Yelling about smudged nails doesn’t solve the problem. It may relieve the stress, but you’re still left with a less than perfect manicure. You may be a DIY manicure (and pedicure) expert and nail art master, but smudges still happen. It’s just too hard with phones, computers, and all dressed chips (yum) with reach, to let our nails dry for almost an hour without doing something. Smudged nails aren’t the only manicure problem. If you’ve ever painted your nails black and been left with a gray tint, you know what I’m talking about. Don’t worry. There is a solution, and it doesn’t involve repainting your nails to cover the evidence.
Here are 16 solutions to all your manicure problems:
1. Stained Nails Fix
I forgot you couldn’t be bothered to apply your base coat, and now your nails are stained a weird shade of red? Bring them back to their original color with one of these products. You can use them individually or combine them for a stain remover worthy of its own infomercial.
2. Stained Nails
Toothpaste isn’t just for brushing your teeth (who knew!). Bring your nails back to their true color by giving them a scrub with your whitening toothpaste, preferably using a different brush than the one you use for your mouth.
3. Fix A Broken Nail
It’s a proven fact that if you spend weeks growing your nails, one will break. Before you cut all the other ones short to match it, repair the broken nail with a piece of a teabag. Attach it to the nail and seal it with a topcoat. Probably a good idea to add a color on top. Bandaged nails aren’t a big nail art trend. Yet.
4. Fix Old Nail Polish
If your favorite shade of nail polish has gone chunky, there are specialty nail polish thinners you can use. If you don’t feel like buying another product, try adding a bit of your topcoat to it, to thin it out. Just don’t add water; I learned that one the hard way.
5. Get Neat Nails With Lotion
If you have a tendency to get as much nail polish around your cuticle as you do on your actual nail, apply a bit of lotion to your skin before you paint your nails. Any mistakes will easily rub off afterwards.
6. Glue Works Too
If for some strange reason, you are out of nail polish, glue also works for keeping your nail polish edges crisp. It’s also a lot more fun to peel off.
7. Glue As A Base Coat
Speaking of glue, try adding liquid glue to your nails before your nail color. Apparently, it produces a gel-like finish and helps your polish last longer.
8. Use A Bandage For Straight French Manicure Tips
If you find those French manicure guides are completely the wrong shape, try using a bandage instead. You can even get the round ones for moon manicures.
9. Neat French Manicure
Run out of bandages? Try an elastic to get professional-looking French tips.
10. Fix Messy Manicure Edges
Let’s be honest; we’re not going to apply lotion or glue to our cuticles for every manicure, though we probably should–especially when we’re painting with our wrong hands. For precise touch-ups, dip a brush in nail polish remover and run it around your nails. It’s better than using a cotton ball and smudging everything.
11. Set Your Manicure Fast
Have they been repackaging cooking spray at the nail salon and calling it “setting spray” all this time?
12. Ice Water Drying Nails
Before you start texting with wet nails, stick your hands in ice water for a couple of minutes. It will help set the polish. That person can wait three minutes for a response.
13. Smudged Nail Fix
Arrgh. There are few things more annoying than spending all that time with the base coat, nail color, and topcoat only to smudge your nails. Instead of taking off all the polish and starting fresh, just rub a bit of remover over the nail and add one fresh coat.
14. Smudged Nail Quick Fix
Smudged your nail but don’t have any nail polish remover on hand? Smooth it out with a sponge eyeshadow brush. Make sure it’s not one of your good ones, though.
15. Glitter Topcoat Manicure Fix
My secret to prolonging the life of my manicure. Just keep adding glitter topcoats, and you’ll get at least a week out of that base polish.
16. Remove Glitter Easily
If you do the previous hack a couple times, you need to know how to remove those layers of glitter the right way. If you don’t follow this, be prepared to spend 30 minutes and 15 cotton balls trying to get it off.