Hi Goddesses
One of your very favourite Crumpet posts is The 10 Basics of Nail Polish - What Every Beginner Should Know. It's a great post, packed with all the info I learnt in my first few months of being a polish addict, and as I've learnt so much this year, I thought I'd do another !
These are in no particular order, just hopefully great tips!
1 - PVA Glue
Oh man. I resent every minute of my life I didn't know about this! When I first heard that you could apply PVA glue to your nails as a base coat, and then add any glitterbomb polish, and then it would just peel off when you wanted it to, I was all, "nooooooo" and "surely not". This was closely followed by "I want someone else to try it first" and "won't it harm my nails".
Well, the amazing news is it doesn't seem to harm your nails at all, and it is a MIRACLE! Scared of wearing glitter polishes ? No more! Bored with the foil removal technique ? No more! Seriously, this is the best discovery EVERRRRRRR.
Paint your nails with PVA (don't use a normal base coat). Apply whatever polish on top. Top coat as normal. When you're ready, pick it off! Usually, you can hook it at an edge or a corner and it will come off in a one-r. Genius.
2 - Konad Stamping Polishes
Oh I wish I'd tried these sooner. All the agony of trying to work out which polishes stamp, and "why isn't it working", when for just £5 a bottle you can have guaranteed success. Winner.
3 - de-dupe that stash!
This was so liberating! Honestly, why DO you need 17 shades of aqua or 3 shades of forest green, a colour you never wear? So I picked the best one and ditched the rest. Wow, easier than you think! AND you can use the money to buy new polish !
4 - proper hand care
I am a lazy Crumpet by nature, and cuticle care wasn't something I'd paid too much attention to until they got really dry in the summer. So now I mositurise, just like every big girl should. Avojuice so far is as good as it gets.
5 - a dotting tool is a great TOOL
I always used my dotting tools for nail art, but recently, I've discovered they're useful for nail clean up too. I have quite high nail walls, and sometimes, the polish will flood the wall a little. Best trick? Whilst it's wet, use your thinnest dotting tool to scoop the excess out of the channel! Crisper lines and neater clean up.
6 - to take great photos, you need a great camera
I finally bought a new camera in the summer and wow oh wow, what a difference. I now cringe looking back on old photos.
7 - find the light !
To take good photos you also need to find a steady and fantastic light source - see above
8 - the foil method
Before PVA, this was how I learnt to remove my glitter. Soak your cotton wool pad, place on nail, wrap in bacofoil and leave in place for about 10 mins. Pull off in one smooth motion, and all or most of the glitter will slide off too. Those very fine glitters are tricky bastards though, you may have to have an extra scrub at them! Here's a great tutorial from The Polishaholic.
9 - keep your untrieds separate
Ok, this seems a bit of a weird one, and it's not really technical, but hey ho. I used to add my untrieds straight into my stash, but I started to realise that I was forgetting what I had bought AND never wearing it! I now keep all my untrieds separate - it also can help to keep your no buy in check, as in "you have 200 untried polishes and you want to buy MORE?!"
and that leads to my final one - 10 - regularly review your stash
Like a lot of you, I seemed to be on a mission to "collect" polish rather than use it. It took me til very late in the year to realise that I would never wear most of my polishes - if you own 1000, you'd have to change polish 3 times a day to wear them all in a year!
And whilst it might be nice to own 5 navys so that one day, you can do a comparison post, what's the point, especially when you don't like navy ? Lol.
So I started de-stashing, and I am continuing to do so. The new Zoya Lovelys ARE lovely, but I already own a colour in each of those shades, so I'm not going to buy them, simple as. Keep checking what you've got before you buy more, and above all else, stop buying the same thing over and over.
But don't you own like a gazillion purples ? Ssssshhh, that's different! But I have even de-stashed some of those, just not as brutally.
I hope you picked up at least half a morsel of wisdom from this post, and more than anything, keep enjoying polish.
Lots of Love
Crumpet xxx :)
8 - the foil method
Before PVA, this was how I learnt to remove my glitter. Soak your cotton wool pad, place on nail, wrap in bacofoil and leave in place for about 10 mins. Pull off in one smooth motion, and all or most of the glitter will slide off too. Those very fine glitters are tricky bastards though, you may have to have an extra scrub at them! Here's a great tutorial from The Polishaholic.
9 - keep your untrieds separate
Ok, this seems a bit of a weird one, and it's not really technical, but hey ho. I used to add my untrieds straight into my stash, but I started to realise that I was forgetting what I had bought AND never wearing it! I now keep all my untrieds separate - it also can help to keep your no buy in check, as in "you have 200 untried polishes and you want to buy MORE?!"
and that leads to my final one - 10 - regularly review your stash
Like a lot of you, I seemed to be on a mission to "collect" polish rather than use it. It took me til very late in the year to realise that I would never wear most of my polishes - if you own 1000, you'd have to change polish 3 times a day to wear them all in a year!
And whilst it might be nice to own 5 navys so that one day, you can do a comparison post, what's the point, especially when you don't like navy ? Lol.
So I started de-stashing, and I am continuing to do so. The new Zoya Lovelys ARE lovely, but I already own a colour in each of those shades, so I'm not going to buy them, simple as. Keep checking what you've got before you buy more, and above all else, stop buying the same thing over and over.
But don't you own like a gazillion purples ? Ssssshhh, that's different! But I have even de-stashed some of those, just not as brutally.
I hope you picked up at least half a morsel of wisdom from this post, and more than anything, keep enjoying polish.
Lots of Love
Crumpet xxx :)
