My Winter Nail Care Routine.

Hello, welcome back! So today I'm going to be walking you through my nail care routine. I thought it would be nice to do a nice nail makeover and film it since my nails are getting pretty long now but I have picked up a really awful habit of biting my fingers, like the skin around my fingers. I know it's disgusting, I've never been a biter before, I don't know why. So I'm trying desperately to stop that but as you can see it's pretty sore around my fingers so I thought I'd show my nails some love today. You can also see my cuticles are growing out, they are all over the place, my nails are peeling, paint is chipping so it is time, my friends, for a little bit of love. So I'm gonna start out by getting a little cotton round and some nail polish remover. This is a special moisturising one because nail polish remover is notoriously drying for your nails so if you can find- oop, camera! If you can find a moisturising one it's always going to be better. It's coming off nice and easy. Also stinging where I've bitten my fingers so it's not great. I also make sure to go underneath the nail and just get any that has gone underneath. Make sure to get right down into the sides because you don't want any leftover. I thought this would be a nice chill relaxing video. A lot of people often ask me for an updated nail care routine or just more nail videos. I have a lot of people fascinated by the fact that I can grow them quite long. So we can see on my left hand I have some nasty chipping going on. I have a nice big chunk taken out of my thumb and also my middle finger recently chipped too. You can see it's a little bit skew with. I've been keeping this square shape for quite a while because I really like it but I'm not sure if I should change the shape. Maybe I should just try and mend this because I really like the square shape. Anyway, okay now I have a bowl of warm water here and I'm now gonna wash my fingers and under my nails and scrub them really good with a toothbrush. I just use this because I've always had it and saves me buying an out brush. It works just fine. I'm going to be using this soap. It's just a moisturizing soap which is going to be extra extra care for our hands in the winter and our nails. So what am I doing? I'm doing this all wrong. Usually I would just put it on the toothbrush but decided to put on my hand first and I'm just going to scrub. This is really important to do after I've removed my nail polish because the nail polish remover is super drying and I don't want to leave that on my nails. So make sure we get it all off. Just make sure to get underneath and I also brush the top all over and right into the crevices. So now our fingernails are nice and fresh and clean I'm going to use some cuticle oil and this is just a random one I got. I can't even remember where but they all kind of do the same thing. I'm now going to just brush this on all my cuticles and a little bit goes quite a long way. So something like this will probably last me years. Okay so now it's on there I'm just going to massage it in and then I'm just going to leave this on for about five to ten minutes to soften my cuticles. Okay it's been about five or six minutes so now I'm taking a cuticle pusher. This is just a crystal one but you could use a wooden one or a rubber one and I'm going to really really gently just start nudging back my cuticles. I'm not being too forceful I'm just really lightly nudging. Okay so as you can see nothing too crazy just kind of tidying it all up around the edges. So once you've kind of lifted this bit of skin if your cuticles are quite overgrown this is where you'd go in with some cuticle scissors or some cuticle nippers and really gently just cut off the excess cuticle. And there is a freshly pushed back and trimmed cuticle and it can sometimes look a little white and kind of raw around the edges once you've just done them but it does settle down after about a day. Some of my cuticles aren't even really that bad for instance these never really get very bad but I'll give them a little push back anyway because I do believe, I'm not entirely sure but I do believe it helps your nails to grow. That is just a little theory that I've got in my head it might be complete nonsense but I think it helps your nails to grow. Right so now that my cuticles are all pushed back I'm going to file my nails and I like to use a crystal nail file. I try to go pretty light on the edges because keeping a square shape you don't want to file down the edges too much and then I go across the top. I'll try and get like a millimeter off because all that nail at the edge is usually a little bit ragged and kind of just needs to come off. Once I've kind of got off what I need to I'll just go in one-way motions to just sort of finish it off make sure there's no little hangy bits and that is one filed thumb and I'll do the same for all my nails. So you can see where my middle finger here was kind of a bit skew with just by shortening it I've been able to sort of just maintain this maintain the square shape and same with my thumb I've kind of just shortened it and that enabled me to sort of save the square shape and when that grows out it'll grow out nice and square. Now that they're all looking a little better shaped I'm gonna go in with a base coat. I like this one because it's a base coat and a top coat so quite handy. I've also just made sure that I've wiped off any oil residue on my nails. I'm just gonna do what Suzie does from Nail Career Education if anyone watches her I absolutely love she used to put a I don't know if she still does she used to put a nail polish under her nails to paint them which is a great idea. I do a base coat because in theory it's supposed to protect your nails from the nail polish and supposedly from staining although in my experience it's never really worked my nails still get pretty stained as you can see they're not white they're pretty yellow although I would love to try the Mavala whitening nail polish because that's supposed to help and I've never tried it so if anyone's tried that do let me know in the comments. Usually just go a little bit along the edge of the nail as well just to seal it in where that fresh raw nail is. Now I find that this dries pretty quick but I'm gonna leave this for at least five minutes until I can touch it and it's not tacky at all. So while my nails are drying I'd like to make a quick mention to this video's sponsor Nordgreen. We all know Black Friday is coming so take advantage of my code I may have just found you the perfect gift idea. Okay so what I really love about Nordgreen is that they are a really environmentally conscious company who care about our planet. They're carbon neutral which means they offset their carbon emissions by planting