Beautiful Feet

Summer is officially here, and flip-flops are adorning your feet…but what’s adorning your nails? Want to do your own pedicure or a creative and original design on your toes but don’t know where to start? Here’s how in ten easy steps!

Start your pedi!

Step 1: If you have nail polish on your toes already, remove the polish. Wash your feet in warm soapy water. Scrub any dirt from under your toenails with a nail brush. Dry your feet. Make sure your toenails are completely dry before moving on to the next step, because wet nails are much weaker than dry nails.

Step 2: Cut your fingernails with clippers so they’re all the same length.

Step 3: Use an emery board to shape your nails. Do not use a metal file, as these cause your nails to spilt easily. File in one direction. Filing back and forth will weaken your nails.

Step 4: Put a little cuticle oil, or any edible oil, on the skin that overlaps onto your nails (your cuticle). Massage in circles on the cuticle. Now, put your feet in warm water for about 15 minutes. This will soften your cuticles so you can gently push them off the nail with a cuticle stick. Do not trim the cuticle. Cutting off the cuticle is not healthy, even though it is practiced at many salons.

Step 5: Wash your feet again to remove all the oil. Swipe the nail brush over your nails to get rid of the residue. If you want to pamper yourself (since you are giving yourself a pedicure =D), rub the homemade sugar scrub from one of my former posts on your feet for a few minutes to exfoliate and remove dead skin. Dry your feet thoroughly.

Step 6: Moisturize with a foot cream. Rub over your whole foot, the top, bottom, toes, and ankles. After it’s soaked in, wipe off your toenails with a dry cloth.

Step 7: Use a callus stone or callus reducer to get rid of dead skin on your feet. Scrub the balls of your feet, the bottoms and sides of your heels, and around your toes. If you have a double-sided callus stone/reducer, use the coarser side first, rubbing in circles, then use the other side to smooth off the dead skin.

Step 8: Cover each nail with a base-coat, or a clear polish.

Step 9: Polish with your favorite color in three strokes; one down the middle and two on each side.

Step 10: Finish with the top-coat, or the clear polish again.

Now it's time for...nail art!

When I heard about the Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen, I was so excited! I love to do nail art, but I always did it freehand with nail polish, so my designs were very limited. Here’s something I did on my sister’s toes with regular nail polish:

 

So I went out and got myself a white nail art pen at Walmart to try it out. Here are three designs I tried with it:

{I know what you’re thinking….you love my bathroom floor. hahaha}

 

Aren’t they lovely? Here’s the verdict on the pen:

It's a lot of fun to play with! It made it easy to create fine designs like lines and dots. But strangely, the pen is not nail polish. It reminds me of the white-out stuff my mom uses when she messes up on the calendar. It’s kinda freaky. It says on the pen: Do not apply to bare nail…avoid contact with cuticles and skin. It weirded me out a little, but once I got past that, it worked very well! It’s a little runny, so you have to be careful, and you must apply a top coat, because the nail art pen doesn’t dry. After my polish was dry, I washed my hands and I could tell where I missed putting top coat on, because the design came off. Overall, it was a pretty good investment, but not all I thought it would be. Not sure if I’ll buy one again once it runs out. I might be better off using a toothpick and dipping it in nail polish to make designs. It would be a lot cheaper, and would probably even work better.

But whether you love your feet or not, God thinks they’re absolutely beautiful!

“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" Romans 10:15b