Taking care of my 10 little divas

Hello everybody! How are you doing? It's a beautiful day, darlings! Classes were interesting, I had a lovely coffee before them with lovely people, sun is shining as I speak, I went everywhere on foot just to enjoy the pretty, warmer weather. And I'm really excited about my GA ending tomorrow at midnight! It's been an interesting journey. :) BTW, people, please use the form! I don't acctept comment entries, I've warned about that and I still got new one today. Will add the warning, again, to the GA entry. But anyway! This post is long overdue. Taya asked me a month ago if I can show you how I'm taking care of my nails, and now I'm finally typing this away. So sorry it took that long, Taya, hope you don't mind! 

It's also the last one I owe you for now. Again, if you have any wishes for comparisons, specific colours or anything nail (polish) related you'd like me to write about, let me know!

To the topic. It's going to be a longer entry, but I'll try to explain everything in it, I'll also share my nail care WL with you (yes I have that one too). There are some steel facts about my nails you need to know. 1. They are divas.  2. There are strict rules for taking care of them, and I can't change that too much or they'll start to layer and break. I actually had to refuse a review of a really awesome gadget because I was worried about chaning file for filing down my nails. The last time I did it, I had to cut down my nails completely, layered as they were. 3. I have a slight cuticle/hand skin OCD, I cannot have them dry. Serisouly, I get nervous, I can't think about anything if I feel like my hands are made of paper bag because of the dry skin. Thus, I admit, I may get a bit extreme about hand cream and cuticle care.

I'll show you the things I pay attention to throughout the year, but especially in cold winter times. I have no idea what the order of things should be, but let's start with my best secret for perfect cuticle and nails.

• Hand Creme And Cuticle Butter

Lord Of The Rings, how much I adore Badger Cuticle Care!!! This baby is my number one product for nails and I worship it for what it has done to my nails. Not to mention the cutest packaging ever! Look how the little badger is showing its claws. Together everybody: awww! Seriously people, this baby does everything it's promising to do for the nails. Cuticles are fed, not dry, they get dry slower, the nails are growing almost too fast, they are super strong (seriously, they don't layer or break, unless you really hit the wall with them. What I usually do when I break a nail), and just ... you know, healthy, happy, spoiled nails and cuticles. 

I use it just about every day, in average 6 days a week, usually when I go to sleep. The amount you use is really small, since it's really butter-like and you massage it into your fingertips. That's it. I purchased also cotton gloves not to wipe it off my nails, but more about that later on. Smells of lemon, it's also yellow. Badger also has USDA organic certificate, so major plus, people! I adore Badger, really, I'd love to try the body butters and other stuff as well, but usually never manage to keep money on me for that long to buy it. I buy my Badger goodness in BB Natura shop, they have a stand in Supernova in Ljubljana, it costs 7€. Since I am around the middle of the contents with every day usage after whole 4 months (!!) I'd say it's a fair price. You get magic with it, people!!

Second thing I'm always - and I mean always - having with me is hand creme. The one on the picture is actually my 4th or 5th favourite. The best cremes for me are Balea Urea Handcreme (urea on second place of ingredients!), Balea Olive Oil Handcreme and also Afrodita Aroma. These are also very cheap. I tried a wide range of hand cremes, very expensive and very cheap, and I'll tell you, the price does not always bring quality. Balea is laughably cheap and I adore it. Fact also is I use one 100 ml hand creme per month, so I couldn't really afford extra expensive ones. My advice is: use hand creme as often as you can. For me it has become essential like a tooth brush. I use it almost every time I wash my hands, which is quite often. Make a habit out of it. 

The SOS product for cuticles, when I'm at my BF's and I don't carry around my Badger, is the best lip balm I've ever tried. Ziaja Orange Butter Lip Balm. I love Ziaja's products, they have the best body scrub, shower gels and so on, but this is the winner in my opinion. Not only for lips, but also for your cuticles. Awesome! And I hate it sooo much I can't find it anywhere in Slovenia anymore. :( 

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WL: I'm perfectly happy with Badger Cuticle Care, I'd be happy to use it for the rest of my life. However, I'm always happy to try new things (you can be sure I'll have Badger lying around too, JIC) and frankly, I'd like to try LUSH Lemony Flutter just because people say it's so damn good and I want to see if it will beat Badger.

