look odd. Everyone has to learn sometime, right?

I don't have perfect hands and nails by any means, but I'm lucky to have strong nails that grow well. I don't have the longest nail beds but I like the way they look, whether they're mid-length like this or down to the fingertips, so I'm lucky in that way too.

There's some staining going on, which I think is the beginning of what I hear is the polish addicts' curse - go without polish long enough to get rid of the stains (gasp, the horror), or maintain the stains by wearing polish to cover them. What a dilemma...I know what my solution will be!

There are some of my manicure things. I forgot to add the hand cream I mention below and the Boots Expert Nail Strength Solution that I use *facepalm* but there we go.

The Nail Files: Bare All Tag rules/questions:

• Include a photo of your clean, product free, natural nails: see above for before and after shots!
• Preferred length:  Short to Mid, because some of my nails spoon when they grow too long - the first picture above is as long as I let them get.
• Preferred shape: Squoval, but sometimes they lean towards square by accident.
• Favorite base coat:  Orly Bonder, but I haven't tried any other big-name basecoats yet.
• Favorite top coat:  Seche Vite but again, I haven't tried any other well-known ones (recommendations for either, that I can pick up in UK for £10 or under, are welcome!)
• Favorite cuticle cream/oil:  Burt's Bees Lemon Cuticle Cream
• Favorite hand cream:  Ahava Dead Sea Water Mineral Hand Cream, which was a gift but can be bought from www.ahava.co.uk
• Favorite nail clippers:  I use Boots ones if I'm taking off more than a couple of millimetres, otherwise I file them down a little.
• Favorite nail file:  At the moment I'm using a large emery board, from Boots I think! Coveting a glass file having heard good things about them.
• Favorite remover:  Cutex removers so far.
• Self or professional manicure:  I do my own but try and go for a professional full manicure a few times a year.
• How often do you polish:  It depends on how much free time I have. Since I started blogging, it's been about twice a week but the urge is growing to do it more often. I don't always have good light for manicures and end up removing them later without ever having photographed them, so I'm hopefully making a DIY lightbox this weekend to fix that.
• Most wanted nail product: At the moment, it's the new gold flakes topcoat that Zoya released a picture of!
• Be sure to include the nail files bare all tag in your post/video response

I'd love to see some of your bare nails - leave a link to your bare nails post in the comments if you make one and I'll edit them into the article :)

Thanks for the post idea, Lou!

Topcoat and basecoat

When I decided to start doing this manicure thing regularly, I figured a proper basecoat and topcoat would be a good investment. After a lot of reading around on various blogs, I went for Orly Bonder as a basecoat and Seche Vite as a topcoat. I've been using them for a few weeks so here are my thoughts.

Orly Bonder is marketed as a rubberized basecoat that helps grip lacquer to its surface, making your manicure last longer. It goes on easily and it isn’t smooth to touch - it really does feel slightly rubbery. I've been using it for a few weeks now and I haven't had chips like I normally do, just a little tip wear. It's also prevented any staining.

Seche Vite has quite a strong smell but it applies well, dries quickly and has a good shine to it, so it’s already miles ahead of the non-branded topcoat I was using before! A daily coat of this has kept manicures going a little longer, but I have noticed pullback at the tips with non-creme polishes. This might just be my application but it's happened when I've wrapped colour over tips too. Overall, I'm open to trying other brands but I have no major problems with Seche.

In other news, my cuticles are marginally better but still a massive work in progress - it’s going to be a lot of intensive care until I get them sorted!