Nail Care

How to Do a French Manicure at Home

The French manicure is often considered the most elegant thing you can do with your fingernails, since it combines perfect polish with a natural look that looks smooth and classy. If you’re going for a job interview or just want perfect hands to show off a new ring, the French manicure is ideal. The French manicure can easily be done at home, with some patience and the right tools.
Preparing Nails for a French Manicure Any manicure starts with scrubbing your hands, filing your nails and caring for your cuticles. Use a diamond file instead of the cheaper metal ones: it’s about a dollar more expensive, but it files much quicker and smoother. For a classic French manicure, your nails shouldn’t be dragon-lady long, but should have a smooth, oval shape that’s slightly elongated to make the most of the white nail tips. You’re going to need:

Tools and Directions for an at Home French Manicure

A base coat in a subtle, neutral color like pale peach, nearly-not-there pink, or beige. The contrast comes with the white nail tips, which point up the hint of color in the base coat.

Nail Supplies You Need

1. Nail File
2. Neutral, Pink-Beige for the Base Coat
3. White Nail Polish for the Tips
4. French Nail Tip Guide Strips (available at drugstores)
5. Clear Top Coat Nail Polish

After filing your nails and tending to your cuticles by softening them and pushing them back away from the half-moons, paint your entire nail with the base coat color and let it dry. If you have chronic problems with getting the nails on your second hand painted cleanly, you may want to start by putting a little petroleum jelly on the skin of your fingers around the nail. The petroleum jelly keeps the polish from sticking to your skin if you should slip up while painting, making for easy clean-up and a neater look overall.

Using French Manicure Stencil or Template Products

Once the base coat of polish is completely dry—never try to rush this step—put the nail tip guides on your fingernails. Apply the strip guide to the area where your actual finger ends. The white tip of your nail shouldn’t comprise more than 20% of the overall fingernail when you’re done. Make sure to place the guide strips on each finger so that the tips of your nails are the same length for each.
Once the guides are in place, you can brush white polish onto your fingernails. This is a time for especial care, so that you stay with the guides and get no white polish on the lower part of the nail. Don’t remove the guides until the white polish is completely dry, or you’ll ruin the tips.
Once the white tips are dry, remove the guides. If they leave any sticky residue behind, use rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball to take it off. Don’t forget and use nail polish remover or you’ll ruin your whole manicure!

Important Step for a Salon Quality Finish to Any Mani or Pedi

Finish your French manicure by painting the entire nail with the clear top coat of polish. This does two things: it helps your manicure stay fresh longer by protecting it, and it gives a shiny and unified gloss to each nail.
You can buy a manicure in a kit, great for the new DIY nail maven, because they come with designs, color options, style ideas, instructions and all the products you need for a manicure or pedicure. You can try the new manicure polish pen, buy fun stencils and templates or go for a natural look with a brand like Sephora, Opi or Sally Hansen. For professional looking fingers and toes, you don’t need a history of salon work: you can get everything you need online or from your local drugstore. And for a quick version of the French look, you can buy a nail whitening pencil. Slide it under the edge of your nail to white the tip, et viola—instant (not as elegant, but very nice) manicure!

Review of Steps to Create the Perfect at Home French Manicure

• Clean and push back cuticles (no cuticle cutting please!).
• File names into a rounded, slightly enlongated shape.
• Base coat nails is a subdued, natural color like pale peach. Let dry completely.
• Apply the french nail tip guides from nail bed to where you actually finger ends. Leave no more than 20% of your nail showing. Tips of all nails should be the same,
• Polish nauls with guides in place and take special care not get white polish under the guides.
• Let nails dry completely, then carefully remove guides.
• Polish a final coat of clear top coat to protect all the work you just did.
• If this sounds like too much work, do it with a friend or visit your local nail salon for a relaxing manicure. French manicures normally cost between $20-$35.