thousands of trees and they're partnered with non-government organizations to help support global causes and what's even more amazing is that a portion of your purchase price goes towards one of their three global causes. You just enter the serial number found on the back of your watch into their website so I chose my portion to go towards the rainforest which apparently preserved 50 square meters of rainforest in Latin America so I'm pretty pleased with that. The stylish Scandinavian design of these watches are very sleek, very minimal and very smart which makes these watches really versatile in terms of dress. I decided on a very classic look with a stainless steel three link strap and a blue watch face which I felt went well with my own personal style. There's also a variety of watch faces and straps to choose from including the very popular mesh strap design which is fully adjustable. I will mention though that in order to adjust the link strap you need a special tool to do so which I used to make mine a bit more snug. There are other ways of doing this online or you can take it to a jeweler's who will do it for very cheap or often for free. So if you've been thinking of buying a nice watch for yourself or a loved one Nordgreen would be a really good option especially because you can put some of your purchase towards a good cause. You can browse their watches through the link in the description and get 35% off if you use my code before the 1st of December so make sure you take advantage of the Black Friday offer. Thanks again to Nordgreen for being this month's sponsor. Okay nails are now dry and for the colour I've chosen this really funky blue colour. This is a Ciate birthday bash blue. Oh no sorry birthday blue. This colour is so amazing. I make sure to get a decent amount on my brush and I kind of place it right at the base of the nail in the centre and push towards the cuticle a little and then swipe it along and then I turn the brush and I go on either side. It's nice if you've got a really thick brush this really helps. This side keep turning the brush and then I usually go back in and try and fix up the cuticle. If I go wrong like I did there just a little bit I'll just take my thumbnail from the other finger and I just wipe it clean with my thumb. Honestly works a charm. So that's the first layer you can see it's not perfect but we don't want to make the first layer too thick because then it will just take forever to dry so the key is getting a really even light layer for your first coat and when the nail polishes start to go a little bit dry like this one is it can be a lot harder to get a nice even coat because it starts to go a little bit gloopy. So when that happens I'll show you a little trick that you probably already know I feel like lots of people know this trick is you get a teensy wincy bit of nail polish remover. We're going to pop in a few drops. It's spilling everywhere. Right that should do it. Lucky we've got a towel. Give it a shake. Make sure you mix it with the brush in there too. It can be kind of hard with these funny shaped nail polish bottles. Now it should be there we go. See it's a lot easier now. The consistency is just so much easier to work with with a teensy bit of nail polish remover in there. I also leave my thumbs until last because as you saw I used them to kind of clean up around the edges. Okay so the first coat is done. Now this is really really important to leave a really good length of time before doing the second coat because this is where if you go in with your second coat too fast your nail polish will just take forever to dry and in some cases it just won't really ever fully dry. It will always be a little bit... what's the word? It won't like completely harden and that's when you find you will get little dents and dashes in your nails when you knock them. So I'm not going to lie sometimes I actually wait overnight and I do them I finish them off sometimes the next day. I'm not even kidding because then I know that it's going to be super super dry and it's not going to smudge. In a scenario like today I will probably leave it about 20 minutes but yeah as nail polishes get older they just get a little bit gloopier and I find that they generally take longer to dry the older they get. Depends obviously on the formula but I'm gonna leave these now for a good 20 minutes. It has been 20 minutes and I'm not gonna lie it's still not as dry as I'd want to. I can just tell by running my nail across it's kind of dragging a little bit but we're just gonna get on with it. So same as before I've got quite a large little glob on my brush and with the first coat I've kind of already mapped out where the cuticle line is so I just make sure not to go over that. There we have it. Okay we are almost done but I am so annoyed at myself. This is how I know this is becoming a really bad habit. I went to unconsciously bite at my thumb and with my tooth I have nicked the paint with my tooth as I was going to bite. This really is a bad habit guys. I need to stop. It's so bad. So there we have our second coat and this is where I would usually call it a day but if I want a really special manicure I would go over with a top coat. I don't usually do this. A quick dry top coat would be perfect because it will allow you to get on with your day without having any smudges. I actually tend not to wear a top coat because I typically change my nail polish about once a week to once every two weeks. I find I don't have to use as much nail polish remover trying to remove it if I don't have a top coat on. I don't know that's just how I've done it but today I think I will do a top coat just to finish off the look. Okay so you can definitely see a difference to giving a top coat. It just kind of looks a lot more glossy and kind of just more finished. So I do like doing a top coat when extra flaky. And there we have our finished nails. I absolutely adore this color. I don't wear it very often but I felt like something a little bit different. I usually go with like reds and purples and pinks. But yeah I really like this blue. So these will probably last me about a week or two because my nails don't tend to chip or peel too much. The nail polish tends to stay on pretty well. Anyway thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you so much to Nordgreen for sponsoring this video. I've really been enjoying wearing my watch this week. Remember to let me know in the comments what you want to see in a nail care video because I kind of just want to make sure that I can provide you with what you want to see or what you most enjoy from a nail care video. So thank you so much for watching. If you like the video give it a like. Please subscribe if you'd like to see more and I will see you all soon in my next video. Bye!