Don't look, my meat is showing

I started rock climbing recently ...

uuuh ... minus the heels.  What the hell was she thinking?  I mean yes there are sexy shirtless men there, but still ...

Landa and Angie have been talking about their short nubs on twitter lately.  I thought mine were short, until I started climbing.

So, I went to town.  Every time I saw a nail file ... I filed.  Eventually I hit my meat. 

photo credit

See the meat sticking under my pointer.

The other hand did not fare much better.






My fingers tips are so sore.  I agree with Landa and Angie ... nubs can suck.

What's a girl to do? ... Quite whining ... tuck ... and go.

I tucked my sore skin under the nail and did a new mani!

The old mani was:
OPI - Do You Lilac It?
topped with Pure Ice - Oh Baby!

Tucked and ready for action with ...

China Glaze - Ruby Pumps

In the shade.

Reminds me of Color Club - Ruby Slippers

I think the China Glaze is slightly deeper red.

Do not adjust your screens ...

I went to a drag show recently because I heard they do splits.  I was not disappointed.  Can you imagine the meat tucking this move required?  If only she was wearing ruby pumps this post would come full circle.

Tampons for your nails

Typically hemorrhaging of any kind is sopped up with a pad or a tampon.  Take wrestling for instance.  I remember on the high school wrestling team, when some dude would get a bloody nose, they would stick a tampon up his nose and call it a day.

Did you know your nails can hemorrhage?  Does that mean we need a maxi pad wrapped around each finger?  Luckily, no.  Although I imagine my hands would look exactly the way they do when I'm taking off glitter. ... see Foil Method post and video.


On occasion my nails hemorrhage and so do yours.  Have you ever noticed the following? ...

Do you see the black splinter? Click to make it bigger.  That is the start of a splinter hemorrhage.

There are medical reasons that cause such things to happened, one of serious concern is fungus, but I am ignoring those at the moment.  More typically, my hemorrhaging splinters come from over zealous buffing or knocking my nail bed into something.

It's faint and spread out at first, but gets more needle like as it grows out.

I usually don't worry too much about it and just let it grow out. Eventually, it will come to the nail free edge.

Growing out the coagulated blood...




 Let me show you the under carriage. lol

Creepy right.  You really can pick it off like a splinter.  Don't pry at it though.

Notice the hyponychium under the nail.  You can learn more about that in this post. 

In short, it is just skin that grows up the nail free edge.  This skin prevents some of us from taking down their nails to true nubbiness.  You can, however, manipulate it carefully.  Again, visit this post for more information. 

Next time you pull out a tampon think of your nails ... and how they don't need one.

Do you want shorter nail beds?

Some people are probably thinking WTF?!  Why would you want that?!  Believe it or not I get about one hit a week from people searching the topic.  Normally people want the opposite of this and I showed how you could achieve longer nail beds in a previous post found here.

Actually I've had the tutorial pictures for this post prepared months back, but I am a bit hesitant to post because I thought I might get some back lash with the method.  Hopefully people will read the post in it's entirety.  Either way maybe a few words of caution first ...

BE GENTLE

More on how later in the post but first, why would someone want to do this?!  How about some pictures?

I suppose some people would actually want to shorten their nail beds while others just want to even out the smile line.  It's all about what you find aesthetically pleasing.

Not all nails are created equal. Sometimes they grow all weird at the free edge. What we are really talking about is skin connected to the nail called hyponychium.

This picture shows one nail that grows pretty even (in black) while the other (in red) is a bit wonky.

Lets look at the hyponychium from underneath the nail ...

Some people have this skin grow up the nail free edge while other people will not even notice it. 

It's this skin (in blue) that you can GENTLY manipulate to even out or shorten the nail bed.

Manipulating this skin is not a permanent fix.  It will grow back ...

I swear it grows back.  Here is one hand where I GENTLY pushed back the skin.

Here is the same hand months later.



















Finally the HOW TO:

There are a plethora of ways to go about doing this.
For example, you could put your hands in warm water for a couple of minutes or even better do this after a hot shower.  Doing this after a shower with cuticle oil is the way to go if it's your first time. 

Some tools.  It looks a bit scary, but that is why I stress pushing back the hyponychium SLOWLY and GENTLY.  This shouldn't hurt ... ever.

So, let's grease up first k?

Apply oil to the cuticle.

Apply oil underneath.

Wait 5 to 10 minutes for the oil to penetrate and soften the skin.


Use the tools GENTLY and SLOWLY to push back the hyponychium to create the smile line you find appealing.

After the skin is pushed back your nail will be clear underneath.  You can see this on two of the nails in the picture.  After the nail dries it will go to the normal free edge nail color. 












Is this safe and should you do this?!  That is up to you.  All I am saying here is that I've been there done that and survived, lol.  If you don't feel comfortable poking yourself underneath your nail then don't do it.  However, if you are doing it gently and slowly it should not hurt and it will grow back.