Cleaning, Toenail Grooming and Smooth Heels

The foot: an interesting part of the human anatomy. When we’re born, they take our footprints, people count our toes and tickle our soles to hear that wonderful baby gurgle. At that amazing age babies can actually take hold of their feet to chew reflectively on their own toes. Long before we’re walking, our parents are cramming them into tiny little leather Oxfords, hiking boots or even tiny running shoes, I guess because they’re just so darned cute. Once we do start walking, we take our feet for granted. They get us where we want to go, and that’s just fine.

Fish Pedicure

Women, Feet Size & Shape and Beauty

But once we’re grown and trying to fulfill our sexual destiny, we become aware of feet as aesthetic accessories. Turns out, they are more than just balancing tools, locomoting appendages. Feet have the surprising capacity to be extremely cute, or they can be downright hideous.
Women’s feet are usually nicer than men’s, and the foot fetish is a common obsession among men. In fact, China once made the foot the primary object of female sexual beauty, subjecting women to footbinding because tiny feet were considered the most attractive. We still hold to the ideal of tiny feet, which explains why it’s so hard to find women’s shoes in wider that “B” width. It also describes pointy-toed shoes, stilettos and other fashionable footwear that makes your legs look wonderful, but can turn toes into what one author described as “scrambled monstrosities”.
Treat Yourself to a Professional Home Pedicure
Whether you have hard little feet or larger, softer ones, your feet will appreciate a weekly soak and scrub. Especially for women like nurses or teachers, who spend hours on their feet each day, a dedicated footbath is essential to preserving not only the beauty of your feet, but their health and comfort too. Use the time to push back softened cuticles with an orange stick, to rub away calluses with a pumice stone, and finish by moisturizing and rubbing your feet. A foot rub is the perfect finish to your footbath: get help from your own sweetheart!

Basic Foot Care Everyone Should Do

Sexy feet, repulsive feet, are not usually a matter of luck. A lot depends on the care and maintenance regime established by the foot-owner. At an absolute, bare minimum, feet should be clean. I mean, you walk on them, don’t you! What if you were stuffed into a leather show all day, strolling through parking lots, jogging in parks, shopping, doing laundry, tapping impatiently in line at the bank. Feet suffer from lack of air, from shoes that don’t breathe, from sweaty conditions on hot summer asphalt. Daily scrubbing with soap and a nail brush is a good start, but it’s only a start, if you want good-looking feet.

Pretty, Groomed Toe Nails Are Easy

When it comes to toenails, there is no in-between. Clean, healthy, well-groomed toenails are sexy. Grubby, long, unhealthy toenails are nasty, and not to be tolerated. Toenails should be well-brushed with soapy water, clipped short and neat with clippers, and treated with anti-fungal medicine if nails are discolored, thick or peeling. Even girls can get athlete’s foot (always wear flip-flops at the gym, at the pool, at the park, in any shower that is not your very own), and there topical medicines that can cure it. (If you don’t know what athlete’s foot is, it’s a fungus that causes feet to burn, itch and peel).

How to Keep Feet Smooth

Assuming your feet are clean and healthy, the step to beauty is a short one. Keep your feet and heels smooth by using a pumice stone a couple of times a week, rub them with lotion like Upper Canada Peppermint Foot Cream to keep them soft, and use a clear polish if you don’t like brightly colored toes. No one talks about it (except in women’s studies class), but women grow hair on their toes. If your toes are fuzzy, you can wax them to add to overall foot smoothness. Get a pedicure for that professional polish, but don’t let them cut your cuticles, whose sole purpose in life is to keep your feet safe from infections.

Show off Pretty Feed in the Right Accessories

Showcase your sexy feet in strappy date-night sandals, sexy career pumps or silly, weekend, jelly thongs with a silver toe ring for an scent. (Never wear a toe ring and an anklet at the same time –it’s a huge Fashion Don’t). Hiking boots are ideal for long walks, and they also look cute with ragg socks in wool or cotton and tweed skirts. Boots always look wonderful, and the longer they are, the better they look. (There is a limit—boots that go past the knee scream “Dominatrix!” and may not be the look you’re trying to project.

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