We know that I have struggled with flooding my cuticles.

So I looked for help. To the internet!

I’ve seen this image about 80,000 times.

It shows how Michèle of Lacquerized applies her polish. I think she has a great blog and this post is hugely popular, but her method doesn’t work for me. You’re saying I should plop down a bead of polish and smoosh it around? That is exactly the best way for me to accidentally flood my cuticles.

Cleaning up your flooded cuticles with a brush and acetone works, but I’m impatient. I’d rather just not make a mess in the first place!

And then I watched this video (skip to 1:25):

And for some reason, it just clicked. So the key to not flooding your cuticles is simply not putting polish on them? Why didn’t anyone say so?!

Much better! What I learned from the video is to dab the polish in an arc, following the shape of your cuticle but not touching it. This creates a kind of barrier edge, and then you can fill in the rest with long strokes of polish. It’s sort of like when you use a crayon to trace the boundaries of an image and then fill it in. The edge also really helps with lining up your second coat so that the two layers are even.

This is Wet ‘n’ Wild’s I Need a Refresh-Mint. Orly Bonder base coat, Poshe topcoat. Can I once again rave about how much I think Wet ‘n’ Wild is stepping up their game? I love the wide, curved brush, and the colors are really getting good. Not only is I Need a Refresh-Mint gorgeous and a cheaper, easily accessible dupe of China Glaze’s For Audrey, you could get by with one coat if you wanted to.

So there you have it. To avoid flooding your cuticles, don’t put polish in them. Done.