My Top 10 Tips For Flawless Nails

Over the last year I have become more and more obsessed with painting my nails pretty colours and patterns. Whilst browsing some of my old posts I noticed how much better I have become at actually doing them neatly, so I thought I would share with you my top 10 tips on how to create flawless nails.

• Let them breathe! Even if its's just for a day a week, try not to keep them painted the whole time.
• Buff! Once a week I usually remove my nail varnish, cut my nails, buff them, mouisturise them and push the cuticles back. I have found that when my nails are buffed they are less likely to stain from the nail varnish, as they have a shiny surface. And that brings me on to my next point...
• Use a base coat! I have had nasty experiences, especially with red nail polish, after having not worn a base coat, it is not a pretty sight.
• Pick a good quality nail varnish, especially if you are planning on painting different layers. Some of my faves are Rimmel, Sally Hansen, Essie and Models Own.
• Don't flood your cuticles. Make sure you leave a gap between your cuticle and the start of the varnish. It took me ages to realise this looked SO much better. If I do by accident, or if they look a little untidy I get a very fine paintbrush and dip it into some nail varnish remover, then I just follow the cuticle round until it looks nice and smooth.
• Let the layers dry. This may sound obvious but it is especially important if you are planning on painting different colours on top.  A lot of the designs I go with have 3 colours, so I would usually paint my nails the base colour on an evening where I don't have anything to do. The first coat would go on after I had done everything I needed to. Dinner made and washed up, any chores done, and already in my PJ's! I would give the first coat at least an hour to dry before putting on the second, and make sure there is another hour to go before I need to be in bed. I often find that I end up with annoying duvet marks if I paint them too late!  Then, my second colour would go on the following day, and the third the day after that. I often use these stickers, so the polish has to be completly dry or it would ruin the layers you had already done!
• When the varnish is dry, if you have made any mistakes you can touch them up using you chosen nail varnish and a cocktail stick for the fiddly bits. The lumpiness you can often get with this will most likely be concealed by my next tip...
• Use a top coat of Seche Vite. This can hide a multitude of sins! 
• Moisturise! Your nails will always look better if your hands are not dry and in a good condition. I probably have a bit of an ocd thing about moisturising though, I do it all the time!
• When your nail art is coming to the end of its life, you may find that the top of the varnish starts to wear away and you can see the top of your nail coming through, or perhaps another colour. A handy tip to make it last just that little bit longer is to use a nail art pen to add to the design, just like I did below!

I hope you found my tips today useful. I will admit that I do not follow all of these tips myself all the time, but I find that I get the best results when I do! If you want to take a look at all of the other nail designs I have done on the blog, you can find them here.

Just in case you are interested the varnishes I used for my nail design in the pictures above are these...

Laura xXx