Get the Skills to Be a Nail Technology Professional
Of all the areas of beauty, manicures are probably the most fun and immediate. From the popularity of nail art to new nail polish recipes, aspiring manicurists and nail technicians have more tools than ever to express their creativity. But how to start?
Learn Your State Requirements
While the road to becoming a nail technician is shorter than most of the cosmetology fields, the number of hours you need to put in before licensure varies from state to state. You’ll want to find the website for your state (or the state you plan on working in) in order to find out how many hours of training you’d need to complete. For example, in Massachusetts you need 100 hours, whereas in California you need 400 hours.
Manicurists can improve their skills in the following ways:
- Attend professional training courses: Sign up for professional nail training courses to learn new techniques and skills and constantly improve your professional skills.
- Keep up with industry trends: Keep abreast of new trends, products and technologies in the nail industry so that you can keep your knowledge and skills up to date.
- Practice more: Do more exercises, constantly try new designs and skills, and improve their operational proficiency.
- Watch and learn: Ask other excellent manicurists, watch them in action, and learn their experience and skills.
- Participate in competitions and activities: Actively participate in nail art competitions and related activities to communicate with other manicurists, broaden their horizons and improve their skill level.
- Self-learning: Using Internet resources, books and other ways, self-study nail art related knowledge and skills, and constantly improve their overall quality.
- Expand the scope of business: learn other skills related to nail art, such as eyelashes, tattoos, etc., to improve their competitiveness and increase sources of income.
- Focus on customer service: improve their communication skills and service awareness, pay attention to customer needs, provide satisfactory service, so as to obtain customer recognition and word-of-mouth.
- Keep innovating: Keep trying new designs, color combinations and techniques to improve your ability to innovate and make your work more attractive.
- Build a personal brand: Show your work and skills through social media, personal blogs and other ways to improve your visibility and lay the foundation for your career development.
Essential skills for a manicurist
- Manicures
- Pedicures
- Acrylic Nail
- Gel Nails
- Fiberglass
- Hand & Arm Massage and More!
Finding First Job
Of course, this is easier said than done, but there are some strategies that can improve your odds of landing a job after passing the manicurist exam. You can research nail salons in your area that might be hiring, or get friendly with manicurists at your favorite places and ask them how they got started. It's important to network and let people know that you're qualified and interested in finding a job. You may also want to consider taking a more liberal path or collaborating with other beauty professionals at events like weddings or parties.
Nail art basics
- Nail basics: The so-called nail art, as the name suggests, is the work on the nail, then it is necessary for us to first have a full understanding of the nail, what is the nail, what are the parts of the nail? What are healthy nails and what are unhealthy nails? What are the manifestations of nail lesions and what changes do they reflect in the body? Things like that should be recognized.
- Nail art tool knowledge: Nail art is not a simple application of nails, a bottle of nail polish, a brush can be, qualified manicurists should also master more nail art skills and tools.
- Basic knowledge of nail color systems: Nail art is art, art is colorful, so manicurists should also have some understanding of color, to understand the basic knowledge of color, color system, etc., to be able to distinguish colors at a glance, and know the different characteristics of each color, with the season, holiday atmosphere, etc.
So after we understand basic knowledge, we should do a good job of hand armor and nail art
- We should take oral vitamin supplements along with our nails. In this process, we need nutritional oils, moisturizers, softeners and strengthening oils. Nutritional oils are mainly used to maintain the shine and elasticity of the nail surface. Then apply moisturizer to our extra bed to reduce the damage our nail products do to our nails. Keratin softeners soften the keratin better when cleaning dead skin. Fortified oils are the equivalent of applying a layer of armor to your nails. At the same time, if the nails change too quickly, they will not give the nails enough rest time, so if you want to do a good job of nails, healthy nails are the foundation. If nail polish covers the nail bed for a long time, it will cause the nail bed to breathe abnormally. In addition, our manicure process and nail removal process are polished and cleaned, so that the surface of the nail will be thinner.
- How often do you remove your nails? Removing your nails usually takes more than three weeks, preferably no more than a month. Because nails are healthy, they have a growth cycle. If you don't understand it for a long time, there will be a gap at the root of the nail and it will warp. If water or oil stains are raised, it is easy to grow mold in the gap for a long time. Some people's nails turn blue, or some nails turn green. At the same time, in order to avoid this phenomenon, we can also use half patches instead of full patches.
- The correct way to clean the surface: After cutting and polishing the nail surface, sweep away the excess dust with a dust brush, and then clean the nail surface with 75 degree wine. When wiping, pay attention to the position of the back edge and nail groove. Wipe again with cleaning solution. Only if the nail surface is completely cleaned in place, it is not prone to warping problems.
- The problem of wrapping the nail surface: If the customer has a bump in the middle of the nail, it means that the nail polish has not been fully cured. The first reason for incomplete curing is that there is not enough time to light the lamp, and the other reason is the problem of the phototherapy machine. All electrical equipment has a life span and we have to replace it regularly.