Cleaning Up My Manicure- A Look At My Nail Brushes

A few posts back (or maybe more than a few, I'm not so good with time) someone asked in the comments what sort of brushes I use to clean up my manicure. In a totally separate conversation, a friend of mine mentioned that she thought I was just super-talented at painting my nails and managed not to make a total mess at it. That's so not true... so much so that I had to laugh!

See, I've had a tremor since I was in my teens. I could never be a neurosurgeon, else my patients would end up blinded, paralyzed, or missing chunks of their anatomy! As it is, I've managed to cut off part of my finger using a craft knife. (Don't worry, it was a tiny part and I barely miss it. But if you ever look closely at my left hand index finger, you'll notice it's got a slanted edge on one side. That's because I lost that part in a nasty art school incident. But I digress...)

So how do I end up with nails that look neat and skillfully-painted? Easy. I cheat. I use a technique that I first read about on Lacquerized: I use a paint brush and pure acetone to remove the polish from everywhere that should be polish-free! For the actual how-to, I really suggest you go read her description of the process. I simply cannot explain the process any better than she does, or even add anything new or fun to it. But finish reading my entry before you go, if you don't mind. :D

The question is, what sort of brush do I use? I still haven't completely decided what sort of brush to use. Mostly, I flip-flop between two main brushes. Thankfully, since I'm a painter I have an absolute ton of paintbrushes on hand. Let's look at what I've been using...

I started out using this tiny little brush. It came from a multi-pack of brushes from WalMart's craft department. (I think it was $3 or $4 for a pack of five brushes, maybe?) Although this was a very inexpensive brush, it works really well. It would also be a good brush to use for cream or gel eyeliners. What I love about this brush is that it's got such a sharp, chiseled edge. This means I can get right into the crevices on the sides of my nails where polish tends to pool, or I can turn the brush sideways to sweep off larger blobs of polish from other parts of my finger.

 The synthetic bristles hold their shape well and so far haven't seemed to be degrading from the acetone. The biggest drawback of this brush is that it simply doesn't hold much acetone, so I end up dipping back into the liquid over and over and over and over again. It gets tedious. So for preliminary cleanup (or when I'm feeling particularly lazy) I switch over to my larger cleanup brush.

 

You can see that this brush is much larger than the first one. I can sweep off much more polish with this one before needing to redip it. Unfortunately, since it holds more acetone it also tends to flood my nail with it if I'm not careful. (It's always something, isn't it? Sheesh, my diamond shoes are too tight and all this money in my purse makes my bag too heavy!) To avoid the acetone flooding into my nail creases, I simply tap the tip of the brush onto my towel before I touch it to my finger. Problem solved!

One thing to be careful with: acetone is a really potent solvent. It removes nail polish, right? Well, it will also remove the paint from your paintbrushes, so be very careful not to dip your brush too far into your acetone. If you aren't careful, you'll end up with paintbrush paint all over your fingers. It's not a pretty look, trust me!

I have one more brush that I use for nail art, and it's one I customized myself. I may have mentioned this before, but I am VERY frugal. (Frugal sounds so much nicer than cheap or poor.) I wanted to have a fine brush that was long enough to make straight lines easier to paint and fine enough to make those lines thin. I had several liner brushes, but they were all entirely too large. So, one day I pulled out my scissors and gave my brush a haircut.

Now the brush does exactly what I wanted it to do, even if it is ugly as can be. One day I may end up with actual nail art brushes, but until then these do the job nicely. I'm even getting faster with cleaning up my polish... when I first started this technique, I'd spend a good hour going over the various parts of my nails and still not have a very good result. Now I get a pretty nice result after around half an hour (unless I'm wearing red- red is EVIL to clean up!), and I know people who manage to do their cleanup in around 10 minutes!

So, do you think you'll try this method? I honestly cannot say enough good things about it. How do you currently clean up your edges?

NAIL ART TUTORIAL:How to Do a Sponged Gradient

So you want to do a gradient on your nails, but you're not quite sure how to go about it. I've heard people say it's intimidating, they're worried the polish will dry or they'll mess it up. They're afraid they won't have the skills required to do it correctly, or that something bad will happen. Well, let me tell you this- it won't.

