You should have already chosen your treatment base coat, for dry nails, brittle nails or the elusive normal nails.
Do not shake your base coat bottle, but turn it upside down slowly just a couple of times. Pull the brush out of the bottle, wipe the brush off on the rim of the bottle, making sure there isn’t a lot of polish running down the neck of the brush, then dip the brush back in just to the top of the bristles. Let the drop of polish that will want to come off the brush come on off, but other than that one drop, you want your brush nice and loaded with polish.
Starting with the pinky of your “right” hand (your dominant hand – this could be your left hand, if you are left handed!), paint a coat of medium thickness on your nails, beginning right next to your cuticle, and pulling your brush straight out, all the way off of the end of your nail. Be sure and cover your whole nail, from side to side, and cuticle to end, always going from cuticle to end, never putting “plops” of polish down, then spreading it out. When the top of your nail is covered, take the brush and slide it right across the tip end of your nail, coating the edge with base coat. If you have any spots that want to run, wipe them off and do them over. You will get the hang of this quickly.
Examine your base coat closely, even under a magnifying glass if you have one. You want this coat to be nice and smooth. You may see that you have lots of tiny bubbles on your nails when you apply the base coat. If you see this, you must remove your polish, and go back to the 4 way buffer and rebuff your nails. Your nails are made up of layers, and until your top nail layer is smooth (as opposed to looking like a microscopic cheese grater) these tiny bubbles will pop right up through your polish and you will end up with a very rough looking polish job that will have very little going for it in the way of durability. Catch this problem now, with the base coat, before you see it coming through the polish as the whole thing is drying.
