Just like on your hands, you must make sure that all of the lotion is off of your toenails before you even begin to think about polishing them. Use a towel to get most of it off, pushing down your toenail towards your cuticle just like you did with your nails. Get into those grooves! When you have rubbed off all of the lotion you can get with your towel, take your cuticle nippers and only cut off what is sticking up and BEGGING to be cut off. Remember scar tissue, and only cut off what is necessary. Just like your fingernails, you cuticle will quickly become trained to stay back, and any thick parts will respond well to your treatments and slough off fairly quickly.
Take some acetone on a gauze pad and wipe off your toenails, again, being careful of your painted fingernails. Now, here is a trick that I love. You are going to use a paper towel to separate your toes for polishing. Take one full sized paper towel and roll it up tightly into a long cord. Weave this cord in between your toes, beginning underneath the big toe and bringing it up through the space between that toe and the one next to it. Weave it all the way through your toes (on one foot only, please), ending under the pinky toe. Both ends of the cord should be under your foot, so they wont accidentally get into your polish. This works a lot better than the manufactured “toe separators,” which have a tendency to move around and eventually get in the way of polishing, or even worse, mar a finished polish job.
You are now ready to move on to the Polish That Lasts section, but remember, unless you go barefooted A LOT, do not use topcoat. And, let those toes dry for a LONG TIME before you put shoes on them!
Put each foot back in the bath for a moment, and wash off the leftover salts. Dry your feet off, then get out your favorite good smelling lotion or cream. Give yourself a great foot massage. You think someone else can give a good foot massage, well, you are the best. You know where it feels good, so do it! Gently pull on your toes, and massage your muscles in your toes. Dig your thumbs in to the arches of your feet, and push up towards your toes and see how good that feels. When you are finished, with the first foot, make sure there is still some cream on it, and wrap it in plastic wrap and stick it in between your heating pad for about 15 minutes while you massage your other foot.
Now you will move on to taking care of the bottoms of your feet. Remove that first foot from the bath again, dry it off, and grab your foot file. If you have chosen my favorite foot file, you grab the end of the file without the sandpaper on it, find the courser side, and start filing. Pay attention to the area around your heel, and the ball of your foot, giving extra attention to the more calloused areas. After all of this soaking, you will most likely sling all kinds of skin bits around, so be sure and have a towel under your foot. You may have seen the razor type of implement that is supposed to be used to cut off very hard calluses, but I do NOT recommend the use of these, for exactly the same reason as I don’t recommend cutting your cuticles — it will cause scar tissue, which is tougher, and harder to remove than even the hardest callous you can imagine. If you cannot get off all of the callous that you want to this time, you can soak your foot a few more minutes and try again, OR, my recommendation is to do another pedicure in a couple weeks, and do another thorough foot filing. A little bit of filing at a time over a longer time period is
less likely to cause scar tissue than aggressively removing it all at once.
When that foot is as soft as a baby’s bottom (or as close as you are going to get to that this time, get out your salt and oil scrub, and massage it into that foot, this time paying close attention to your ankles, the tops of your feet and toes, and in between your toes. Give yourself a good massage, and let it sit on your feet while you remove the next foot and repeat this step on it.
pedicures,
Step by Step
Next, you want to file your toenails. If they are very long, you can clip them down first, with toenail clippers, but generally, the file does a great job. Like on your fingernails, file in one direction only to discourage the layers of your nail from separating. With your clippers, clip off just the very teeniest bit of each corner of your nail, which should be easy to get to after you have done the procedure described above. This will also discourage ingrown toenails. If you find you have any soreness in the sides of your toenails already, please do yourself a favor and go to the podiatrist right away to get it taken care of before it becomes a problem requiring ingrown toenail surgery, it is painful and takes a long time to recover from. You might be interested to know that a great deal of people have pinky toenails that are not quite right. Most everyone I have seen says something about their pinky toenails being ugly, or malformed, and they are always surprised when I tell them that just about every ones are. I am sure it is due to walking around for years and years and years in shoes, not to mention the kinds of shoes that women wear. Do yourself another favor and make sure the shoes that you wear fit your feet, and have enough room in the toe box to wiggle your toes a little. This will keep your feet looking much better and more importantly, FEELING much better in years to come!
Ok, put that foot BACK in the bath, and repeat the above steps on the other foot. And smile—you are on the road to gorgeous, pampered looking and FEELING feet!
Remove one foot from the bath. Put your foot either on the edge of the chair or on the side of the bath. With your cuticle pusher, scrape all of the cuticle skin attached to your toenails from the edge of your nail down towards the cuticle, being very careful not to gouge your cuticle and cause bleeding. Take the metal pusher and carefully run it up the sides of your toenail, getting as deep into that groove as you can (and even UNDER the sides of the toenail), sliding all of the gunk that accumulates up to the top and out of there . This is a huge step in avoiding ingrown toenails. If your toe is sore on the sides, it is very likely you have an accumulation of dead skin and dirt in there that is invading your body and causing an infection. This process may be a little uncomfortable at first, but you will get the hang of it with practice, and as your toes get used to it, it will become easier.