There's a very important fact to keep in mind- it's only nail polish. As long as you make a few preparations, the worst you'll have to deal with is cleaning the polish off your fingers. It comes off. It's really ok! The next time you try, it'll go a little better, and before you know it you'll be doing gradients with the best of them!

Supplies needed:

• base coat
• polishes (2 minimum)
• top coat
• a makeup sponge or two
• nail polish remover or acetone
• cotton buds or a brush
• cotton balls or rounds

Optional Supplies:

• newspaper (to protect surfaces)
• petroleum jelly (for easier cleanup)
• scissors (to cut sponge)
• a pantyliner (for sponge cleaning)

When you choose your polishes for a gradient, it helps to pick colors that are analogous, or next to each other on the color wheel. If you try to blend colors that are too far apart, they tend to look muddy. This is an entire lesson on its own, and I can go into that later if you're interested. For now, just remember to look for colors that blend into each other. I'm using red, orange, and yellow. You can see they're next to each other on the color wheel.

If you were to try to make gradient from colors across from each other on the color wheel, like blue and orange, they would make a muddy grey/brown in the center where they meet. It's not terribly pretty, although understanding the color wheel can come in very handy when you're mixing your own colors! But for now, back to gradients!

The first thing I would suggest is to put down a layer of newspaper on the surface you're going to be working on. You're working with lots of polishes and sponges and things, and if you're anything like me it's safest to put something down between you and your antique coffee table. Nail polish on furniture can be bad, but nail polish remover on furniture is even worse! Then make sure you've got everything you'll need for a while, because this can take a bit of time. Grab a soda or a bottle of water, the phone, the TV remote- whatever you need so that you don't have to go digging for it with wet nails. Also, visit the restroom- wet nails are not compatible with potty breaks!

Now, you need to prep your nails. I've been experimenting with using petroleum jelly on my cuticles and the skin around my nails, just to make cleanup a bit easier. I'm not sure if it helps, but it can't hurt, right?

You'll also want to wipe your nails down with nail polish remover on a cotton ball or round. This helps remove oils and things that can make your polish come off, and helps dry out your nail so that your base coat can really adhere. Then you need to apply 2-3 coats of your base color, depending on how much coverage you want.

Before you start stamping, it helps to decide where you want your polishes to be on your nail.
I'm basically using yellow, orange and red for this gradient, but I also have two pinks I want to use for sparkle and easing the gradient. (Pink + yellow = orange too!) So, looking at my nail, I decided I wanted to put the pale pink down over most of my nail, then put the orange polish over about half of my nail, and put the red just on the tip of my nail.

You can draw it out if it helps you, or you can just eyeball it and estimate in your mind. Either way, it does help to get an idea of just where you want each color to start and end. If you use fewer colors, you'll have larger sections, and vice versa. Remember- it's all up to you, and you really can do whatever you want. There are no hard and fast rules!

Before I started sponging, I decided to cut my sponges down so I'd have more control. You can make them as large or small as you like- mine ended up around the size of a pencil eraser. It would cover a little over half my nail.

Loading the sponge is easy. You simply paint on the polish, just like painting your nail! However, I found that for the yellow and orange, it helped to paint them both onto the sponge like in the photo to the right. This helped the colors blend a bit more, and made a much smoother gradient. You don't have to do this, but it's an option.

To sponge the color on, you simply put the sponge over where you want the color to be, then pat it onto the nail. You don't need a lot of pressure... just pat pat pat the color onto the nail. It will build up fast enough, and you'll still have a bit of control over it. Yes, this will get all over your fingers. That's why we have the polish remover, so we can clean up afterwards.

Then it's simply a process of patting the color where you want it. You can see how it progressed for me. The camera really struggled to pick up the contrast between the red and the orange. I probably should have chosen different colors, but hey... you live and learn, right? I still think it turned out cute!

If you find that your red has gone up too far, just put some orange back onto the sponge and pat it over the red. You can really make a smooth gradient if you take your time with this. Just try to be patient, and work with it. Small pats of color really give you more control over the gradient.

You may end up feeling like you've got too much polish in the sponge. I know I did! This is when that pantyliner comes in handy. Just firmly press the sponge into the pantyliner a couple of times and it'll be clean enough to use with another color. It will be discolored, but it won't affect your polish as long as you're working from light to dark. I even used it with yellow after this and it was fine!

