Which Vitamins Are Good For Nails & Why You Should Care

If you read this blog, you most likely care about having healthy nails. Take a trip down the nail care isle & you will find all sorts of products you can slather on your nails to improve their health. Do these products work? Maybe, it varies from product to product. But let's take a step back for a moment & consider what our nails actually are.

Our nails are made up of a protein called keratin. Keratin is a really interesting protein because it is a major component of not only our nails but our skin & hair as well. Considering how different these three things are, it is really cool that one protein can play such a large role in all three. Highly simplified, our nails are formed by keratinized skin cells. Before we go on, let's break down the different parts of the nail so we can better understand how nail growth occurs.

• Nail plate - This is the part of the nail we see & polish
• Nail bed - Skin below the nail plate. The pink tint of the nail is due to the blood vessels found here
• Cuticle - Tissue that overlaps the plate & rims the base of the nail. The cuticle protects the new growing cells of your nails
• Nail folds - Skin folds that frame & support the nail on three sides
• Lunula - The whitish half-moon at the base of the nail
• Matrix - Hidden part of the nail under the cuticle - This is where most of the action takes place

New cells are formed in the matrix. As more & more form, the older cells are pushed out, packed together & flattened to form the nail plate. This means the majority of our nails are actually dead cells. That is why you can file & trim your nails painlessly. So while adding products to your nails might improve their appearance or temporarily reinforce them greater attention should be paid to improving the health of the living cells before they undergo the keratinization process. Like any organ in our bodies, nails are an external gauge of our internal health. Doctors actually will use the appearance of nails as an aide in diagnosis - here are a few examples of what your nail appearances could reveal about your health.  

I understand that isn't the answer most people want. We are used to quick fix products & instant results - hence why these products are appealing to people. But if you're patient & work on making sure your body is getting the essential components it needs for healthy nails you will eventually notice a difference. Nails need a few more things besides keratin to be healthy. Nails need a lot of vitamins, just to name a few...

• B-complex
• C
• A
• E 
• D
• Calcium
• Zinc
• Iodine
• Iron
• Folic acid

If we are lacking these vitamins or our bodies are having a hard time absorbing them our nails will become dry, brittle, dull and more prone to breakage & peeling. So how do we make sure our nails have all the vitamins they need? One way is diet - a diet rich in fruits, veggies, eggs, fish, seeds, nuts, & whole grains will provide our bodies with vitamins that make nails happy. But most people aren't going to change their diet just for their nails & some people flat out can't. This is where vitamin supplements come into play. Buying all these vitamins separately will drain your wallet & is not exactly convenient. Luckily you can find Hair, Skin & Nail (makes sense now, eh?) vitamin supplements that are pre-blended to help promote nail health.

A word of caution - do not let yourself get ripped off! When I went to CVS to purchase vitamins I found many brands charging $15 & up. The most important thing to do is check the label, the generic brand had all the same vitamins as the most expensive brands for a fraction of the price. Also, check the directions. The ones I bought tell me to take three a day but I stick to one - I honestly think that is just an attempt to get you to spend more money. If you look at the the percentage of daily value taking three tablets would put you at up to a 1000% of the daily value for some vitamins - which I personally don't think is necessary. That is a personal choice - look at the percentages on your bottle & decide for yourself. 

What other things beside vitamins promote nail health?

• Keep away from smoking. Smoking can cause nails to be yellow & brittle - not to mention it is gross & could kill you. 
• Use those base coats! Base coats provide a barrier between your nail & polish which can prevent staining. Also, a lot of base coats also contain vitamins themselves.
• Keep those cuticles moist & avoid cutting if possible - cuticles take care of your growing nail cells so be sure to take care of them. Also, avoid getting much polish on them if you can. I plan on doing a more in-depth cuticle post in the future. 

In my last post I mentioned I was working on getting some neon polishes so I could do a laser mani walkthrough - well here they are!

The two reds aren't neon, they were just on sale & I couldn't resist

Thanks to my lovely girlfriend I have striping tape on the way so I'm hoping by this weekend I should be good to go. So far my seran wrap nails are still looking great - which I have to credit to the Seche Vite top coat.

Thank you to everyone who has liked my Facebook page & followed me on Twitter - it is nice to know I'm not just talking to myself on here :)

What to Expect from Updates & Where to Find Reminders - Plus Sparkles!

