Nail This

My mother has beautiful, strong nails that she could tear a house down with and still not even get a chip. Since I was a little girl I have been jealous of my mother's nails. Unfortunately I didn't get them in the Great Genetic Divide; I did however get my mother's ability and desire to work with my hands - gardening, sewing, construction and the like. I don't have the girliest looking hands; in fact I have recently been told that I have the "hands of a Welsh miner".

It's a rare thing when my nails will grow and stay longer than a few millimetres past my fingertips. Imagine my surprise when I woke up a few weeks ago to realize that my nails have grown quite long and stayed there. I've been convinced that I will wake up one morning and they all will have spontaneously fallen off in my sleep, typical long nail paranoia.

I've been very good about being nice to my new long nails. I file them delicately, moisturize as often as possible, paint them with clear coat for extra protection, take extra Omega suppliments and avoid tearing apart drywall with my bare hands. Just as I thought my new girly hands might be here to stay, WHAMO! I break one. Not all the way, just a nice jagged, below-the-fingertip tear. It's happened before but this time I thought I'd try a little trick I'd read about years ago.

Take a small piece of tissue and lay it over the ripped part of the nail. Coat the nail with a thin coat of clear nail polish. Once that dries put on two more coats of increasingly thicker clear polish. Once the polish is completely dry use a fine emery board to gently buff the excess from the edge of your nail and voila! A do-it-yourself nail wrap to save the nail.

So far it's lasted through two days of typing at work and all the usual things that should destroy your nails - zippers, dishes, opening soda cans and the occasional nervous nail gnaw. To be sure that I won't lose the nail I'll head to a professional manicurist tomorrow to get a proper nail wrap but the tissue/polish combo sure has lived up to my expectations.