How I paint my nails

I get a lot of questions about how I paint my nails so it is time to answer them :) First of all I want to say that this is my way and it may not be right, but it works on me. I paint my nails over ten years now and the way I do it is years of mistakes and practise. If you think I am doing this wrong, you may be right but as I said: works for me :) So here we go:

• After removing my old polish I wash my hands with soap to get rid of the nail polish remover and don´t apply any cream or lotion.
• Then I apply base coat. My favourite is Essie Protein Base Coat, about which I already wrote. It dries really quick, so I can start painting my nails immediately.
• Painting the nails...I tried to do a video, which would be easier to understand, but it was crap, so I will try to explain on a picture:

1. I always sweep one side of the brush against the bottle to get rid of too much polish. If you have too much polish on your brush you can never paint neatly. On the other side if you pick too little, the result will be crap too. The perfect amount of polish is about expirience, everybody needs it different. When I place the brush on the nail I put about half of the amount on the top of my nail (number 1 on the picture). By doing this I don´t get all the polish on the bottom and nothing on the top. I had problems with that when I started painting.
2. Then I start paintng my nails like everybody else does BUT I do it a bit different. I don´t place the brush the closest to the cuticle as I can get. From my experience it is really hard to do that neatly. Instead I place it about 2-3mm away (look at number 2 on the picture). When the brush lies on the nail you have better control of it. So now I just slide the brush close to the cuticles. It is really easy.
3. After doing this I do about three strokes on the whole nail and I am finished :)

• I know it might sound a bit complicated or confusing, but 99% of the times I don´t have to do any clean ups on my cuticles and I have a nice and neat curve like on the picture without any other cleaning.

If you have any questions about this, please go ahead and ask me :) I will be happy to help!

P.S. Moc se omlouvám svým českým čtenářkám, ale do češtiny už to nepřeložím :) Ach ta lenost. Kdyžtak se ptejte.