Hello readers, I wanted to take a moment to address a few aspects of how I intend to keep up this blog. There are a lot of manicure blogs out there that update daily - this is not one of them. One of the biggest reasons for this is I don't want to change my polish every day or every other day. Why?

• I'm iffy about exposing my nails to that much acetone. I know there are non-acetone polish removers out there & I intend of doing some blog posts reviewing different ones, but for now I mainly use acetone because it works quickly & cleaner than other removers I've used. It also tends to be cheaper, which brings me to my next point...
• I'm a college student who works retail. This means not only am I juggling school & work schedule wise, but I'm not bringing in a whole lot of money either. Polishes vary in price, some of my polishes came off 99 cent racks & others cost more than a couple frappuccinos. I don't really see wearing a mani for one or two days to be a good use of my money. 
• There is a lot of valuable information lost in doing this! In this blog I want to explore different products beyond just polish such as base coats, top coats, cuticle treatments, etc. I don't feel that a day or two is enough time to test the quality and durability of these different products. I'm actually very interested to see how long manis last & which products best prolong them.

So, how often should you expect updates them? Probably once or twice a week for now. Now I'm aware that a blog that doesn't update as much can *cringe* unfortunately be easy to forget about. So I've taken a few steps to make sure that doesn't happen! The first being I created a Facebook page for this blog, which can be found here. On this page I will post links to new entries as they come so you don't have to be checking back here to look for posts. I will also be sharing picture updates on manis featured on the blog as well as polls about what else you would like to see here, any sales or contests I find & discussions with my readers. If Facebook isn't your thing you can follow me on Twitter. I'm also working on having a banner made & adding some personal flair to this page. 

As I've been building my stash there has been one polish I have been coveting - Essie's Shine of the Times. This multidimensional base coat gives a beautiful iridescent finish & I really want to play with it. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to find it. I tried Walgreens - they had an Essie display and had all but Shine of the Times. Same with Macy's where I happen to work. Essie's website was also sold out so I was getting frustrated. But tonight my lovely lady & I were browsing Target & I can't go into any store without looking at their polish selection - lo & behold there it was! My sweetie was nice enough to help me get a closer shot of the sparkles to try to share the beauty of this polish with you.

Check out those sparkle flakes!

According to the poll on my Facebook page, you guys want rainbow & laser nails. I'm looking into getting a neon set & striping tape for the laser mani so expect that within the next couple weeks. I might need a few new colors for the rainbow nails & I have a couple different methods of this I want to try. I wish I had remembered it was Memorial Day weekend before I did the seran wrap mani because I would have tried a red/white/blue themed mani but expect one come Fourth of July.

Thank you to those of you who have been reading & liked my Facebook page. I wasn't expecting to have this many page views & likes on such a new page, it is a great feeling!

Seran Wrap Nails

When I first started getting interested in painting my nails I browsed a lot of different nail blogs. I found a lot of really nice blogs - too nice. I felt really intimidated by the amazing designs I saw and my own lack of skill. That is why I decided to start my own blog by an admitted novice. I'm not an expert, I'm showing my learning process and the tips I gain along the way. The only way to learn is practice so I figured I would jump in. I have a whole list of techniques I want to try but I decided to start out with a simple technique - seran wrap nails.

But before I start, I went shopping today!  While browsing Walgreens I stumbled across these Wet n' Wild polishes & for 99 cents a piece I couldn't help fill in some color gaps I had in my stash. I especially needed a yellow for when I attempt rainbow nails in the very near future. I was inspired to buy the gold by my excitement over receiving an early copy of Richelle Mead's The Golden Lily.

Yup, I have The Golden Lily early. I have a Barnes & Noble error to thank for that!

Anyway, on to the seran wrap nails! Seran wrap nails require at a minimum two different color polishes, so I chose to use Sally Hansen The Real Teal & Virtual Violet.

And of course, we need the seran wrap. The brand doesn't matter, you can find seran wrap at any grocery store & I'd be willing to bet the dollar store has it too. Before any polish comes out cut your pieces of seran wrap off the roll. It requires ten little pieces, one for each nail. This is much easier to do with dry nails. Also make sure to keep a trash can close for this manicure to discard of the seran pieces after they are used as to prevent a mess.

Before we get to painting there are a few things I need to take care of. Before I got to painting I would like to call attention to the unseen stars of all my manicures...

