Manicure 101: Cuticle Care, Perfect Cuticles are Easy!

Over the last 4 days I've shared with you all of my steps in creating a great looking manicure at home. The problem? I haven't shown you what I do to maintain it, and I keep saying "Acetone, Acetone, Acetone." Which means that if you've been following my directions from this week your fingers and cuticles are probably cracked and bleeding by now because they are so dry!

So, the key to having great looking nails and cuticles really is moisture. Yes, even when you have on polish, you need to keep moisturizing. I am really not so good at remembering to keep applying moisturizing products to my nails, but I do apply before bed every night and this seems to be often enough for me. My favorite method of moisturizing my cuticles is to apply a cuticle oil such as CND Solar Oil first. The oil step seems to really be key for me, don't skip out on the oil! After the oil has had a few minutes to sink in I apply a thick cuticle cream to "lock" it into my cuticle. My favorite is Orly Cuticle Therapy Cream, but the Kiehl's cuticle cream works great as well. The point is to have a fairly occlusive cream on over the oil.

On days that I'm making an effort to remember my cuticles, I use hydroxy acid moisturizers on my cuticles. Pictured here are products from CND and Poshe (I have the old packaging of both, I stocked up about a year ago and am still using them up). The idea behind these products is pretty simple: they hydrate and the hydroxy acids help to exfoliate. When I'm using these a few times a day I find that my cuticles look amazing, I don't need to use cuticle remover and I can go ages between hang nails.