8/19/11

Cuticle Care + Topcoats

 Hey! These are the products I use for my cuticle care and my basics for my manicures. This post is fairly picture heavy, so to view it click it after the jump!




So - I'll start with cuticle remover. I use Blue Cross from Sally's Beauty Supply. I bought this last October, and this is how much I've used so far (if you can see it's just above the word BLUE on the bottle). I use it probably every three days. I dip a q-tip into the bottle then trace the q-tip around my cuticle. When I've done each nail on one hand I push up my cuticle with an orangewood stick and go back and forth with the orange stick on the thick parts of my cuticle and they instantly look better!

Here are my moisturizing products. I know they're a lot, but I definitely didn't buy all of these at once! I mainly use the moisturizing lotion, QTICA cuticle balm and Lush Lemony Flutter. I bought the lotion and Qtica balm from Ulta and Lemony Flutter from Lush! I keep the cuticle creams by my bed so I can put them on before I sleep. I sometimes also use my Carmex lip balm as cuticle cream and it works awesome! 

These are Bliss Glamour Gloves. I don't wear them that often anymore, but they really do lock in moisture when I do wear them! When my hands are feeling particularly parched I slap on some Lemony Flutter and some of my lotion and put these on overnight. Works like a charm!


This is on a slightly different note because it isn't cuticle care, but these are my favorite basecoats and topcoats and the thinner I'm using right now. From left to right: Beauty Secrets Thinner (Sally's), Seche Vite (Sally's, but they also sell it at some drugstores), NYC Longwearing Topcoat (Bought mine at Rite Aid), Gelous (Sally's), Sally Hansen Nail Quencher (eBay). I use the thinner on my old dried-up polishes, but I've noticed that it's really hard to control how much comes out of the bottle! Seche Vite is my go-to topcoat. It does, however, shrink dry polish and some wet polishes, so I use the NYC clear polish as a topcoat when I'm updating my already dry manicure with a konad or any decals. Gelous is awesome for "hungry" glitter - glitter that is really gritty feeling, even with topcoat. It's supposed to be a ridge-filling basecoat, and I use it for both! My favorite basecoat is by far Sally Hansen Nail Quencher. It made my peelies almost 100% better! I didn't order it for a really, really long time because you can't buy it in stores (it's discontinued) but I'm so glad I finally bought it!


Hope this helped! I realize it's a lot to get through, but hopefully the pictures are enough for most of you :) If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments!

6 comments:

  1. What do you mean when you say that Sally Hansen nail quencher got rid of your peelies? I've been using Orly Bonder & have noticed my actual nails start to peel. I've never had this problem before & I'm wondering if that's what is causing it.

    Thanks!

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  2. Thank you for this post because your cuticles look amazing. Using Carmex lip balm as a cuticle cream is interesting, I'm going to have to try it.

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  3. Hi Nichole! I've always had a problem with my nails peeling, and the Sally Hansen base coat is the only thing that has really helped my nails.

    Thanks hauloffame! It's great when you don't want to carry a lot around. I use my qtica cream as chapstick sometimes too :p

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  4. Hi Valerie! I have a question that's not quite about cuticle care, and I hope you don't mind.

    While I was checking out all your posts, I couldn't get over how great your cuticles look, which made me take note of how flawless your nail polish always is at your cuticles--always smooth and perfectly rounded, with no sign at all of brushstrokes.

    And that got me wondering, how the HECK do you do it? I would LOVE for my polish to look that immaculate! I have one of those little manicure corrector pens, which helps, but my nails still don't look anywhere near as clean as yours.

    Any tips?

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  5. Aren, you're so nice! I use a brush dipped in 100% acetone to go around my cuticle line when I mess up painting. I haven't been doing this so much recently, but I can do a tutorial for you if you would find it helpful!

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  6. Ooh, Valerie, if you would, that would be amazing. : )

    I actually just started my own polish blog today at the urging of some Facebook friends, but I'm still such an amateur, and any tips or tricks I can use to make my manicures or blog look better would be much appreciated!

    http://realcutenails.blogspot.com/ (Ha, I just realized that I totally owe you thanks for being the inspiration for my very first post, too!)

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