Here we have cuticle remover gel from Sally Hansen, a plastic cuticle pusher, & Seche Vite clear base & top coat. Since this is my first time outlining a manicure I thought I would go through my pre-mani routine. Unless I state otherwise this is my standard routine. I prefer not to cut my cuticles because 1. I heard cutting the cuticles can cause damage and impair growth and 2. I don't trust myself to not botch it and hack them to hell. So I use a cuticle remover gel. So far Sally Hansen's is the only one I've tried but once it runs out I will try another brand. It is easy to use, you simply apply it to the cuticles and allow it to sit & soak in. Once it has soaked use a cuticle pusher to remove the extra cuticle skin, with the gel it will come right off without any cutting. I prefer to use a plastic pusher since the gel moistens the wood cuticle pushers - plus they tend to splinter. 

Let it soak for 1-2 minutes but no longer than 10 minutes.

Next comes the base coat. Per the recommendations of many posters of r/RedditLaqueristas I used Seche Vite clear base coat. They were actually on sale at my local Sally Beauty Supply 2 for $10. Base coats are important for a few different reasons. The first is they help protect your nails from those pesky stains I was fighting with in my last post. They also often contain vitamins that contribute to the health of your nails. From an esthetic point of view they give your polish a smoother look & help the polish stick to your nails.

Base coat is now equipped. 

Now the fun part - the color! Paint the first color on your nails as you would with any regular mani. I chose to paint the violet polish on first & did two coats to get a deeper color. 

Before I decided to add a second coat. A little messy but since another color is going over it that is okay.

Before you start painting the next color on, keep in mind this next step needs to be done quickly & I found it easier to do it nail by nail instead of painting the whole hand. That being said...

Paint the second coat over the first completely. 

Time to use those seran wrap strips! After painting the second coat bunch the seran piece in your hands and dab it over the wet polish. Dab as much or as little as you please until you like the design. I found that if I took a little too much of the top polish off I could actually dab the wet seran wrap back on to restore a little bit of the polish with no negative consequences. 

Thank you to my sister Ashley for helping me take this picture

After repeating this process on all ten nails seal the design in with the top coat. This was my first time using the Seche Vite top coat and I loved it. It dried quickly and the shine was wonderful.

Pretty, but messy.

As you can see we have some clean-up to do. The dabbing aspect of this technique makes this an especially messy mani. In previous manis I had used q-tips dipped in polish remover to do clean-up but the shape & size of the q-tip made controlling the clean-up difficult. So for this clean-up I will be trying out the new brushes I bought & acetone.

This part is pretty simple. Simply dip the brush into the acetone and brush around the nail to clean up any polish on the skin. A word of caution - I decided to pour a little acetone into the lid rather than dip the brush right into the bottle because the acetone was actually removing the black paint from the brushes & causing a mess. 

I originally thought I would prefer the smaller brush due to not wanting to ruin the mani but I found the thicker brush actually worked better & with some patience didn't harm the mani. However it is still best to be careful & use the minimum acetone you can to avoid bleeding into your mani. Don't forget to moisturizing afterwards either. 

I was actually really happy with the outcome of this mani, but the Seche Vite top coat is so beautifully glossy that getting a decent picture without glare was difficult so I apologize for the somewhat poor lighting. I think when I do this mani technique in the future I will use colors with a stronger contrast to really get the full effect. Overall I'm happy with this quick, simple style.

Stained Nail Rage

Last night I removed the red & gold mani I posted at the bottom of my previous post. I noticed that on my right hand, despite using a base coat I had some red tinted staining left on the nails. I'm not sure why this happened on my right hand and not my left. It could possibly be because I'm right handed so perhaps my base coat was less even on this hand or perhaps my polish was a bit messier and I used more. Regardless, now I have this red tint to deal with.

I'm hoping as this blog goes on my naked nails will start to look better, they're pretty sad right now.

After poking around online a couple common methods surfaces for dealing with this - one involving a baking soda paste & the other soaking your nails in lemon juice. A quick glance through the kitchen revealed no baking soda but I did have a container of lemon juice in the fridge. So the lemon juice method it is!

