How to Fix a Broken Nail - Tutorial / Orly Nail Rescue

Back when I had very brittle nails and a broken nail every other week I decided to look for something to fix the problem. I tried the tea-bag-technique with nail glue and the nail repair pads from essence which is pretty much the same thing. I wasn't too happy with these and then read about the Orly Nail Rescue kit which comes with nail glue, nail repair powder and a buffer. After using it a few times I kind of forgot about it. Also, my nails got better bit by bit, so I didn't really need it anymore. Up until the incident two weeks ago when I piled my thumb into a ventilator (it was disconnected - yay!). It was such a bad rip that I couldn't just cut it off and that's when I remembered my kit. I decided to show you the process of repairing a nail with this kit since I thought that could be interesting for some. The set is available from various stores, I got mine on ebay.

A note to start with: I think the powder is acrylic powder and if you have that plus nail glue you might not actually need to buy this kit. I didn't try it though... let me know in the comments if you know more! Oh and: today's pictures aren't pretty, sorry about that! 

Ich hatte früher ganz brüchige Nägel und alle paar Tage einen davon eingerissen. Meine Versuche mit Nagelkleber und Teebeutel bzw. Nail Repair Pads von essence waren nicht sehr erfolgreich und ich bin dann über das ORLY Nail Rescue Set gestolpert. Da drin sind Nagelkleber, ein Pulver und eine Polierfeile zum Reparieren von eingerissenen Nägeln. Vor zwei Wochen habe ich dann meinen Daumen in einen (glücklicherweise ausgeschalteten) Ventilator gerammt - autsch. Da der Riss zu tief war, um den Nagel einfach abzuschneiden, habe ich das Set wiederentdeckt. Ich dachte, ich zeige euch heute, wie ich damit den Nagel geflickt habe, weil das sicher einige von euch interessiert. Das Set gibts bei diversen Anbietern, meines ist von ebay.

Kurze Anmerkung zuerst: Ich glaube, dass es sich beim Pulver um Acrylpulver handelt und ihr darum auch nicht unbedingt genau dieses Set braucht, falls ihr das eh zu Hause hättet. Aber ich habe eigentlich keine Ahnung von dem Zeug und habe es darum auch nicht selbst ausprobiert. Lasst mir gerne einen Kommentar da, falls ihr mehr wisst. Und: Die Fotos sind heute nicht hübsch, sorry dafür. 

Stuff you will need: Nail repair/Acrylic powder, nail glue, a buffer, a brush and an underlay to collect the excess powder. For removal: nail polish remover with acetone, cotton pads, aluminum foil.

Dinge, die ihr braucht: Orly oder Acrylpulver, Nagelkleber, Polierfeile, ein Pinsel und eine Unterlage für das überschüssige Pulver. Zum Entfernen: Nagellackentferner mit Aceton, Wattepads, Alufolie.

Step 1: Remove old polish or the old powder-glue-mix. I've done this several times since it will only last for a few days. You will also have to remove the stuff using this technique, just let it soak for a few minutes. Please wait until it's completely soft and can be removed without difficulty, as shown in the picture, otherwise you might damage the nail underneath! You want to be really careful around the ripped part of your nail.

1. Schritt: Alten Lack oder Pulverreste entfernen. Da ich den Nagel mehrmals flicken musste, habe ich mit der Entfernung des alten Pulvers angefangen. Für das Entfernen einfach den acetonhaltigen Entferner auf ein Wattepad geben, mit Alufolie umwickeln und ein paar Minuten einwirken lassen. Bitte lange genug warten und erst abziehen, wenn das Zeug ganz weich wird, sonst macht ihr euch den Nagel kaputt! Speziell beim Riss müsst ihr sehr aufpassen. 

Step 2: Add the nail glue onto your nail and try to make it as neat as possible. Try not to cover your cuticles in nail glue! As you can see in the next pictures, I didn't do it very good due to having to take a picture while doing it, but the neater you do it here, the better it will look in the end. Also, hurry up because glue dries fast. No kidding.

2. Schritt: Den Nagelkleber so ordentlich wie möglich auf den Nagel aufpinseln und möglichst nicht auf die Nagelhaut. Ich habe mich da wegen dem Fotografieren ein wenig gestresst, wie man in den anderen Bildern sehen kann. Es lohnt sich aber, hier genau zu arbeiten. Und beeilen müsst ihr euch auch, weil euch das Ganze sonst eintrocknet.

Step 3: Dip! 

3. Schritt: Eintauchen!

Step 4: Carefully remove excess powder with a brush. It's better to let it dry first. They say not to touch your eyes while working with this powder and I think that might be very good advice. Close the jar after you're done, so you won't spill it (and go blind). 

