Christmas Nails

Who doesn't love properly manicured and well-groomed nails. Ensuring you get as creative with your nails as you are with your clothes is the industry of nail art designs. Today, the trend of nail fashion is greatly influenced by the various unique and creative styles that give a complete makeover to your nails.

There are numerous ways of making your nails look glamorous and interesting. You can paint beautiful designs on your nails with the help of nail polish or even acrylic paint and further accentuate the design with glitters, stickers, semi precious stones and rhinestones. In fact you can take your pick from a range of designs to match with your clothes and even special occasions and festivals.

There are designs that are especially apt for occasions such as Christmas, Halloween, Valentine and even special Bridal occasions. For Christmas you can coordinate a red and while color theme and use a fine brush to paint a Christmas tree, candy canes, stars, holly leaves, etc. For Halloween you can give a spooky effect to your nails by painting on them little skulls, vampires and skeletons. First you can use a base paint of black and over that use white or red to paint these spooky characters. On Valentine's you can make your nails look as romantic as you do by decorating them with red glitter, 3D heart stickers or semi-precious stones.

For every day use, you can deck up your nails with either a flower based or a puzzled based theme or get really creative and create your own theme to match with your personality, clothes and accessories. Also, airbrush painting is another great way to decorate your nails. The Japanese way of designing nails are also quite a popular method since it covers a range of elaborate adornments including precious jewels, boats, feathers, painting and even nail calligraphy.

Different methods can be adopted to create a variety of nail art designs such as painting objects and designs with a thin brush tip or blending colors on the nail through the help of a toothpick. Under this method you first use a toothpick to apply one dot and over that you apply another color dot with another toothpick. Therefore, you blend two colors to create a special effect on your nail. Besides applying, jewels, stickers and stones, you can even use the method of water marbling in which you add a drop of paint to the surface of the water which creates a marbled effect.

These are just few ways of creating innovative designs on your nails and with a bit of imagination and creativity, you can definitely come up with more interesting ideas as well. But before you get down to creating a masterpiece out of your nails, it is important that your nails are clean and you have all the essentials such as thin tip paintbrush, acrylic as well as nail paints ready. Nail paint is really interesting, enjoyable and creative and once you have got the hang of it, you can create several unique and interesting nail art designs.

Nail Polish

A lot of women - and a few men as well - apply nail polish on their fingers and toes as a matter of habit. They believe that painting their nails is part of good grooming. And for some, applying nail varnish is the basis of nail art, and many people see nail art as a way of expressing themselves.

If many women consider painting their finger- and toenails as a matter of hygiene, just as many women don't paint their nails. It's either they think applying polish is a waste of time or they simply don't know how to do it. If you belong to the latter category and want to learn how to apply nail lacquer, then here is a short and easy guide you can turn to on how to apply nail polish.

Before you do anything to your finger- or toenails, prepare your work area. Have your polish and manicure tools ready on your work table. Also, to minimize the mess and to prevent the polish from staining your work space, you should spread an old towel over its surface.

Remove old nail varnish off your finger- and toenails, if you have them, with a non-acetone nail polish remover. This will ensure that your new polish will spread evenly over your nail for a smooth and flawless appearance.

Wash your hands thoroughly so no dirt or debris gets onto your nails or into your nail polish while you're giving yourself a manicure.

Rub the bottle of the colorless base coat polish between your hands for around 20 or 30 seconds. Doing so will warm up the polish and get rid of the bubbles that may have formed inside the bottle.

Apply the base coat on your nails. Start from the middle of the nail bed and then work your way to the sides. Don't worry about staining your skin with the base coat. It's colorless, so no one will notice. Let it dry completely before you resume your work.

Rub the bottle of your colored polish between your hands, just like what you did in step four.

Apply the color coat on your nails, once again starting from the middle of the nail and working your way to the sides. Allow your coat to dry completely before you do anything else.

Apply the color coat for a second time if you want to have a deeper shade of nail polish. You can skip this part if you're satisfied with the shade of your previous color coat. Once again, let your nail varnish dry completely before you do anything.

Get a bottle of colorless polish and rub it between your hands, just like in step four.

Apply colorless polish as top coat on your nails. This will protect your finger- and toenails from chipping, as well as make your polish last at least a week longer. Allow this top coat to dry thoroughly.

After your top coat has completely dried, get a piece of cotton wad and wrap it tightly around the end of an orangewood stick. Dip the cotton end of this stick in your nail polish remover. And then, using the stick, remove the excess nail polish on the skin around your nails. This will give your manicure a sophisticated look.

