Bridal Nails How-To

What colour should a bride wear?
                                                   

A popular request is for sheer, glowing, natural nails. Essie’s Gel Couture Bridal collection is an edited collection of bridal colours and also a perfect option for bridesmaids to complement the bride. Essie’s Ballet Slippers is often a good place to start when looking at neutral, pinky polish shades which can be recreated with gel colours. You can play around with layering shades like CND Shellac’s Beau, Negligee or Romantique or look at Naked Naivete and Nude Knickers if you want a more solid but still subtle pink. Any nail technician should be able to create a colour for you by layering shades if you can’t find one you want. If your dress is white, look for a warmer pink and if it’s ivory, either cool or warm undertones can work.

Should I consider gel nails?

Yes! Not only is the glossy finish unbeatable, they’ll last for your honeymoon too. Gel nails are a highly risk-averse option. Why? You can rely on there being no smudges or chips - a big no-no for any bride-to-be - and you won’t have to bother with drying time in the salon because they instantly dry after curing in the lamp. Every minute counts in the days leading up to your wedding day so any time-saving treatments are valuable. Gel and gel-hybrid treatments like Shellac or Gelish are quick and applied to your natural nail so you won’t spend hours having carefully sculpted enhancements, unless you need or want them of course.

Is nail art a faux pas?

Approach your make-up and beauty as you would choosing your wedding dress. Will you still like it when you look back at pictures in 20 years? Minimal nail art design won’t look gaudy, just a fun but considered detail that you could opt for on a couple of nails. Just don’t leave someone free to do want they want. Have a look at examples on Instagram and Pinterest and show your nail tech.

Why we bite our nails

Nail-biting has long been considered a bad habit at best and a form of addiction at worst. Despite the social and potential health consequences, over 30 per cent of people do it. There are four main reasons for why people bite their nails:
               

It feels good | According to Tracy Foose, a professor of Psychology at UCSF School of Medicine, it feels ‘relaxing’ to bite one’s nails. Because of the unconscious enjoyment people get from it, biting nails can be comforting during a stressful situation, or might calm you down in the process of engaging in a difficult task.

You’re a perfectionist | Linked to the idea of comfort, research in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry found that those who get irritable or angry quickly tended to be calmed by biting nails.

Genetic predisposition | One research paper argued that there may be a link between Onychophagia — habitual biting of the nails — and family history. Indeed, Shari Lipner, a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine argues that a third of nail biters have a member of their family who bites their nails also.

It’s a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) | The last point is disputed. In 2012, the American Psychiatry Association listed nail-biting as a form of OCD (along with skin picking and hair pulling). However a large body of psychiatrists disagree with the decision, calling it an over-simplification of the disorder. Foose said, “As an anxiety specialist, I think that was an overreach for lumping disorders.”

Amber Rose Rocks Long Red Nails For Halloween

Today’s manicure Monday gets a Halloween twist thanks to Amber Rose. The social media star shared a picture of her candy apple red nails, perfect for the fall season. Click ahead for the details on Amber’s nails, and find out how you can copy the look for yourself.

Amber Rose is officially in the Halloween spirit, but her look is more glam than ghoulish. Taking to Instagram to show off her look, Amber hit up the nail salon to make sure she had a festive mani for the occasion.

Turning to manicurist Daya Montoya, Amber decided to skip the the obvious vampire nail art or black and orange color scheme you’d usually associate with Halloween and go for something a little more classic. Opting for a candy apple red polish, Amber kept her nails long with a coffin-shaped tip.

Daya also posted a picture of Amber’s nails to her own Instagram account, where she shared that she gave Amber acrylic nails (for the extra length) and used a gel lacquer, Perfect Match in Fizzy Apple.

If you want to recreate Amber’s glossy red color at home, you can use a regular nail polish as opposed to the Perfect Match color that needs to be cured with a special LED/UV light. To copy Amber, you can use a nail file to give your nails a square tip and prep them with a base coat. For the high-shine red, try two thin coats of Essie Nail Lacquer in Jelly Apple, letting each coat dry properly and sealing with a top coat.

Things Your Nails Reveal About Your Health

Nail symptom: They’re concave enough that a drop of water wouldn’t roll off them.
             

 
The technical term: Spoon or scooped nails
The no-big-deal explanation: Nails can take on a hollowed-out look with normal aging.
Why you should get it checked out anyway: Iron disorders like iron-deficiency anemia are the most common cause of spoon or scooped nails, says Dana Stern, MD, a board-certified dermatologist and nail specialist in New York. Your doctor will likely do a blood test to check your ferritin (iron) levels, as it’s possible that your nails would be the first sign of the problem, says Chris Adigun, MD, a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology and a nail specialist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (That doesn’t mean that all cases of anemia cause spoon or scooped nails, though—other symptoms include fatigue, lightheadedness, pale skin and headaches.) Another, less common, possibility is that you’ve got a thyroid issue. Either way, your nails should return to normal once the underlying cause is under control.