4. Schritt: Ganz vorsichtig das überschüssige Pulver mit dem Pinsel entfernen, aber am besten zuerst trocknen lassen. Bitte mit dem Pulver nicht in die Augen fassen und das Döschen rasch wieder verschliessen. Teufelszeug! 

Step 5: Let it dry. At least 30 minutes. Then buff for a smooth finish. It feels and looks a bit weird, but it doesn't actually need a lot of buffing.

5. Schritt: Komplett trocknen lassen. Mindestens 30 Minuten. Dann polieren, bis ihr zufrieden seid. Es wird natürlich nicht so glatt wie der Nagel vorher, braucht also nicht zu viel Poliererei.

Step 6: Make sure that there is no excess powder on your nails. Then add two coats of a base coat of your choice and let it dry.

6. Schritt: Wenn ihr sicher seid, dass kein loses Pulver mehr auf dem Nagel liegt, könnt ihr zwei Schichten Base Coat auftragen und trocknen lassen. 

Step 7: If you want to, you can add a color of your choice. I used two coats of Zoya - Dree and one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss top coat. The finish looks perfect to me and in my opinion no one can tell that there's a broken nail underneath. Now the duration of this nail rescue depends on what you do with your nails every day. It took three days until the powder mix gave in and then you just have to be a bit careful with that nail until you're able to add a new layer or - if the ripped part grew out - file down your nail. That's it, nail rescued! 

7. Schritt: Wenn ihr wollt, könnt ihr jetzt noch darüber lackieren. Ich habe dafür zwei Schichten von Zoya - Dree plus eine Schicht vom Essence BTGN High Gloss Top Coat lackiert und ich finde, dass man dann von der ganzen Reparatur überhaupt nichts sehen kann (ohne Farblack natürlich schon). Bei mir hält das Ganze ca. drei Tage und dann fängt das Puder an der gleichen Stelle wie der Nagel zu reissen. Ich schaue dann, dass ich das Ganze entweder möglichst rasch wieder neu machen kann oder falls der Riss schon ganz rausgewachsen ist, den Nagel kürzen kann, damit ich nicht irgendwo hängen bleibe. Das wars auch schon! 

Waterspotted Nails - Tutorial for Nail It Magazine

I just wanted to share a tutorial that I created for Nail It magazine! It shows how I created the waterspotted nails from a few weeks ago for The Lacquer Legion challenge. I hope you like it! :)

You will need:

• China Glaze - Holly-Day
• Dance Legend - Wazowski
• cup of water
• disinfectant spray
• toothpick
• nail polish remover
• top coat

1. Paint your nails with your base color. I used two coats of China Glaze - Holly-Day. You can add tape around your nails to prevent a mess.

2. Add a drop of your multichrome polish into the cup of water.

3. Spray it with the disinfectant spray. You can vary the distance of the spray and the waiting time until dipping in your nail to create different effects!

4. Dip your nail into the water and remove the polish on the surface of the water with a toothpick.

5. This is what it looks like without using tape. Time for clean up!

6. Add top coat and you're done!

Turquoise Salted Watercolor Nails + Video Tutorial

I love making video tutorials! Well especially the filming process, the editing part not so much. But I made it and here it is, my video tutorial for the salted watercolor nails. This time I used two shades of turquoise on top of a white base. To see how I did these watch the video at the end of this post! :) 

More videos!

Watercolor Nails - Video Tutorial

I want to thank everyone for the lovely feedback I got for my Blue & White Watercolor Nails! A lot of you asked for a tutorial on how I did these and I'm happy to do that today. Check out the short picture tutorial and the video tutorial below to see the easy steps for this design:

The Water Marble Basics

This post is all about the Water Marble (WM) technique. I will explain how I get the best results and what there is to consider. I hope you enjoy this and if you have any additional advice on the Water Marble technique, please share it in the comments for everyone to read! Click here, to find all my recent WM designs and check out my most popular WM design of all time:

Halloween Water Marble - October 2012 

The Material

Nail Polish, Tape, Cup, Distilled Water, Paper Towels, Needle, Wooden Stick / Dotting Tool, Tweezers, Nail Polish Remover, Clean Up Brush

The Preparation

1. Prepare 20 pieces of tape and stick them somewhere where you can easily take them off again (for example: the table where you're working at).

2. Take your cup and fill it with distilled water. The cup should be big enough, so that you can dip your nail inside without accidentally touching the sides of the cup. But it should be small enough, so that you don't use tons of water and polish. You could also use tap water, but in my opinion it works better with distilled water.

3. Usually you will need a base color for your WM, so now is the time to paint your nails with the base color and let it dry. Most of the times I use the lightest color of the design or just white. 