The supplies needed for this are a bowl for the lemon juice, the lemon juice, & lotion/moisturizer. This is important because lemon juice can be drying for your nails & cuticles - dry nails are not happy nails. Also, you may want to brush your nails down with polish remover or acetone before this to make sure all the polish is actually removed. I did this last night so I didn't show this step. 

Pour just lemon juice in the bowl to cover your nails. I actually put my nails in upside down in order to need less lemon juice to cover the nail since I didn't have a whole lot of lemon juice. Leave them in 1-2 minutes. I let mine go a little longer, I just picked a song to listen to & left them in for the duration of the song. Also a word of caution check your fingers for cuts before starting because lemon juice in cuts burns something awful. 

I only had refrigerated lemon juice so it was really cold...

Once the time is up wash your hands with soap & water to get all the juice off. Once clean lather up with your moisturizer to prevent drying out. 

The results!

The results were eh at most. I feel like the lemon juice certainly dulled the red staining but I can still see it when I look at my nails. I don't consider this a real success. This could be for a number of reasons: 

• I only had refrigerated lemon juice & I'm really not sure how long it had been in the fridge. Fresher lemon juice might work better. 
• Might not have been longer enough, could try again with a longer soaking time. 
• It could also be that my nails are not at their healthiest. 

I might pick up some baking soda & try a baking soda paste at one point but I'm not sure if it will be before my next polish job. I will try to make sure my base coat is even on both fingers next time & see if that prevents further staining. 

In the next day or two I'm going to be attempting a saran wrap manicure so watch out for it!

Acquiring a Passion for Polish

Before recently I didn't paint my nails much for a couple reasons. The first being I work as a receiving associate which makes it hard to keep nails looking very pretty. The second reason was that I didn't know much about nails. Before a couple months ago I didn't know what a base coat was, how to have healthy cuticles (nor did I know why this was important) or how to get multiple colors on your nails - or even paint one color on smoothly! 

This past Christmas my mom decided we should get mani/pedis together. I was excited - just because my job makes it hard to have pretty nails doesn't mean I didn't want them! We both got acrylic nails, I picked a red tip with striping for a festive look.

They reminded me of candy canes!

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed having acrylic nails. But like all acrylic manicures, my nails started to grow out and once the first acrylic popped off it was all over. By this point Christmas was over as well so I was itching for a new color. So back to the salon I went...

By this point I was hooked. But I was also becoming more aware of the financial burden of going to the salon every time I needed a fill or wanted a different color. When this manicure started to grow out I didn't have the money right away for a new one so I figured I would remove them and wait until I could afford a new one. But when I took them off I was really disturbed by the condition of my nails underneath. They were weak, discolored, and uneven. I decided between the financial aspect and the damage my nails had taken acrylics weren't worth it.

By this point my best friend Pixie had introduced me to Reddit and I had stumbled upon the glorious subreddit known as r/RedditLaqueristas. After being inspired by so many of the wonderful posts I decided that I would build up a polish stash and learn to do my own nails. The following pictures include the cast of this blog - my polish stash thus far.

Sally Hansen Polishes

China Glaze Polishes

Misc Polishes

Which brings me to the point of this blog - to share what I learn (the good & the bad) as I experiment with my nail art. Posts will include step-by-step pictures of new techniques I try, pictures of new polishes I add to my stash, and general nail tips I come across as I go. I hope that through sharing these I can meet other nail enthusiasts and we can all learn from each other.

On that note, I want to share with you a few of my first attempts at doing my own nails. This manicure used China Glaze Dorothy Who? & China Glaze Platinum Pieces crackle polish.

This next one was a bit harder and took a few tries. I used a Sally Hansen french manicure kit. It came with a white french tip color, a sheer french pink coat, & a UV top coat. This kit also came with little stickers that are used to guide the painting of the tip. This took me a few tries and I had to redo a couple nails but overall I was happy with the outcome.

My latest manicure was inspired after watching a late night Harry Potter movie marathon. For this one I used Sally Hansen Red Carpet & China Glaze Electrify from the Hunger Games collection (which was a birthday present from my lovely girlfriend). Overall I liked the combination but I wish the tips were more even but since I drew them on freehand that was to be expected. If I do this manicure again I will try using the strips I used for the french mani. I also learned the glitter is not cooperative when it comes to removal - if I find a good technique for removing glitter polish I will share!

Gryffindor Nails!

This brings me to now. From here on out I will be sharing my manicures in more depth and hopefully improving!