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!