As for hand creme, again, I'd love to try something made by Badger, also the LUSH one, Lalica told us it's really good. 

• Nail polish remover

I had the worst experiences with nail polish removers possible. One dried out my nails so badly, I had to start taking biotin pills for them to recover. It was horrible. I know lots of you are perfectly fine with low price, Essence/Ebelin/etc. removers but they cause chaos for me. Thus I stopped even trying and am strictly using Afrodita Oliva and Aroma nail polish removers. Both of them on the picture are perfect! You can se the ingredients too, they're pretty decent, I'd say. And they don't dry up my nails, which is essential. As I empty around one bottle (maybe more) per month, with 2.20-2.70€ per bottle they aren't really the cheapest out there, but they are excellent. If you're having major problems with your nails, perhaps you should try and change your nail polish remover. People think it doesn't do damage, trust me, it does!

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WL: Zoya nail polish remover. Because I've heard it's perfect.

• Shaping the divas

Crystal file was a complete revelation for me. Before that my nails layered as i filed them down, so the dust actually went between the layers of the nails. It was horrible, people! Remember the mentioned refused review? That's the reason why. I can only file my nails with crystal file if I want to avoid layering. Essie file is really great, I love it! On the picture also the wooden stick for cuticles, although I rarely need it (please don't push your cuticles off the nail with the iron one, it hurts me and I'm only writing about it. It's way to agressive) and a buffer cube. Now, people, I don't buff unless I really need too, I don't want to weaken my nails. I have it just in case if I need to buff down really bad stain or some kind of irregularity on the nails. Otherwise I'm against buffing, I fear I'd ruin my nails with it. 

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WL: Little travelling version of the Essie file, to have with me all the time.

• Gloves 

I use three pairs of gloves. The white cotton one are for night treatment with cuticle care balm. If you want to use cuticle oils regularly, I really recommend them, because then you won't have the excuse for not using it like: i don't want to get oil all over my keyboard, books, dress, sheets, etc. They also make sure the oil stays on the nail and cuticles not just about everywhere else. With cotton gloves you can type, read, just about everything while you're pampering your nails. :)

The black one are obviously for the cold outside. I see lots of people going out without gloves, for me that's a killer of nice cuticles. If I don't have gloves my cuticles dry up completely, it's awful. Especially if I have to carry something and don't have my hands in my pockets. Obviously these are important for winter and it's cold, I don't walk around with gloves in Summer. :)

The latex one are for cleaning house. No matter what it says on your dish cleaner, people, it's aggressive and you should be wearing gloves while doing the dishes. We have a dish washer, so most of the time I don't need gloves (I don't put them on to put the dishes into the washer), but when I'm cleaning like bathroom or using any kind of really aggressive cleaners, I use the gloves. I have latex one, because those we had at home, otherwise you have much better ones for cleaning out there.

•  Base Coat??

This is where my care of my nails fails. Good base coat. I thought before I don't need one, but the more I use nail polish, the more I see I need one for certain colours. Because my nails are really badly stained. Not that it's a problem most of the time, but I'd still like to try and invest into a good base coat, especially after I realized it can sometimes mess up the colour accuracy with swatching (remember depend and night sparkle fiasco?). The only one I've got is this Essie Fill the gap! mini bottle. :/ 

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WL: I don't know. You tell me! I have my eyes on Zoya base coat. Dunno why, but I like Zoya, and I'm guessing it must be good. :) 

I think that's just about it. My secrets revealed! ;) Well, not much of secrets, anyway, I'm sure most of you know and do all of this already. :) 

Tell me your opinions on my treatment, please. And if you know a good base coat, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions and tips!

Thank you for reading! :*