I have a theory that my back is breaking out because of the mineral and chemical build up in my shower head. I know it hasn't been cleaned for a year (because I just moved home after a year) so I thought this would be a more creative way of cleaning the shower head.
I gathered my tools: Some white vinegar, a ziploc baggie, and a hair tie.
I took my shower caddy off my shower head spout before I started. I then made sure the bag fit over the shower head, then I filled the bag with the vinegar and submerged the head. This took some skill, but I pulled the hair tie around the bag and spout and pulled one end through the other end. To keep it from coming apart, I used a small face wash sample. Some of the vinegar did spill out of the top, but as you can see the entire head is nicely submerged. Then I waited overnight!
When I woke up the next day, the bag of vinegar did not look any different :( I was hoping that the vinegar would have changed colors with all the minerals and chemicals it was breaking up, but unfortunately it was anti-climactic. There weren't any funny colors to the water that came out of the shower head either, so I have no idea if this worked.
Only time will tell!
As for my nails, I had noticed some discoloration from painting them so much and so I pulled up a post from pinterest on how to get whiter nails.
.........Result: It worked! I wish now I had done a before and after, but I was pleasantly surprised with this easy at home nail whitening solution. I had some stains on my nails from continuously painting them and this really lightened or eliminated the stains.
Now that my nails are growing out longer, I am starting to get stress cracks on the sides right where the quick meets the nail. Story of every natural-nail girl's life! So when my middle finger got a small crack, I tried to super glue it and paint my nails over the glue. That held for about a day, until the crack got a little bigger and started making me nervous. Back to Pinterest! This time I found how to fix my nail with a tea bag. I really got a laugh reading this blog and the directions were very clear with pictures.....not what you are going to get on my blog!
So I started by finding a tea bag that was never going to be used in my house, in this case it as blueberry green tea. I cut the top off the bag, emptied out the tea and then cut the bag near the seam so I could save what was going to be left over the the next time I needed it. I then headed to my manicure kit where I took out some nail scissors, gel super glue, buffing block, and of course my butter London Horse Power nail fertilizer.
Then I removed the gorgeous nail polish with super glue that I had just put on the day before, my butter London in Snog. To get both the polish and the 3 layers of super glue off, I let a cotton ball soaked in nail polish remover sit on my nail for a minute or two. When the polish and super glue sandwich did not come off the nail, I took some tweezers and gently picked it off... ta-da! I would have attempted to get a picture of the cracked nail, but it is less than a centimeter long and I wanted to keep it that way :)
So following the instructions some what, I put more super glue on the crack of my nail. In the blog instructions she covered he whole nail, but in my case I thought that was a bit excessive. I made sure that the super glue covered the crack and the area around the crack for a good seal. Then, I trimmed out a strip of the tea bag that went almost to my cuticle and past the length of my nail, again deviating from the directions of the blog. Since I was using gel super glue, which takes a bit longer to dry, my tea bag strip was easily placed over the still sticky glue and pressed into place. After in place, I trimmed off the end right at the end of the nail and added more super glue to saturate the tea bag strip. It makes the paper almost transparent which was really cool.
After letting the top coat of super glue dry, I took the buffing block and as directed I smoothed out the roughness of the glue.
It only took a few passes of the block to even it out and I did not want to try to get it perfect and sand down to the paper. I did skip the polishing step with the block because, again, I did not want to file it down to the paper or mess it up.As you can see here, the tea bag patch is barely noticeable. Then, after removing all the polish from all my nails *weep* I put 2 coats of my nail fertilizer on my nails and 3 coats on my repaired nail. This helped smooth out the nail more and you can not notice the patch unless my hand is 6 inches from your face. Since I don't like to be even 12 inches close to people, this works out tremendously!
I did take the more rough side of the buffing block and buffed off the super glue that had gotten on the side of my nail and after the clear polish had dried, I treated all my nails to some butter London Handbag Holiday cuticle oil. This stuff smells delicious! And it replenished the moisture that was lost to my fingers when I removed the polish and buffed them with the block.
This might have been the highlight of my day today :) Not only did I save myself from having my nail ripped down to the quick, but I learned a fast and relatively easy way to repair any stress cracks in the future! My mother laughed at me, but she will be taking that shit back when I am fixing her nails that are always breaking.
Yey Pinterest!
Jenn
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