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.
Get comfy, put your feet in the bath, and relax for about 15 minutes. Read a book, or just close your eyes and enjoy your senses.
If you have polish on, remove it. If you are wearing polish on your nails, this can be a trick. Nail Techs are taught to put your chosen polish remover pads between your knuckles and scrub the polish off that way, but I prefer to put on some rubber gloves and do it. Also, you can dampen 10 pads and lay one on each toe for a minute, then go back and remove the polish much easier.
If your feet are really dirty, stand in your bathtub and wash them off a little first, just so your pedicure bath can stay luxurious and not get nasty too quickly.
In either a large enough bowl for your feet, or an electric pedicure unit, put some nicely scented liquid soap, maybe a drop of two of essential oil, and even some flower petals, if you happen to have some around. Light a candle or two. Fill the tub up with nice warm water, as warm as you can stand it. I have a pedicure tub that cost around $35, and has a heater in it that will maintain the heat of the water. That is a VERY nice feature to have. Gather all of your pedicure supplies, and don’t forget several towels, as your feet will be going in and out of the water several times.
Pedicure bath available at The Sharper Image: Portable “No Spill” Massaging Foot Spa with Jet-Action Bubbles, Vibration & Heat (CA843)
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[Ed. note - we are moving right on to the Spa Pedicure this week due to the news from Dallas that I reported yesterday about people being infected by Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria from pedicure baths. I hope you will forgive me if I stress cleanliness so much here, but this bacteria is very, very dangerous and life threatening. Please take the time and make the effort to do your own pedicures, or ensure that the work area is very clean if you must go to a salon.]
Ok, on to the intro:
The Basic Spa Pedicure is very similar to the Spa Manicure, except, naturally, it is performed on the feet. Something special to
remember about manicuring your toes is that you do not need a topcoat on toes. Just your basic basecoat, and two coats of color is all you need, as your toes do not go through the abuse that your nails do. The added thickness of the topcoat on your toes can even encourage them to chip under the pressure of wearing shoes all day. So just skip the topcoat, but be sure and allow your toes plenty of time to dry completely before you put shoes/socks/stockings on, preferably overnight!
So, lets get started!
Wrap your hands up in a towel to retain the heat for as long as possible, sit back and relax for 15-30 minutes (or as long as you feel like sitting there—the longer the better). When you are ready, just remove the plastic, the paraffin will probably slip right off with it, and throw the whole thing away. Do NOT reuse the paraffin that was on your hands, no matter how tempting it may be—it will be dirty, full of skin cells, bacteria and microbes that LOVE to breed in warmth, and your paraffin pot will be full of nasty bacteria the next time you want to use it.
Now if you want to finish your Spa Manicure, go back up to Step 6 of the Spa Manicure. If you are finished with your hand treatment, you may wash your hands to remove any residual oils and get on with your day!