If you want to, you can put stickers and glitter on your nails. Experiment with nail art to your heart's content.

3D Nail Art

Some women have a fetish for shoes and some for clothes, but there are many others ready to spend any amount on decorating their nails. If you're one of them, we have something that could be of use to you. It is a how-to guide on 3D nail art.

Earlier, a nail routine was confined to trimming, filing and painting fingernails. Bright red and blush pink shades became classic colors in the nail polish category. In the later decades, women experimented with darker hues. It didn't stop there. A plain coat of polish looked too simple and basic. As a result, nail art came to be used. Solid colored surfaces were decorated with dainty designs. The evolution continued and the latest is 3D nail art.

There is a range of designs to choose from. We have mentioned a few below.

Flowers are one of the most popular designs. They are neat and feminine. Floral designs include acrylic roses or floral designs painted with paint and decorated with crystals and stones. Akin to French manicure is the lace design. It features black and white lines with rhinestone accents. One can create a bejeweled look with crystal and rhinestone accents. Cartoon characters are also listed among popular 3D nail art designs.

Your choice in embellishments reveals a lot about your personality. You can also choose designs to match upcoming occasions and festivities.

Sweet Nails

Nails consist primarily of Keratin, which is a hard protein. The body's protein is the building block of the body that protects the fingers and toes from injury or trauma. In truth, the significance of caring for the nails has been around for one hundred years.

People before already recognized the importance of caring for the nails in order to protect them and beautify the feet and hands. Simple caring for the nails can be achieved at home. First, wash your nails with soap and lukewarm water. After washing, push the stubborn cuticles if they are long and ragged.

File after trimming your nails to remove the stubborn nail edges. This will eliminate the dirt and sustain the nail beauty. Finish your nail regiment with a moisturizer for smooth and soft skin you will love to show off. Two techniques are commonly used for caring nails, which are manicure and pedicure.

The professionals in these two fields have sufficient knowledge on caring for your nails. Significantly, it is advised for people who seek nail care to go directly to them. However, professionals of manicure and pedicure are costly. Nonetheless, you can reduce the number of times you seek for these professionals. Here are some nail tips for maintaining the good look on your nails:

Instead of coloring your nails just before the cuticles, place the nail brush one-eight inches away from the nail cuticle. Then, push backwards toward the cuticle prior to the nail skin. Brush thoroughly on the nail bed.

Always plan your care of nails ahead of time. For instance, coloring your nails just an hour before you sleep will result to a messy nail polish. More often, nail polish peels after taking a bath when you wake up in the morning. If there is a stubborn nail polish on the skin, you can easily remove it using warm water and soft towel. If your polish hasn't dry, just use the cotton swab and acetone or nail color remover to do the trick.

You can buff the top of nails just near the cuticle with a file of fine-grain. This will remove the top, oily enamel for better adherence of nail color.

When using two nail coats or more, allow another couple of coats for good nail polish. Always avoid peeling by sticking to one ridge-filler coat. Wait for the coat to completely dry and apply your desired nail polish.

Few thin nail coats is better than applying a couple of thick nail coats. Utilize thin coats rather than thick coats for better coverage, fast drying, and longer lasting nail coat.

If your nail polish keeps on cracking, here is what to do. Apply thin coats every night, not before sleeping, but every night. Always plan this coating in order to reduce the risk of nail polish peeling.

Nail Art Trends

Every woman who loves her body loves her nails too. Taking care of the nails is easy; a regularly done manicure and pedicure makes the nails healthy and strong and keeps them clean. To beautify your nails further, nail art is the best way. Nail art has become famous in the recent years and its popularity is increasing.

There are a lot of designs that you can make on your finger nails and toe nails and one of the forms of nail art that has recently gathered many takers is the Fimo nail art.

In this nail art form, the polymer clay is used in the form of thin slices. Available in different sizes, colors and designs, these chips or slices are soft and fine and used to decorate nails. The canes of polymer are sliced using a razor so that perfect slices can be achieved.

Creating designs using fimo art is not easy. Creative designs are difficult to make and need professional designers to make them. However, you too can make simple ones if you try and have a look at some of the pictures available online. The designs can range from simple hearts to even detailed fruits and vegetables. The designs when embedded into nails with the help of paints and brushes look fabulous and enhance the beauty of the hands further.

You can create some funky designs on your nails and use the fimo canes to add more elegance to them. There are many unique designs in Fimo art canes ranging from simple flowers and hearts to animal stripes, butterfly wings, bee, dragonfly, cat, cakes and much more to delight you with.