Nail symptom: Vertical brown or black bands 
The technical term: It depends (see below) 
The no-big-deal explanation: Pigmentation in nails is very common, especially in people of color, says Stern. Regardless of your skin color, though, if you’ve had the band for a long time and it hasn’t changed, or you have bands on multiple nails, there’s little reason to worry. Even new bands can be the result of a trauma activating the pigment-producing cells in your nail, like an overly zealous manicure, medications like antibiotics or blood pressure meds, or even pregnancy. It could also be a mole or freckle, though those are more common in children.
Why you should get it checked out anyway: Stern estimates that in less than 3 percent of cases, these bands are actually a melanoma growing in your nail. (All the more reason to remove your nail polish before you get a skin-cancer screening.) Melanomas are more common on the thumb and index finger (experts aren’t sure why) and usually only occur in one nail. If the pigment starts leaching out onto the surrounding skin, that’s a sign that you need to see your doctor now, says Stern, because it means the tumor is growing.

Libertine Models Don Fur Nails On The NYFW Fall 2016 Runway

At New York Fashion Week on Tuesday, Libertine presented a collection full of crystal embellished designs with a surrealist punk edge that was bound for misfit greatness.


But as much as we loved the gorgeous coats and capes sported on the runway, it was the nails that caught our attention.

And for good reason. Why? Because they had fur on them.

We know. Weird. But kind of cool?

To get the furry look, Jan Arnold, style director and co-founder of CND nail polish, painted each nail with Vinylux Weekly Polish in the shades of "Rubble" and "Cream Puff." Then, things got wild when the brown and white faux fur was added on to each nail using a Super Shiney High-Gloss Top Coat.

"This is now our fourth season partnering with Libertine’s Johnson Hartig and our synergies are intuitive and based in an artists’ understanding of design and fashion," Arnold tells Modern Salon. "Johnson shares his extraordinary vision and we’re right there with him! "

The fuzzy designs weren't the only wild nails to hit Johnson Hartig runway. Hand-crafted embellished designs were also adorned by the models. According to Modern Salon, the 180 beaded eye nail designs took 200 hours of production and we finished off with 60 LED-lit Swarovski crystal pupils.

Laura Whitmore goes for classic, short dark nails at NTAs

Not only did her gang over at I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! win Best Entertainment programme at this year's glittering event... but the presenter's nails were totally on point.



Laura joined her fellow I'm A Celeb posse, including TV presenter winners (again!), Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, on the red carpet on Wednesday (20 January) as this year's NTAs hit the O2 Arena in London.

Other glamorous attendees included Michelle Keegan and hubby Mark Wright, TOWIE stars Jess Wright and Lydia Bright, EastEnders' Jacqueline Jossa and Holly Willoughby to name just a few.

Laura looked stunning in a floor-length, one-shoulder Maria Grachvogel gown, with her hair worn loose and straight.

She also gave us a close-up of her nails earlier in the evening when she took to Instagram before heading out to the ceremony...

We love cute, short nails here in the Reveal office and quite frankly they're the BEST way to wear dark nail colours.

Laura's colour in question is Nails Inc Nailkale Polish in Bruton Mews, £14, a super-dark, rich green that perfectly complemented the blues and greens in her dress. Not to mention her beautiful navy Sophie Clutch Bag by Stacy Chan.

That's what we call great styling, right there.

To copy her mani at home, always apply a base coat before any dark polish, then carefully paint on two thin layers, before finishing with a glossy topcoat.

Spray-on nail varnish

As a kid who could barely muster enough coordination for one stroke of finger paint, nail-polish cheats were the kind of thing I dreamed about. I’ve patiently been waiting for someone to invent a machine that allows you instant nail-colour changes at the flick of a button, but until that we have this, nail art’s latest innovation, to get us through. It’s fairly straightforward but, annoyingly, you still have to use a base and top coat for it to stay on. It’s great for going straight from the office to a party, and definitely a decent stocking filler – but do it in the bathroom or on a newspaper because there is going to be a lot of mess. The best thing is that unlike regular nail polish, this stuff washes off your skin instantly, so you can be as messy as you like – but wait for a few minutes for the polish to dry first.



Work Christmas parties are notoriously tense, mainly because you have about seven minutes to get ready in the office loo before your do. Thanks then to Nails Inc, which has created Paint Can, the “world’s first ever spray-on home manicure”. The main shtick is that it dries quicker than graffiti or regular nail varnish. And it’s impossible to screw up. You simply spray it all over your hands and wash the rest off. Not sure about the name of this shade – Hoxton Market – but Alexa Chung rates it, so there must be something in it.