Wellness Wednesday:

DIY Manicures and Pedicures

A few weeks ago, realizing that it was going to be a long time before I was able to get out for any beauty treatments, I decided that I was going to use quarantine to tackle three things I’ve always been terrible at doing myself: curling my hair, facials, and doing my own nails. I came across the company Olive and June and decided to order one of their at home manicure kits to see if I could master this skill, given all the time I had on my hands. The kit took a few weeks to come, but once it arrived, my girls were super excited, so we sat down for an afternoon of nail fun.

The Tools You Need:

The kit contained nail clippers, a nail file, a nail buffer, cuticle oil, nail polish remover and a little brush for precise removal, the brush handle attachment that the company is known for, a clear top coat polish and five nail polish colors that you select from their line. Their instruction manual gives you the order to do the steps, and helpful hints about how to get the best results. For example, most of the nail trimming should be done with the clippers and then just minimal clean up and shaping with the file.

Once we were clipped and filed and buffed, we went on to the color stage. I had selected fairly pale, neutral shades, ranging from white to pink, which I had read was easier to get right than some of the brighter colors that showed every mistake. The company is known for this wider rubber handle that you attach to the handle of the polish to make it easier to grip and paint your dominant hand. We tried it, but didn’t find that it worked very well for us-it was tricky to get on the brush handles in just the right position.

We had a few mishaps with the polish application that were user errors, but once we got it on, we loved all of the colors and their full coverage. They’ve stayed on well for the past week despite the constant hand washing and the girls even did some nail art with them. I’ve been very happy with their subtle and sophisticated color-sometime neutral colors can look weird with my skin tone, but I think all of the colors worked.

Here are the things I learned for at home manicure success:

1. It’s all about the cuticles. You need to clean them up, push them back, and keep them continually moisturized, since we didn’t attempt any cuticle trimming or removal. I’m now putting balm on my cuticles every night before bed and it’s really helped.

2. Shorter is better for nail length. We kept our nails as short as I could get them, which made it easier to get them into similar natural shapes and keep them looking neat. It’s really hard to shape long nails well, so that they all look the same, but keeping the short and in a natural shape makes it a lot easier for them match.

3. Really take the time to sit and let your nails harden before you attempt to do anything. I ruined my polish the first two times because I was too impatient to sit still and really let the polish cure, and then realized that I had to paint them at night when there were no kids around to need me to open anything and I could just sit in front of TV and give them plenty of time to set.