French manicure at home

Here comes a description on how to do a French manicure at home. It's not all all as difficult as you maybe think to do a French manicure at home. At most drugstores you can by rather inexpensive (if compared to a French manicure made at a salon!) French manicure at home sets. They come complete in pouches or packages and often has instructions. You can just try them out and then pick your favorite, there are a lot of brands! You can also buy refills of peel off stickers and other useful manicure things. Put all the things you will need for doing a French manicure at home on a table. You will need a towel, nail care tools and a French manicure nail polishing set.

Start with cleaning your nails. Clean the area under the nails (the little gap between the skin of the finger and the nail is easily filled with dirt and bacterias) using a sharp manicure tool or a wooden orange pen. Before beginning the French manicure at home, form your nails to the form you wish to have with a nail file. Some prefer sharper edges and a kind of square form while others want a rounder form on their nails. Use a nail file you like; a glass fiber nail is a good recommendation. Before starting the French manicure at home nail polishing, cut off dead skin parts around the nail with a nail cutter or nail scissors. Brush your nails under pouring warm water for a minute or so using a nail brush with which you gently scrub the nails and the cuticles. Use a liquid cuticles remover on the nail and the cuticles. This is a kind of gentle scrub which will remove dead skin cells and make the nails and the cuticles soft. Wait for five minutes while the cuticles remover is acting, brush your nails with the nail brush without water, and then again, this second time under pouring water. Now the nails and the cuticles are soft after all the scrubbing and brushing. You can easily put down the cuticles. Apply and massage in some nail oil. Don't use too much oil if you're about to polish your nails or do a French manicure at home because the oil will prevent the polish layers from getting firmly attached to the nails.

A simple tutorial: French manicure at home
(Read through all of the steps before starting!)

1. Clean your nails and cuticles. Follow some or all of the simple tips described above before doing a French manicure at home.

2. You start your French manicure at home by applying a good transparent base coat and let it dry for about 5 minutes. A bonder is a kind of top coat which first sticks to the fingernails and then to the next coming layers. You don't have to be too careful to get it exactly onto the nail area; if you do the French manicure at home in the evening you can peel the over left polish off after showering since the water and shampoo will loosen it up. This way the whole nail area will be covered in coat. If you're too careful not to get any coat on your fingers outside the nails, maybe you'll miss some small part of the nail. A full covering base coat is important, it's the foundation of the finished nail polish and in this case, the French manicure.

3. The next step of the French manicure at home is to apply the white tip coat on all finger nails. This is the tricky part; you want to create a regular arc following the natural white part of your nail. You can try to hold back the tip of the finger from the nail and then rotate both the finger and the brush (with not too much paint on it) to create a good line of white. If you have long nails, the white area will be wider but if your nails are short you may want to pant the white line a little bit below your natural one. If one barely can see the white line, nobody will really know that you've made a French manicure at home! Polish two layers of white tip coat to get a full cover of white but try at the same time to get is as thin as possible. The tip of the nail is an exposed area and if this is thick it will more easily crack and shed. If one swipe doesn't fill it all in, just fill in the gaps before the color dyes so you get a smooth finish.

In order to get a curve; start thicker at the corner, ease up the pressure from the brush at the center and then make it firmer again. If you're right handed the right hand will be more difficult to paint when doing the French manicure at home. Try to hold the brush more still and rotate the nail instead while painting the right hand. The opposite is of course applicable if your left-handed! If you have a friend who can do your “other” hand this is of course comfortable when doing a French manicure at home... Do the thumbs last so you can use them to clean up on the other fingers while the polish is wet. If you don't feel so secure to get a straight line and have unsteady hands, you can use peel off stickers. This is small strips to place right under where you want the painted line. Then just paint over the sticker and peel it off the nail and you have a perfect line! Let the white tip coat of the French manicure at home dry for about 10 minutes. If you don't want to use a stark white tone there are more natural or pearl like ones to choose between so you don't get that obvious painted-on and fake look.

4. Apply the pink or beige coat over the whole nail. Let this layer dry for about 3 minutes. Be careful so that you don't get too much nail polish at the bottom of the nails, this can ruin your French manicure at home. A pink coat will tone the white tip coat down a bit so don't be afraid if the white looks too bright at first. But the pink coat will still not completely wash out the white. It doesn't change that much, it just gives an all over finished look. This pink or beige coat may look streaky at first but just let it settle and it will smoothen out.

5. Finally apply the clear top coat and your French manicure at home is almost finished! Some types of top coats has the effect of sealing and fusing all the previous layers together. These kinds you would want to apply before the other layers have dried completely. But if you use a common top coat, especially the white tip lines must be dry, otherwise they might smear. You don't have to wait for the top coat to dry before you do step 6. If you skip step 6, let the top coat dry for about 10 minutes. Try to avoid touching anything with your nails within this time. That is because the top coat is thicker than the other layers, it gets indentations easier.

6. Drip two drops of “Drip Dry” (from OPI for example) and shake your hands. This step is voluntary, maybe something for the expert nail polisher but a hot French manicure tip also for the common nail polisher at home! Congratulations, now you've done a French manicure at home, I hope it all went well!