Nail Polish Removal

With nail art all the rage, you may be trying on some new shades. Oxblood, glitter, you’re up for anything. The only problem is that it can be hard to try out a new trend when the last one is still on your nails. Dark shades can stain your nails, making it impossible to wear anything but another dark (and staining) shade to cover it up. Or how about glitter?

In both sports and manicures, the best defense is a good offense. The best way to avoid staining your nails is to apply a base coat before applying dark polish. Dark polish on bare nails almost always equals yellow stains. If that preventive tip has come too late for your nails, Fashion magazine has a solution. Mix one tablespoon of three percent hydrogen peroxide with two tablespoons of baking soda to make a paste. Use a cotton ball or Q-Tip to apply the paste to your nails, leave on for about five minutes, then scrub off with a nail brush. If that wasn’t easy enough, get some denture whitening tablets, dissolve them according to their accompanying instructions, and soak your nails in the solution.

Demetri Martin said that glitter is the herpes of the craft world; likewise, glitter polish is like the herpes of nail polish – you can never truly get rid of it. Luckily, Erica of Erica’s Primp and Polish came across a tip that will remove even the most stubborn sparkles or other hard-to-remove polish without rubbing your cuticles to bits. Take a cotton ball and soak it in nail polish remover. Place the cotton ball on each nail, then wrap your fingertips in tinfoil to keep the cotton ball in place. It might be hard to put tinfoil on the last few fingers, so you can either ask someone for help or just go back and do those fingers after the first batch is done. Leave the cotton balls/tinfoil on your fingers for five to ten minutes, then apply pressure to the nail as you slide the cotton ball and tinfoil off. The nail polish should slide off with it. If that doesn’t take all of the polish off, stick your nail back in the wrap and rub it until it is nail polish-free.

Follow these tips and your nails should be clean and ready to try another hip manicure. So now that the ombre design is finally gone from your digits, what’s next? Burberry plaid? Camouflage? Dripping oxblood? The choice is yours; just make sure that you apply a basecoat.