Video Transcript

Hi I'm Ashlie Johnson, celebrity manicurist, and today I'm going to show you some nail polish techniques. So for our nail techniques I'm going to use Essie Wicked. Dark colors are usually a lot harder to apply so it's good to know the best way to do it. For the first step I'm going to use a ridge filling base coat. It helps smooth out any ridges in the nail and it also adheres the polish to the nail longer. It's good to give the bottle a little shake to make sure that the pigment and the solvent are all mixed well together. You want to start at the base of the nail and move towards the free edge in one or two swipes just to give it a smooth even coverage and you're going to do this for all ten nails. So for step number two we're going to use a vamp type color. These polishes are pretty hard to apply on your own so it's good to know the right way to do it. You want to start by giving it a little shake to make sure that the solvent and the pigment are all mixed together. This helps so that your color will go on evenly. You're going to apply this the same way you did your base coat but you want to make sure the polish isn't too thick on the first coat and don't worry if it's not completely even because we can fix that with the second coat. It's good just to make sure it's all nice and smooth. So you can see it's a little streaky but with the second coat that will even it all out and here on the side we've got a little bit of polish which always happens with the dark colors but we can clean it up in the end. By the time you finish all ten, they're dry enough that you can apply the next coat and again don't worry if the first coat looks a little streaky. That's very typical with dark pigmented colors and it usually all evens out with the second coat. It's also good to remember to do a little swipe at the bottom of the nail at the free edge so that the color wraps all the way around the nail. So for the next step we're going to do another layer of our color coat. This coat is going to help even out any of the streakiness you saw with the first coat. It's also going to make the color really pigmented and give it a good coverage. Sometimes with the darker colors you'll see a little lighter spot and you can just go over it again with a little bit more polish. Also you want to make sure you have just enough polish on the brush to cover the nail but not so much that it's going to flow over. These dark colors are pretty hard to clean up out of the cuticle so it's better to have thinner layers and go back and if you need a third coat, do a third coat but do them as thin as possible. And now you can see the difference between the second and first coat. With the second coat it makes the polish a lot more pigmented. It's a nice smooth even color. So now we've done both of our coats of color and the final step would be the top coat. Same thing here you're going to apply it just as you did your other coats, two or three swipes, sealing off the edge. You can even go back after you're done all the nails and you can do another swipe on the edge. That is a good little trick. a color like this you will be able to notice the chips a little faster so it's good if the next day after your manicure you do an extra top coat and a good manicure with the polish done well should last you a week and that's our top coat. To finish off the manicure, it's almost impossible not to get a little bit of polish on the skin so we're going to use an orange wood stick and a little bit of remover. You're just going to take your orange wood stick, dip it in your remover and just go along the edges of the cuticle and sides of the nail. If you get a little bit of buildup on your orange wood stick you can just wipe it on the little cotton pad to clean it off. If not, then you just start spreading the dark color and smearing it and making a mess. You could also take a little bit of cotton and wrap it around your orange wood stick if you want to give it a little extra texture to remove the polish and don't forget to clean up the very edge of the fingertip in case any got under the nail and just make sure none got under the cuticle either. This is the part that makes it look like a real professional manicure because it gives it nice sharp clean edges. And there you go, there's our nail polish techniques. I'm Ashlie Johnson. Thanks for watching.

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