4. Now you can start adding the tape to your fingers. I do one hand at a time because it's usually not too comfortable. I use two pieces for each finger: one piece goes along one side to the front, under the nail and back on the other side. The other piece goes across the finger, right at the line of the cuticles, but not over the nail! I fold the ends, so it will be easier to remove the tape later. 

The Nail Polish & The Marbling

It's not easy to spot the nail polishes that will work for WM. New polishes with creme finish work well with WM, while old and gooey ones usually don't work. Also, very thin polishes are difficult to work with, because they might mix with your other colors in the water. If you're doing a WM and it just won't work, you have to try it with a different polish! Sometimes it is just one of your polishes, while other times some just won't work together. WM can be a b*tch sometimes. On the left picture below you can see how I first tried a black polish from The New Black, which didn't work at all. In the middle I moved on to Sally Hansen - Night Watch which works great. My white was Flormar - 400. 

Let the Marbling begin! Start adding drops of polish to the water, not from too high above. You might want to decide what kind of a marble you're going for before starting the process or you can just start with a random marble. There are so many different ways of marbling! My favorite WM artist on YouTube is My Simple Little Pleasures. I use a needle to do my designs because this gives beautiful and exact lines. Remove the excess polish on the needle every now and then. When you're done with the design, don't wait too long and slowly dip your nail inside the water. Leave your finger inside the cup, blow onto the water surface and remove all excess polish with the wooden stick. Then remove the finger. 

The Clean-Up

Remove the tape carefully with the tweezers. Now comes the important part. There will be water drops over and sometimes below the nail polish and if you don't do anything right there, you might end up with missing pieces in your design. Take a clean paper towel and carefully touch the water drop with the towel. This will absorb the water and at the best let the design stay intact. This part is a bit tricky to explain! But if you have already done WM before, you might have seen the design pulling at the edges. Most of the times this can be prevented with the paper towel. After that you can clean-up the sides of your nail with a brush and some nail polish remover. It's better if you wait a while before adding the top coat, because WM does smudge easily. If I have any missing pieces in my design, I try to cover them up with a bit of polish and a nail art brush. This works great and no one in real life will know!

I know that WM can often be a tricky technique and it is not always worth the effort, but I hope my post made some steps a bit easier to understand or at least makes you want to try it again! Feel free to leave links to your water marble designs, I'd love to see your creations! 

piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013 - Celebrating the Year of the Blogger

I'm super excited about today's post, because I'm part of the piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013! 

This year's blog fest is all about nail art. We received three specifique shades of piCture pOlish each and the challenge was to create our most amazing nail art using these three shades. I got a light nude called Nude (yup!), a coral pink called Watermelon and a beautiful purple with silver glitter called Attitude. I panicked! For weeks! Even though I love each color by itself, I had no idea how to combine these in one design. Everything I tried didn't seem right, until I tried Polka Dots. I think Nude makes an awesome background color for Watermelon and Attitude and lets them stand out even more. Check out my short tutorial at the end of this post!

So if it's a challenge, what is it about? There will be three winners which will have the chance to create a collaboration shade with piCture pOlish. How awesome is that? I know I would be excited to see my name on a bottle of nail polish ;) The designs will all be pinned on their Pinterest board and then everyone can vote on their favorites. The other two winners will be chosen by the participants of this Blog Fest plus Jules & Megs from piCture pOlish. 

1. Paint your nails with two coats of piCture pOlish - Nude. 2. Use the end of a nail art brush and make big dots with piCture pOlish  -Watermelon and Attitude. 3. Use a dotting tool and make small dots in the middle of the big dots. 4. Use top coat to even out the surface and make your design last longer. 

Find piCture pOlish online:

Online Shop (Shipping, Network, Everyday Deals)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Instagram

Outlined Watercolor Nails + Watercolor Video Tutorial

Today's design started out as another attempt to make the most of the Essie Neons and they ended up as outlined Watercolor Nails. First I used two coats of Essie - Blanc to create an even, thick base for my watercoloring. Then I used Essie - Bottle Service and Essie - DJ Play That Song to create the watercolor nails. I filmed the process on one nail, so there's a short tutorial in the middle of this post!

I wanted to wear them like this first so I added one coat of BTGN Top Sealer. Somehow I managed to get a lot of tip wear in just a day, so that's why I used the technique of outlining once again, hoping to get better results this time. And I really like them so much more on round nails! And with a thinner line. Success! :) I used white acrylic paint and then another coat of BTGN Top Sealer to finish.

