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Turns Out We’ve Been Filing Our Nails Completely Wrong for Years

olive and june studio box

Thanks to messy applications, misshaped nails and scraggly cuticles, most of us only trust a nail technician with our manis. But that was then, and this is the age of Olive & June, the L.A.-based salon that is changing the way we paint our digits, for good. See, Olive & June's goal is to give us all the confidence to create a salon-worthy look from the comfort of our very own home…in front of Netflix…while simultaneously FaceTiming our mom. To prove it, Olive & June's founder, Sarah Tuttle, visited the PureWow office to host a mani masterclass where she showed us the ropes firsthand (pun very much intended).

Tuttle explained that with the right tools and a few pro tips, we could all paint our nails just as well as our go-to manicurist. (And maybe even better, because we can fix our mistakes without sheepishly asking for a repaint.) So she set us all up with a Studio Box (aka every item needed to create a flawless mani) and got right into teaching mode.

The mani guru mentioned that in order to decrease the number of chips, we should prep our nails in a specific way. First, use clippers to cut nails to the desired length before filing. "Always cut nails 90 percent and file 10 percent for less jagged edges and splitting," she said, dubbing it the 90-10 rule. And then, Tuttle explained,  if you have polish on already, you should cut and file your nails before removing your old polish so you can create your desired shape more easily. This helps to obscure the whites of your nails, which actually aren't an ideal shaping guide, because they're not uniform. Um, how have we been doing our nails (wrong) for years without knowing this? Mind. Blown.

Sarah was also sure to let us in on another key secret: Once your nails are filed and buffed into your desired shape, remove your polish and then do not touch your nails, or you risk reintroducing the oils you just painstakingly removed, back onto the surface. The lingering presence of oils is what prevents polish from adhering correctly. 

At the end of our masterclass, all 12 PureWow editors were shocked at how professional our manis looked. And thanks to Olive & June's non-streaky, super easy-to-use nail polish and groundbreaking Poppy attachment (if you don't have one yet, it's *necessary*), our manis are still going strong a full week later.

This Just Might Be the Best Nail Polish We’ve Ever Tried



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Brianna Lapolla formerly held the role of Senior Commerce Editor at PureWow covering all things shopping across beauty, fashion, and lifestyle. Now, she's putting her 12 years of...