And finally, after patpatpating your nails until you're probably ready to beatbeatbeat your head into the wall, you'll end up with nails that look like this. If you're like me, you'll be too tired to consider cleanup, throw some quickdry on top and call it a night. But the better thing to do would be to grab those cotton buds and wipe away the stray polish on your fingers with some nail polish remover. That shouldn't take too long, and then you'll have an adorable gradient manicure. It looks great on its own, or you can do nail art on top of it! You could mask off part of the nail and do a partial gradient. Flower stickers would look good on this, as would stripes or dots or... well, lots of things! It's all up to you...

I hope this helps. It's less tutorial and more of high points, but I couldn't really figure out how to write "pat pat pat the orange down. Then pat pat pat some red on top of the orange. If it's too much red, pat pat pat some orange on top." I think you guys can figure that part out on your own! :D

I hope this gives you the courage to try it. Remember, it's just nail polish, and you can always fix it if it's awful. If you do decide to do it, take a picture, I'd love to see it!

Til next time!
     <3 Laynie

Birthday Haul!

This is something I will rarely do. I don't generally spend money on nail polish stuff. Because of that, I don't do haul posts. Even this time, I went for colors I can use in artsy stuff to round out my palette. Still, I got $50 from my dad for my birthday day-before-yesterday, and I spent a bit on me. Don't get me wrong, $20 went to fix my car's AC, because I live in hell South Louisiana, where the heat index has been reaching 110° or higher on a regular basis. AC is not a splurge, it's a necessity.

But then, my husband told me he wanted me to get something for myself, something to make me happy. (This is where everyone is supposed to smile and saw, "Awww, he's awesome!") So I did. I went digging through online coupons and things, and I decided to look for what I might be missing, and so... well... here we go. I took pictures.

First off, I was running low on remover & acetone, and you know how important those are! So, I grabbed one of each. The remover was $0.98, the acetone was $3.45 or so.

Then I went to look for the stickers I've been drooling over for months. Seriously, well before I started painting my nails, but alas, they were sold out.  No cute cupcake & crossbones decals for Laynie. =(

That's ok. In a way, it's better, because that leaves more room for polishes, and boy did I ever shop well for polish. Now, the two purple Wet n Wild polishes (Eggplant Frost and Wild Card) were from the other day, I just hadn't photographed them, so I stuck them in with the birthday haul. They were birthday, just not from Dad's contribution. I also decided to get the Carribean Frost because it's such a pretty teal, the Shield because OMG, it's a gorgeous sort of warm pewter color, and I'm always needing clear polish to mix with. All were $1 except Shield, which was $2.

I also grabbed a couple of Love My Nails polishes, because hey, $1 polishes make me happy. I chose Hot Tamale because it's such a gorgeous, vibrant shimmery orange, and Dazzling because it's such an understated, purple/green shimmer. Seriously, it is insane, and it's so pretty!

Rockstar Pink was the biggest splurge of all, and it was from my actual birthday. I spent $2.50 on it, and it was worth every penny. It's a crazy glittertastic party, and I wouldn't change a bit of it. Well, I might make it a little easier to remove, but hey... it IS glitter, right?

And here's the fun part: I found a coupon at Walgreens online to get Sinful Colors polishes for $0.99. Be sure to double check if it's valid in your area, unfortunately it's not valid everywhere. There's a limit of three polishes per person, but that's why you bring a friend. I dragged my husband along and picked out six polishes that I think I am absolutely in LOVE with!

Happy Ending is a beautiful grassy green shimmer, Love Nails is an absolutely KILLER sky-blue shimmery/frost (not sure which), Let's Meet is a summery golden yellow shimmer, Dream On is the most impossible-to-photograph vibrant purple (almost fluorescent), All About You is a mix of gold and coppery glitters in a practically-clear base, and Call You Later is a crazy mix of multi-sized Green and Gold glitters in a practically-clear base.

And because that's not enough, I also got a nail art kit from the Dollar Tree because I have all sorts of strange ideas running through my mind for nail art, and lots of them involve little multicolor stones of some sort. it comes with 120 gems and a small bottle of top coat, and it, too, was $1.

If you've been keeping track, that's less than $20 spent today and less than $25 spent total. Not bad for 15 polishes, 120 rhinestones, a bottle of acetone, and a bottle of remover, yes? I'm giddy. I love getting a good deal! The only problem I have is...

... how the heck am I gonna STORE these babies? O.o