Take care of your nails!

Hello everyone!

You know that I like nails and doing nail art, but in order to do a beautiful nail art, you need to take good care of your nails, cuticles and hands. Nothing looks nice on dry hands, with ugly cuticles and on chipped nails. So I am going to share with you my secrets to beautiful nails that I discovered over the years.


Water
We all know that water is everything, so I'm not going to write about it a lot. Just drink your water and your entire body will be happy and healthy! You can go here to see my post about the importance of water and how to make Sassy water.

Vitamins
Just like your skin, your nails need some nurture from the inside and some nutrients can help with them. First one is biotin (vitamin H, coenzyme R or vitamin B₇). Foods with a relatively high biotin content include peanuts, chard and other leafy green vegetables, raw egg yolk, liver, and Saskatoon berries, but it can also be taken in a supplement form. Second one is iron, which shows its deficiency in brittle nails. You can get iron by eating nuts, lean red meat and green, leafy vegetables. Deficiency of zinc is usually visible in white spots, slow nail growth and inflammation, and you can find it in dark chocolate, peanuts and turkey. The last one is Vitamin B12, which can be found in cheese, eggs and crab. As you can see, most of these are pretty similar, and you can find more than one of the fore mentioned nutrients in just one ingredient. So get some eggs, leafy greens and nuts and start eating! You can also get supplements for all of these, but it's always better to intake them naturally.

Hand cream
Hand cream is essential for hands, cuticles and nails. All three need moisture, and the best thing (and the easiest one) is hand cream. It's not even that important which hand cream, as long as you use something. Of course, there are better ones, and less good ones, but it all comes down to the same thing- hydrating your hands. And you don't need to put cream on your hands every 10 minutes, but if you start applying it in the evening (before going to bed), you've made a lot of progress. You can apply it a couple more times throughout the day and you're good to go! Just massage it into your skin, your nails and your cuticles. I have a bunch of hand creams, so I'm not going to show them to you, but just get anything... anything is better than nothing.

Also, once in a while, you can use a hand mask and you can find some great DIY recipes here and here.

Cuticle oil
You will see a lot of nail artists use cuticle oil after doing a manicure, because it makes everything look nice and smooth, but use it more often! It's a nice habit (which is not one of my habits :D) to put some cuticle oil on at night, before going to bed. It will absorb faster than during daytime when you have lots of work to do, and your cuticles, as well as nails, will be healthy.
It is not recommended to cut cuticles, because that makes them grow even faster, but only pushing them, and make them less visible that way. I use Deborah Emollient cuticle softener or O.P.I cuticle oils (I ordered them from eBay for a couple of $$, and a cuticle pusher from eBay, as well).

You can make cuticle oil yourself, too, and there are hundreds of recipes online but here is one.

A good nail clipper

You want your nail clipper to be nice and big. In fact, big enough to cut the entire nail at once. When you use small clippers, it takes two or three clippings to cut off the entire nail, and that causes a lot of damage to your nails, and nails can chip easily. And use a clipper only- nail scissors are forbidden!

A good nail file

Your nail file shouldn't be made of metal, because it is too harsh, and can also damage your nail. Buy regular paper nail file that is not too coarse and use it in one direction only. That way, your nails won't get damaged at all! Also, when you use a nail clipper, you don't need to file a lot. You only need to file the edges a little, and make them less sharp and smooth.

Base coat

Base coat is the last step in nail care, and the first step in nail art. It is important for making your nail stronger, as well as protecting your nails from becoming yellow from dark nail polishes. It is not important what you use (of course, there are better ones and less good ones :D ), you can use a normal clear polish, but again, some protection is better than no protection (pun intended). I use two different base coats (not at the same time and they are not really base coats, but bare with me) by Essence Cosmetics. Essence studio nails pro white hardener and Essence ultra strong nail repair (as you can see, they have some extra benefits).

Some of my other tips are not to put gel or acryl on your nails, because that causes a lot of damage (you have to file your entire nail a lot) and to sometimes not wear any nailpolish. That may sound weird or unneccessary, but I believe that even nails have to breathe from time to time.


And that's it for today's post. Do you have some other tips? Do you agree with my tips? Do you think I'm wrong? Let me know :)

Thank you for reading this post and I will talk to you next week!

Have a great week!
See you soon xx