How to clean up your manicure to make it look fantastic

Hiya! Today I've got a tutorial that I've had lots of questions about- how I make my nails look like they're "perfectly polished." Friends have told me that I must have incredibly steady hands to polish  my nails so neatly, and yet nothing could be farther from the truth!

Instead, I've got a pretty noticeable tremor. My hands shake most of the time, and there's not really anything I can do about it. This means when I paint my nails, I get polish on the skin surrounding my nails as well. This makes it look like my nails were painted by a distracted toddler!

Thankfully, I learned how to fix it from several blogs, and I'm going to share the technique with you. It's fast and easy, and gives me that fresh-from-the-salon look. Have a look:



See? You can do this too, and with a bit of practice it won't take you long at all! Here are the details you'll need:

Supplies:
Acetone or nail polish remover
A paintbrush of your choice

I use a brush that came with a cream eyeliner from Black Radiance. It's almost the same brush that came with my Wet n Wild cream eyeliner, which isn't surprising the same parent company owns both Black Radiance and Wet n Wild! My brush looks weird because I taped it to a length of wooden dowel to make it longer.

I like this brush because it's nice and firm, and the angled tip lets me get into spaces I can't quite reach with a square brush. Still, brush preference is a very personal thing, and you might not like this brush. Try out several to see what you prefer!

You don't need a special nail art brush for this, either. You can use any brush you like. I've gotten brushes from art supplies and from WalMart, and they all work equally well for this.

Unfortunately, brushes don't last forever. As you can see, the fibers of the older (silver) Wet n Wild brush are kind of splayed out and going every-which-way. This doesn't work well when I'm trying to clean up my nails. The newer Black Radiance (gold) brush is also thinner, but that hasn't made much difference in my cleanup.

Unfortunately, the fibers in the newer brush are starting to get a bit wonky as well. I think it's time for a new one. Still, I think the eyeliner cost a whopping $3, so I'm not breaking the bank whenever I need a new one!

I hope this helps you, and that you can get neat nails too! Leave me a comment if you find this helpful.

Have a great day!

Polishes were provided by the brand for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

My New Manicure CleanUp Brush!

OMG, y'all, I have the BEST news.

Some of you may think I have super-amazing nail painting skills and never ever make a mess. You couldn't be further from the truth. I have shaky hands, and I end up with quite a mess around my cuticles. It's ok, though, because once I learned how to clean up with a brush and some acetone (or regular polish remover, whatever) my nails looked great!

I went through a lot of brushes, trying to find one that would be perfect. Big enough without being too big, nice angles, the right shape. Finally, I found one that I fell in love with. Wet n Wild makes a creme eyeliner that is freakin' amazing, and the brush that comes with it is perfect for cleaning up your nails. (It sucks for lining your eyes, though- get a new brush for that!) Best of all, the eyeliner costs a whopping $4, so I don't feel like I'm breaking the bank when I need to replace my brush.

Unfortunately, that brush is almost a year old and it's pretty much died. Acetone isn't the nicest to brushes, and these poor bristles have lost their oomph. When I went to replace it, I couldn't find the Wet n Wild liner ANYWHERE!!! This was QUITE a problem!

Well, on the ride home from dropping the kiddo off at summer camp, we stopped every few hours to stretch our legs and walk a bit. Lucky for me, I checked the cosmetics section in one of these tiny little towns and found a new brand of makeup called Black Radiance. It's a lovely cosmetics collection for darker-skinned women, and they had my brush!!

At that point, I didn't care if the cream liner worked or not, or if it was even in the package. I just wanted that brush! The good news is that it cost even less than my original Wet n Wild liner! This lovely package cost a grand total of $3.88- a price I was more than willing to pay.

Well... ok. I won't lie here. I actually picked it up and carried it in the buggy with me for a good 15 minutes while I decided whether I was going to buy it or not. Cheap or not, we're broke and we still have to go pick up the kid in 3 weeks! But eventually, I decided to go wild and bring it home with me, and I'm SO glad I did! The brush is utterly gorgeous and even works for putting on eyeliner, if you don't have any other brushes. I'd still recommend using a nicer one, though.

As if this wasn't enough good news, the liner is actually amazing! I have a feeling it's the same liner as the Wet n Wild, since it comes in the same colors and is made by the same parent company as Wet n Wild. Since I already have black liner, I went with the chocolate brown and couldn't be happier. I applied a test line onto my hand just to see how well it lasts, and after countless times washing my hands, sleeping with it, etc, it was still looking exactly the way it did when I put it on. This stuff STAYS!

I also love it on my eyes... the brown is dark enough to really make my lashline look thick without screaming "Look At My Eyeliner!" I'm loving this stuff!

So if you're looking for a new cleanup brush, head to your local cosmetics department and look for some cream eyeliner. If you can find the Wet n Wild, grab it, but the Black Radiance is just as good!

Til next time!

I bought this one with my own money, and I'll buy another when I find it!

See my disclosure statement for more information.

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?