Lazy Manicure

If you’re a busy woman whether it’s working or playing it is always quite difficult to find time to do your nails at home and with most ladies it never looks anywhere near a salon manicure. So here is the lazy manicure I did the other day.

Eva Lewis for Tamla Motown a few decades ago

With my lazy manicure, I can never be bothered to soak my nails and on this occasion I looked at my nails and they were all different lengths so I took a pair of nail scissors and cut them all very short. I cut them absolutely straight like you would toe nails and then cut tiny angles at the corners so that it would be easier for me to shape them with a file. I then filed them down the sides and round the corners so they were a nice square shape but with rounded sides.

I used a salon emery board but I buy them at Boots the Chemist for about £2.00 for two.

My cuticles were a bit dry and scruffy looking. I don’t believe in cutting them as they grow back looking hard and horrible. I found some Essie Cuticle Oil as we used Essie in my Beauty Salon it is called Apricot Cuticle Oil.

I coated all around my nail both the cuticles and the sides. I then took the end of the scissors which is completely not allowed and against all rules of beauty and used that to scratch off any cuticle that had stuck to the nail and also to go under the cuticle. Don’t do it too hard. This Essie product is brilliant the cuticle residue just melted away in seconds like magic.

Any cuticle remover will do a good job and it really doesn’t matter which brand you buy. My nails looked perfect and I quickly rubbed in a scrub - any one will do, (this makes your hands nice and smooth) and then rinsed it off.

I applied a Ridge Filler which is a good undercoat that smoothes out any small blemishes. I then put on one coat of bright red polish, as I like short nails to have a really bright colour. That is my manicure. Because red nail polish chips so much and I need it to last all week I have the first day with just one coat. The next day I will paint only the chipped away areas and then apply one coat of Top Coat. The next day I apply one coat of Red polish and the next day I paint only the chipped areas and use the Top Coat again and keep that up until I can be bothered to start the whole thing off again.

If I have made mistakes around my fingers while painting my nails I use Leighton Denny’s wonderful Precision Corrector and Brush. You just use the brush to paint over any polish overspill and it just disappears.

If you don’t want to spend that much you can just get an old eye liner brush or any small eye brush and dip it into your nail polish remover and do the same thing. You have to work a bit harder at it but it does work. I prefer to use a harsh nail polish remover because that is nearly pure acetone and works for a whole host of other things. The posher nail polish removers have all sorts of oils in them to make them less abrasive. You can us a cotton bud instead of a brush but you need much more precision.

For those of us who are always in red or dark colours and as you go around your house you find lines of that colour on the sink, in the bath, on a wall, washing machine and all sorts of other places it is the harsh and cheap nail polish remover that when put on a cotton pad will instantly remove those annoying marks. Boots the Chemist do my favourite nail polish remover the price is £1.00.

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