Suzanne R said:
I use cuticle eraser and it works great to soften the cuticles then just a little work with a cuticle pusher.
I read this somewhere else and tried it on my neice who can hardly keep polish on for more the 5 hours. Before polishing lightly apply solor oil to the nails and wipe excess off with a lint free pad, apply base coat and polish, top coat. Sometimes the nails are too dry to keep the polish on.
Thats a new one for me - that sometimes nails are too dry to keep polish on. I'm surprised that using solar oil (even though you wipe excess off) does not hinder the application of the enamel! But if it works then that sounds great. I find that using scrubfresh dries my nails out too much and I've noticed that it contains acetone so its a definate no no for dry, flaky, problem nails I think. I will try really massaging in the cuticle eraser and solar oil just wiping off excess before putting enamel on to see if it works for me.
I'm glad that using the eraser and oil is enough without having to soak the nails as I have found with even my own nails that because they absorb the water and then dry out and go flaky that the enamel does not stay on very well. I didn't want to use the heated mitts in my basic manicure so that I can differentiate between a basic and luxury. Thats why I wanted to know how you could soften the cuticles without using them.
Thanks for your help guys. very useful.
By the way

is there anyway that you can prevent the nails from absorbing water? I find my nails go translucent with a tiny bit of white left at the very tips! It looks awful! Apart from the obvious like don't go near water which is a bit difficult with showers and stuff I'm curious if there is something you can do to prevent it
Tamm