Hi,
Can anyone give me some advise on a new client that has lots of cuticle on her bitten nails. I pushed it back using cuticle away but am hesitant to clip all but the loose bits as I am bit nervous of hurting her. She has rebooked for another Shellac manicure in a fortnight and I would like to be more confident on how to deal with it.
Thanks
You are right to be cautious with nippers, but nail biters do tend to have a lot of non living tissue on the nail plate that looks messy, gets in the way of a nice tidy applications and if we loosen it from the nail plate but don't fully remove it we leave them with loads to pick and bite, delaying their recovery from the addiction of finger biting.
Without seeing the nails in question it's hard to advice exactly what to do but this is my usual way of approaching cuticle work on a bad nail/skin biter;
- Apply a good dose of CND Cuticle Away, use an implement to spread it across the entire nail plate and give it a little longer than usual to do it's job.
- Dab excess Cuticle Away off with a dry pad from the first nail and proceed to lift and loosing the softened non-living cuticle tissue from the nail plate with a 'chisel' shaped metal implement. Then use a probe or curette to get closer into the side walls and along the eponychium. There will be tons of cuticle skin hanging on down at the eponychium, don't nip it yet.
- Do the same with each nail in turn, one at a time.
- Spray with water and give each nail a good rub with a cloth towel, this will deactivate and rinse away the cuticle away, but the rubbing will also be exfoliating off a good bit of that non-living skin that's hanging around at the eponychium, giving you much less to potentially nip - good news!
- Now that the nail are clean and dry it's much easier to see exactly what you need to nip. Take your time and just nip, don't tug at loose 'flappy' bits of non-living skin.
Give yourself a little extra time in the appointment for this. Take your time, you will get more confident every time you do it.
Good luck!