Maybe it’s just that I’m just a control freak, or the fact that I live four hours away from my favorite manicurist, or the fact that I get bored and change my color twice a week, but I like to do my own manicures. I get asked pretty often how I do my nails, but more specifically how I paint them and how I shape them. I will address how I shape them in another post, because its a little more difficult to explain and I’m still working on the best way to show you guys. For today I want to share two easy home manicure tips that will absolutely change your nail painting game.

1. The Naked Thumb - I’ve seen this one around the internet a few times, but I’m still shocked at how many people don’t know about it. It’s the silliest little trick but it makes a huge impact on how your manicure turns out.

The trick is simple, don’t paint your thumb nails until you have completely painted all of your other nails. Well, at least the base coat and both coats of color. You can put the topcoat on all of them at once if you want.

Then you can use the edges of your unpainted thumbs to clean up mistakes in your polish. They should come off pretty easily if you do it right away but if you wait a little too long just dip your thumb nail into some nail polish remover, and do the same thing. Then, once all of your fingers are painted and cleaned up, just very carefully paint your thumbs and put a nice shiny topcoat over all ten digits.

So basically, people ask how I paint my nails without getting it all over and the truth is that sometimes I do get it all over, but I clean it up with my naked thumbs. Let’s not tell just let them though. Let them keep thinking I’m some sort of wizard, it’s more fun that way.

2. Give It Some Space - The biggest mistake I see the most often when people paint their own nails, is that they flood the cuticle with polish. Meaning that they take their nail polish brush and bring it right to the cuticle, and then paint downward from there. The problem with this move is that the polish is going to flood over the skin of the cuticle which looks messy. So so messy. It will also eventually cause the edge of your polish to peel up because nail polish isn’t made to stick on skin.

Good news though, it’s really simple to avoid this mishap. Instead of placing your brush right at the cuticle and dragging down, place your brush a little too far away from your cuticle. Then simple apply a little bit of pressure and push the brush up closer to the cuticle area creating a nice neat edge that approaches the cuticle skin but doesn’t touch it. Then simply drag the polish down your nail as usual

Try these two things the next time you paint your own nails. The results should be much neater than what you usually get.

It might take a little practice but once you get them down you’ll be giving yourself (almost maybe) salon quality manicures. Are there any easy home manicure tips that you swear by? I would love to hear about them!