The Key to Color Blocking

Keep clients excited with your services by constantly incorporating the latest and most popular trends in nail art design. Geometric patterned nail designs are a go-to manicure trend among celebrities who enjoy pushing the fashion envelope including Fergie, Solange Knowles and Katy Perry. The technique is often called “color blocking” – a simple way of creating patterns that place complementary blocks of solid color next to each other to construct eye-catching designs. For even more pizzazz, different finishes or textures, such as glitter or beads can also be included. This is a style that is fun to wear and ranges from minimal and simple to highly elaborate. Now there’s no excuse not to get into shape!

Spring Cleaning at the Nail Salon

 It's that time of the year again...Spring Cleaning at the salon! The obvious is to go through all of your products and discard anything that is expired, reevaluate any areas that may have become cluttered and if you're like me, get out your label gun and go hog wild sorting, organizing and labeling like your life depends on it!

But what else can you do to spruce up your salon and make the most of your efforts? 
Here are some helpful hints:

Leftover lotions and Scrubs – Gather up any remaining scrubs or lotions you may have lying around the salon. As with nail polish, all of us have creams, lotions, and scrubs that either weren’t a client favorite or we never finished using. Combining them together can save you money as well as create a new signature product for your salon.

Tips

• Organize products into scents that complement each other. For example, pair fruit fragrances together instead of with almond or vanilla. 

• Mixing lotions with opposite consistencies can make the perfect pair.  Combining a “too-thick” cream and a “too-thin” lotion can ultimately produce the optimum consistency for your new “signature” cream.

• If your scrubs are partially dried out, you can add the last drops of cuticle oils to the mixture or even standard olive oil to improve consistency. 

Nail Polish – We all have those bottles of nail polish that are only about 1/4 full and will inevitably thicken beyond saving or dry up and will have to be discarded. Why not do what many of the celebrity Nail Techs do at Fashion Week and create your own custom colors by combining these leftovers? All you need are some empty nail polish bottles (and ball bearings for mixing) from your local beauty supply store (or you can easily order these on Amazon or eBay).

Tips

•  Have fun and be creative, but try to mix colors that will complement each other so you don't end up with an unattractive shade that no one will want to wear. As a rule, try not to mix more than 3 colors together.

• Purchase a small plastic painter's palette at your local art supply store so you can test your color mixes with small amounts of polish to make sure you like the results before you use up all of your resources.

• Keep records of what products you mixed together and in what proportions so you can recreate a color that becomes a hit with your clients.

• Make homemade labels for your bespoke color creations and give them fun, original names!

Pre-Summer Pedi Primer

With sandal season right around the corner, your clients will need to get their feet summer ready. In fact, many will expect nail techs to perform a miracle on feet that have been neglected all winter long. To make delivering this a miracle a bit easier, here are some tips to encourage “pre-summer” pedicures – a way  to ease the use and abuse during the closed-toe season.

·         Encourage clients to start the season with a professional spa pedicure early on, before the summer actually gets here. This way they can get a head start on smooth summer feet.

·         Promote Mother’s Day gift certificates for pedicures. This is always a much appreciated gift for Mom! 

·         Maintain your own professional pedicure to ensure your feet are always looking great. It’s free advertising! Nothing looks worse than chipped toenail polish or rough heels in summer sandals or flip-flops.

HELPFUL HINT: At the close of a service, provide tips to help clients keep pedicures looking their best. This will ultimately keep your work looking fabulous and also make your job easier when clients return for their next service. Here are a few:

·         Soak feet in a warm milk bath with a few drops of olive oil. The lactic acid in milk helps slough away dead skin while the oil will help moisturize.

·         Before showering, exfoliate feet dry with a foot file or buffer to remove hard, old calluses and rough spots. Once in the shower, exfoliate again by using a pumice stone along with a quality foot or body scrub.

·         Make a habit of moisturizing. Before bedtime, apply foot cream and sleep with moisture locking socks.

·         Use a good cuticle oil. (My favorite is Solar Oil by CND ). Massage into cuticles daily to nourish nails and surrounding skin. Applying cuticle oil is also a quick pick-me-up for polished toe nails. It refreshes the pedicure and actually keeps polish flexible so there is less chipping, making pedis last longer!    

Make It Metallic

The hottest trend on the streets, in magazines, and on the celebrities since Spring 2010 are super shiny metallic nails. Stars like Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Beyonce have been rocking glimmering metallic nails in both solids and prints over the past couple of years. This look can be accomplished a number of ways -- at home with metallic nail polish or full cover metallic nails sold in stores like Sally Beauty and Ricky's in a brand called Nail Bliss. In the salon, there are more options to acheive this look including nail lacquer, nail wraps such as Minx or Dashing Diva Design FX, and UV gels. Why not be bold and daring this Spring/Summer and shimmer with eye-catching metallic nails?

The Kiddie Nail Craze

Nail services for children have been rising in popularity for some time now, especially with the birthday party set of little princesses that want to get pampered and polished in style. However, child stars and the children of celebrities have recently taken nail services for kids to a whole new level with dramatic style and flair for girls and boys alike. Little Suri Cruise prefers simple polished manicures in pretty pastel shades, while teen pop sensation Willow Smith delights in imaginative 3-D embellished acrylic extensions. The new kid on the block that has everyone talking is Gwen Stefani’s fashion-forward son, Kingston Rossdale. Kingston’s multi-color manis and pedis were the talk of the town and a bold move for him when he began sporting them as a mere five-year-old. Like his fashionable Mom, Kingston has a flair for style and often sports designer duds and a highlighted faux-hawk.

Half & Half For A Whole New Look

Half and Half manis are picking up momentum because there are so many variations on the theme and the color combinations are truly endless. The simplest ways to achieve the look include the straightforward vertical and diagonal styles: the nail is segmented into two halves with color or designs. The more sophisticated half and half look involves taking the curve out of smile lines and using straight horizontal lines across the nail to separate colors and designs for a two-tone look that can be accented in numerous ways. Celebrity fans of this trend include Keri Hilson and Amerie.

Jungle Fever

The lovely ladies of stage and screen are simply wild for animal print nail art. Fun and sexy, this look has a veritable treasure trove of styles ranging from zebra and giraffe to a plethora of jungle cats. Celebrity enthusiasts of this look include Ke$ha, Fergie, Rihanna and Katy Perry, who often like to take it to the next level by mixing their animal print nail art with shimmering metallic polish and glitter. So go on...get your animal print nail art on!

Chipped Manicures

Back in 2008, the New York Times reported that chipped manicures were a hot new trend, but the look faded from popularity before it had a chance to go mainstream. Fast forward to 2010 and the chipped manicure once again made waves in Europe after being sported in saucy shades of red by the editors of Vogue and Elle and on this side of the pond by Tibi designer, Amy Smilovic. Ms. Smilovic went so far as to post her inspiration for the look on the Tibi Facebook page with pictures of a mangled mani she paid for at a nail salon and news quickly trickled down to several fashion blogs. It is unlikely that this look will ever truly catch on outside of the punk/goth scene, but stylish celebrities such as Taylor Momsen, Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus and Jessica Simpson have already been caught rocking this trend – though whether they are intentionally going for this look or are in serious need of a proper manicure is unclear. However, keep in mind -- a flawless manicure will NEVER go out of style!