kitewithfish | Nails again- Basic Red

Basic RED on shorter nails

Nail polish: Sephora by OPI - High Maintenance (opaque bright orange red), $9.50 at Sephora**

This is the first time I have trimmed my nails this short in a long while, and I went with a very basic and classic color to highlight the shape and length of them. Compared to the last two, this is very simple, and I picked it to let myself get used to the idea that short nails can also be classy and glamorous.

I have been trying to grow my nails out for several months now- basically since July. I've had a long history as a nailbiter, more due to boredom and the way having any nail growth at all felt ~weird~ and wrong to someone used to having no nails at all beyond the nailbed itself. I wasn't really able to think about growing out my nails until this summer, because I felt like I never had the time to learn how to do this properly.

I got my nails done professionally for a big giant event this summer (in fact, I got them done about three times in the course of womanly bonding and prep for the actual day of the event) and I found it really, really helpful! *

But because my nail polish use started as a means to master my quest for Longer, Less-Bitten Nails, I really didn't like to cut them at all. I filed and shaped them (squarish for one experiment, very oval for the French Manicure experiment in last post), but I really let them grow out, and it worked really well!

The nail beds, which were formerly quite far down on my finger from all my abuse, have slowly moved their way back up the finger to something that looks more normal for most people. My nails are growing stronger because they have a stronger base, and they break less.

So today, I decided that my long nails had accomplished their task for now, and I filed my nails down a fair bit. Not quite to the quick, because that is still rather far down on my nails, but just enough that I can now make a real good punching fist without stabbing through my palms.

I have to say that I like the look of longer nails better on my hands- it's rather elegant and I think it makes my rather small hands look a big more proportionate.

But they are getting in the way of my personal life, so for now, I will be experimenting with shorter nails and how to make them look awesome without growing them out longer than I can handle.

1. I got to actually see what a professional nail artist DOES to make a good manicure. It was a lot more than I was expecting, and it set a standard that online manicure tutorials tended to refer to without really showing the details. Watching someone actually go through the process of making my nails shapely, clean, primed, and finally painted made it finally clear exactly what I needed to do to repeat that at home.

2. Once at home, I really only needed to do upkeep, and I could get some things wrong but have a clear idea what to go back to.

3. It gave me some ideas of what polish brands are actually respected. This is why I have a lot of OPI Sephora polishes (at least for someone who was without a single polish at the end of June). I saw them in the salon, got to pick among them, and I liked several of them enough to buy, knowing that if a salon professional was using it, it was probably a good product with high demand.

4. Base Coat and Top Coat were a mystery to me before this, and now I have tried several and have some I like a lot, but I also just never paint my nails without them. I had no idea that they would extend the life of my manicure so much!

**I'm going to try and make sure to post where you can buy this polishes in the future, especially for things that are not basic drugstore brands in the US.

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NAIL MYTH SURVEY: In the comments, darlings.

My darling husband says that filing one's nails, as opposed to cutting them with clippers, makes the nail grow back thicker and stronger.

Have any of you heard of this story? Do you put any truth to it? Comment below!

I've never heard of it and I think this is bullshit on the level of saying that shaving your legs makes the hair grow back thicker- it cuts off the tapered part of the hair and makes it more rough to the touch, but shaving cannot change the genetically determined level of hairiness of your legs.