I've had a few people ask me about how I paint my nails and I wrote something out and made a sad attempt at explaining it but I've finally come to terms with the fact that I suck at writing. Instead, I made this visual guide of sorts.
Step 1. Place a drop of polish in the middle of your nail near the cuticle (though not as close as the final polish line will be). Keep the brush in contact with your nail through step 3.
Step 2. Gently push the drop of polish towards your cuticle until there is about 1-2 mm of gap between the polish line and the cuticle (this distance varies depending on how much gap you prefer).
Step 3. From here, pull the brush off the end of your nail to complete the first stroke. Try and complete steps 1-3 in as smooth a fashion as possible. In other words, Steps 1-3 will eventually be completed in one smooth motion rather than individual steps. Be sure to keep your brush in contact with your nail the whole time.
Step 4-7. Repeat steps 1-3 on the left and right side of the nail. Don't wait too long between completing each stroke so that streaks don't occur in the polish.
Step 8. Complete this process on all your nails.
If your line isn't as clean as you'd like it to be, take some acetone and an angled brush or Q-tip and paint over what you'd like removed. I like to take the cap of my acetone bottle and use that to dip my brush in.
Most importantly though, practice makes perfect! The more you paint, the easier it will be. I hardly have cleanup now a-days but it wasn't always like that ;)
Let me know if this was helpful or if you still need some clarification. I'd be happy to eventually put up a video tutorial as well.
Happy Polishing :)
