Giving Yourself a Pedicure

Caring for your Feet

Give your feet some pampering and make sure your toenails look divine. Hopefully you can show them off in some strappy shoes and go dancing!

1. Use a cotton pad soaked with nail polish remover to take off old polish. Use a nail file to smooth the edges, including the sides. Best shape: square with rounded edges.
(squoval) You don’t want any ingrown toenails so don’t file down to far.

2. Position a chair behind a clean, wide bucket filled with hot water or, if you are lucky enough and have one, a foot spa. Add half a cup of Epsom salt, a natural disinfectant or a bit of oil into the footbath.
3. Soak your feet in the hot water for five minutes, then rest them on the edge of the footbath. 
Dip a foot file in the water, then use it to smooth your heels, the balls of your feet and the outsides of your pinkie toes.
4. Use a cuticle stick to gently push your cuticles back on each toe. Be careful not to push them back to far. At this stage you could apply an exfoliating scrub to get all the dead skin off your feet. Then rinse your feet in the footbath.
5. Dry your feet and apply a generous amount of super-moisturizing foot lotion or cream. Wash the moisturizer off your toenails with soap and water or a cotton ball with a bit of nail polish remover and let them dry.


6. Create space between toes with a foam toe separator. Use thin coats of polish. Apply one coat of base coat, two coats of color and one coat of topcoat. Allow 5 minutes for each coat to dry. Let your nail polish cure for two hours, this just means you can’t wear shoes that cover your toes and you can’t go for a run on the beach.
7. Use a Q-tip moistened with nail-polish remover to remove any polish that missed the mark.
8. Apply one coat of topcoat three days after your pedicure, then every third day after that to keep polish from chipping.