Filing Nails into Shapes

Video Transcript

"There are different shapes that you can file the nail in. To demonstrate this, I'm going to use nail tips. The first shape we have is just your square. You're going to take your nail file, and for a square nail, you're just going to hold it. Then file flat against the nail. And you don't want any edge on the side. You're going to bring the edges straight out, straight down. If the person wants square, but doesn't want to scratch them self, you just want to take the nail file out underneath the nail, and just kind of go underneath it a little as such. When a person wants an oval nail file, you're going to slightly taper the front. I do this with clippers. You can do it with the nail file itself, though. You're just going to want to make the top a little pointy. Not too pointy, though. Because as I mentioned on Joyce's nails, you don't want to stab anyone, or scratch them with their own nail. So you don't want it to be too pointy. But you do want it to slightly taper more at the top than you do at the base of their nail. For a round nail, you're actually going to want to make it more round. You don't want there to be a tapered tip really at all. Again, you're just going to take the corners off with the clippers or the file, and you're actually just going to start at the tip, and kind of flatten the tip slightly and just round it out, all the way on the sides. Again you're going to want to go underneath any shape that you have just to make sure that the back of their nail is not going to scratch them. And then the last shape that we have is called squoval. That's a combination of square and oval. For the most part the tip is going to be flat, like square but then the edges are going to be rounded slightly, so that they're not, so that they don't have sharp corners. Again you're just going to hold the nail flat, against the file. Make the tip of it flat and then just kind of slightly round the edges so that the person is not scratching themselves. And the tips aren't so sharp. They're more rounded so that in your everyday tasks you don't tend to break them as often because there's not a protruding tip there. Again go underneath and make sure that it's not going to scratch you. This is the square nail. As you see it's got the flat edge. And you've just slightly made it, the corners, so they're not going to scratch you. The oval is more tapered at the end. The round is just more of a round nail. The squoval is square on the tip, like the square nail, but then you round the edges, like you would the oval nail. The tips that I used here are the white French manicure tips. We also have just the clear natural tips for anyone that wants natural nails that really doesn't have any nails of their own. And that is how you make the different nail shapes. "