*Ouch* - Fixing Poorly Nails

The majority of this morning was spent looking at my horrible, disgusting, rough, paper thin nails and wondering what on earth I could possibly do to make them look anywhere near "normal" again.

I mean even I couldn't bear to look at them, let alone having them inflicted upon the poor people of the world.

I have had acrylic nails on now for around about a year continuously, and despite my nail technician trying to persuade me to have a break from them, I point blank refused and adamantly insisted that the infills always went ahead as planned.

I just loved my long blood red or gothic black talons and couldn't be without them.

But the fact my nail lady gave birth to a beautiful baby boy recently forced my hand really and I had no choice but to listen to her - I mean she could hardly take her acrylics and nail file into the birthing suite with her now could she.

So I decided that the nails would have to come off, and sooner rather than later.

However - very stupidly - I decided to not soak them off as advised, oh no, but to just pull them off...with my teeth...nothing like a little bit of full on pain now is there.

But by doing this, as expected, I was left with some quite horrible looking and feeling nails to deal with today.

So how on earth do you improve this?

Well this little kit I pulled together helped me out no end.

I first filed over the tops of my nails really really gently and then made sure I applied lots of Soap and Glory Hand Food before bed last night, lathering each nail with it just to try and soften the brittleness a little bit whilst I slept.

This solar oil is great, and I swear by it.

Another nail technician I used to go to years ago very kindly gave me it, and it has lasted me ages.

It is great at conditioning nails and cuticles, so naturally it was needed today, and it really made a huge difference.

A little goes a long way and it is very simply dabbed onto each cuticle and then rubbed across the nail - it smells amazing too.

Next, on went two coats of clear nail varnish which really helped to harden my nails a little bit after the solar oil had worked its magic.

Then using this lovely Ciate Nail Caviar set that I was sent during my Secret Santa swap in December (see here), I used two coats of the lovely pink nail varnish - which has a beautiful bow adorned bottle - to cover up the mess that my nails had become.

Because I had pulled the acrylics off, both of my ring finger nails were in a particularly bad way, so I decided to use the teeny-tiny colourful nail caviar pearls to disguise these a little bit more, and they worked brilliantly.

The pearls stuck to the still wet nail varnish, and after being gently pushed down, they stuck perfectly.

The plastic tray in the pack was great at catching the pearls as they were poured over the nail, because they really do bounce everywhere.

The little funnel included in the pack is brilliant at getting them all back into the bottle so that non of them are wasted.

I know that my finished nails are far from perfect, but to say how terrible they looked only a few hours ago, I'm certainly a whole lot happier with them.

I think I'll stay away from the acrylics - for a little while at least.

I think I will quite enjoy getting a little bit "nail creative" for a change