Deadly Sins Challenge - Day 7: Sloth (Studded Nails - Video Tutorial)

This weeks sin is Sloth and it really comes in handy for me, since the semester is soon to be over and I have a lot of stuff to do besides my nails. This means I shouldn't be painting my nails, but obviously won't stop doing so. :) You guys really liked my studded nails for Day 6, thanks so much for all the lovely comments! I decided to make a super short video tutorial on how I add studs to the nails, because today's theme says: Don't try too hard but explain everyone how to do something really easy... (Tutorial).

Illustrations by: dahlig

And because I'm so lazy, I once more added the studs to an already existing design, my Denim Nails. I used round 1.5mm silver studs which I bought on Ebay. They're also available at Born Pretty Store. 

Essie Girls: Water Marble Video Tutorial

About a month ago I created a video tutorial for Essie Girls Switzerland. I decided to make a tutorial for Water Marble Nails which is one of my favorite techniques! If you're part of the Essie Girls app on Facebook you might have already seen my article. I used Essie - Snap Happy as my base color and then did the water marble with Snap Happy, A-List and Luxedo. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

Tutorial in progress :)

You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel if you always want to be up to date with my videos. 

Video Tutorial: Breaking Bad - Heisenberg Nails

As promised, here is the video tutorial for yesterday's Breaking Bad - Heisenberg Nails. In the video you can see two of my latest techniques in action: the DIY Nail Decals and the Liquid Sand Nails. By the way, I did my Obama Nails with the same technique as I did Heisenberg. Hope you like it!

Feather Nails Tutorial

Another easy tutorial for today! 

I used Catrice - Dirty Berry as a base color and feathers from the craft store. 

Have a good weekend! 

Leopard Skittle Nails & Tiny Tutorial

I had these colors selected for some nail art but then my first idea didn't really work out. So when nothing else works, I go for Leopard! But I didn't want to make it too boring, so I did some Skittle nails first and then added the Leopard pattern. I have included a very short "tutorial" at the end of this post.

The colors I chose as a base are from left to right: Essie - Mesmerized, Essie - Mint Candy Apple, Essence - Got A Secret and China Glaze - Something Sweet. On my thumb is simple white (Blanc). Then I added the color on the right side of each nail to do the leopard spots. I did them with the brush of each bottle, which works best for me and the leopard. Because those spots don't need to be perfect, in fact they should not be perfect at all. 

It's different with the black surroundings of the spots, they take a little bit more effort to create a real leopard look. But even with that effort it's a fast design which has a great effect.

So here's my tiny 3-step tutorial, I hope you like it!

I

I was wondering for which kind of design you would like a tutorial? I know tutorials are quite popular and I like doing them, but I'm not sure which design you would like to see. The leopard one is more of an exercise for me, since I guess leopard nails tutorials are all over the web now. So please leave me a comment if you're looking for a tutorial on something I did in the past or even something new you would like me to try. Thanks!

Galaxy Splatter Nails + DIY Decals Tutorial

I love Splatter Nails! But the average technique to get Splatter Nails - blowing the paint with a straw directly onto the nails - is really annoying in regard to cleaning up the cuticles. That's why I always do Splatter Nails with the plastic bag method. I call it DIY Decals because you basically create decals and then stick it onto the nails. You can find my tutorial on how to do those at the end of today's post.

Today's color choice reminds me of Galaxy Nails. I used p2 - Night Out as my base color and then added Essie - Mint Candy Apple and Essie - Penny Talk with my straw. On top of everything is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Topcoat. 

What I love about the selfmade decals is the fact that you can chose the spot with the best pattern. When I did my first Splatter Nails without the plastic bag, I had some nails flooded in polish and others with no splatter at all. 

So the process of creating your own decals is very easy but you will need some time to let it dry. You will need a plastic bag, a straw and your colors of choice. Then paint your base color onto the plastic bag. I always paint a rectangle about 10cm wide and a little bit more than two times my nail length. If you do this for the first time I'd recommend painting a bigger area so you have some spare decals to practice the technique. Take care not to paint the polish too thick because the thicker the decal the more difficult it will be to place it onto the nails evenly. Then you dip the straw in the bottle of nail polish and blow in the other end, so that the polish will splash onto the painted area. I always let my decals dry over night so they can be removed from the plastic easily. The next day you can cut the decal with your scissors and create small pieces in the size of your nails. Paint your first nail with one coat of the chosen base color, remove the decal from the plastic with tweezers and add it onto the wet polish. Press it down gently and wait for a little while. I  can remove most of the overlapping parts with my other finger nails. After that I apply a first coat of clear nail polish to "melt" the decal and the base color together. Then I can clean it up like I would with my usual manicure and add a top coat.

And this is how you shouldn't be doing it. Hard to remove ;) 

I had so much fun making this tutorial and I plan on doing more of them if you like it!