Monday, February 16, 2009

Orly: Smudge Fixer

Have you ever smudged a fresh mani? No? Lucky you - your mortgage is probably paid off, tires never need a rotation and your toilet paper gives birth to a new roll every time you run out. Good for you. As for me - I'm a queen of smudging. Queen of smudging no more, for I've discovered a great product: Smudge Fixer.

OK, today I was turning off a cell phone for a class and chipped my perfect Malaga Wine mani.
School=trouble.




To repair a chip like this one, I usually apply a dot of polish right on the chip, let it set for a bit; then apply a thin coat all over a nail and finish with a fresh top coat. If everything goes smoothly. Do you remember Cinderella's Stepmother? "I said "If".



Usually this happens because I'm a klutz. Today I hit my nail solely for educational purposes.

Good news: even this disaster of a chip is reparable. Get a big blob of Smudge Fixer and drop it on the nail - where you have the thickest layer, not on a place where you have a thinner layer or no polish left. There:
Then start smoothing the bulge out, rewetting the brush as needed. What you are trying to do is to make all layers even. Work in progress:

Gently push the wrinkle with a dripping wet brush towards the bald spot, until you have almost no wrinkle left. Then liberally apply Smudge Fixer on the whole nail (as if you are painting it) to level all layers out completely.

Wait a couple of minutes; apply a new coat of polish; finish with your top coat of choice.
Voila!


Honestly, with such a huge chip I'd rather remove the polish completely and redo this nail - I used Smudge Fixer just for the sake of this tutorial. Smaller chips will take almost no time and no effort to repair. Be careful: color will transfer to the brush and into the Smudge Fixer bottle, unless you wipe off/rinse your brush before dipping it again into the bottle.

Smudge Fixer is available retail (Sally's Beauty Supplies, Ulta and CVS, to name a few) and via major etailers.