How to shape your perfect  nail.

In this article we're going to be going over some tips and tricks for some basic shaping we will be
covering stiletto, almond, coffin  and last but not least the elegant tapered square. I will be going
into detail with each style.

First nail prep?

The second  thing that you want to do is push back the clients cuticles, the reason we do this is to get
any dead dry skin away from the nail bed. if you have dry skin on your nail bed when you're applying
your acrylic it's gonna cause lifting. I prefer using a cuticle pusher to push back the cuticles rather
than cutting the cuticle you never want to cut living tissue you can cause damage to the cuticle or
your client and you can harm them after pushing back the cuticle.

Now you can use nail buffer or medium grit sanding band  buff. the nail plate this removes the
natural shine from your clients nail. file you can do this with hand filing but you want to make sure
that you're using a 180 medium grit file the 240 buffer would be a little too fine and you don't want to
use  on natural nail and you don't want to put any pressure. just take it lightly now always remember
to dust off,
those nails, so you have a clean surface to work with.  nail tips and  make sure the tip doesn't go far
over her natural nail into the sidewall. nail and kind of visualize what the stiletto will look
like so you want to cut down to the length that you want the nail to be I always like to keep it a little
bit longer. because when you're done filing and shaping it's always gonna get shorter with that so
you're just gonna cut straight across. I will be cutting the corners but not all the way to the middle
use  file to perfect the shape there you don't have to do the step with cutting the corners. Get perfect
shape you want to line up from the side wall to the point right down the middle and that's where
you're going to be filing so when you're filing for the" stiletto" you want to keep moving back and forth
and take little and little as at a time by doing it this way you're going to prevent yourself from over
filing one side and making the nail continue to lightly file both sides until you've come into that very
sharp stiletto shape. so full trick " stiletto" has a curve  because we use the nail tip most the littles are
straight from the sidewall and kind of straight out to achieve that you will use a form all right there we
have a stiletto.
" Almond shape" now  nail and always cut a little bit longer than the finished product that you think
that it's gonna be after filing in shaping. the length of the nail is going to be taken down a little bit. so
you always want to leave a little room just so that you can play with it now for this shape cut down
your nails.  Now visualize a line running down the middle of your nails and that's where Your center
points going to be. so file with the side wall and  an inward motion, when shaping this now you like to
move back and forth from left side to right Side. you can keep both sides even and make everything
look uniform. when filing you don't want to over file. because then you're gonna have one side that's
thinner than the other so keep an eye on that and also do not press into the sidewalls of the natural
nail that will cause problems later it'll cause lifting and when you go back in to do a fill the alignment
will be off now when doing an almond style.
"ballerina shaped" nail also known as coffin nails. so you want to look at your clients hand and
visualize what length is going to be aesthetically Pleasing. make sure when you're cutting you're
cutting at an angle not straight up so with all your nails. I like to visualize the line running down the
center of the nail and this is the part of the Nell that we are gonna slightly angle. it inwards then like
with all your nail shaping. I will move from side to side to make sure both sides are equal now when
shaping a tip for acrylic application if you're doing a ballerina shape you're always going to want to
go in a little bit more than what you want the end look to be just because when you apply acrylic it's
gonna add bulk to the Nail.
"Square shaped" and you're going to want to look how long you want the nail and always leave a
little bit longer. because when you file it's gonna start being shorter and shorter and for this shape
you're gonna want to line up. your file with your sidewall and you're gonna slightly bring it in at the bottom.
now you're gonna switch back and forth from right to left filing a little bit at a time. now when doing
the shape you don't want to file too far inwards or have your file at too much of an angle because
then you're gonna start going into more of a coffin shape. when you're filing the tip of your square
you want to make sure that your file is parallel to the nail. you don't want to over angle your file
forward or backward you also want to make sure that you're not rocking back and forth you just want
to keep it straight and parallel. we're gonna mess up that clean sharp line also in doing a tapered
square you don't want to file too much towards the center because then you're gonna go into a
ballerina shaped looking nail and as you can see with the tapered square you kind of keep that
square look with a wider base at the edge of the nail as opposed to a coffin shape where the tip of
the nail is more narrow and you don't have a very wide surface at the very  tip of the nail. So there's
a few tips and tricks for four different shapes of nails.
I hope you guys enjoyed this article.