Does The Teabag Trick Actually Work For Broken Nails

tea bag nail repair

We live for the weekends, and what better time than Sunday to relax, rejuvenate and get your beauty game on point? These are the best easy beauty hacks to aid you wait—and feel—your best in the week to come.

How many times has this happened to you: you spend weeks nurturing your nails until they're long, strong and looking totally amazing. Then one solar day you lot have a fight with a cabinet door, and BAM, one of your nails cracks. It's disheartening, isn't it? You reluctantly file them all down to match the ruined one and feel really sad about your life.

Just look! What if nosotros told you lot that there'southward a fashion to avoid filing your magnificent talons downwardly to nubs every time you break a nail? Considering in that location is.Here'southward how to repair a broken nail using a tea handbag. Yes, we're serious.

It's so elementary, and yet it works so well: tea numberless are fabricated of sparse, fibrous paper. When this paper is stuck to nails, information technology covers upwardly and strengthens cracks and breaks without adding bulk. Like it's salon-just cousin, the silk wrap, tea bag wraps are a temporary only durable way to repair even the weakest or badly cleaved nails.

Here'south what y'all will need for this vivid nail-repair hack…

– A paper (not cloth) tea bag. For some reason, we detect that Tazo tea bags piece of work the best for nail repair.
– A really skillful base coat. We dear NailKale Superfood Base Coat ($15, Sephora).
– Scissors.
– A fine-grit nail file. We love Deborah Lippmann'due south 4-style Polish Operator file ($12, Sephora).
– Your boom colour of choice.
– A really amazing pinnacle coat. Sally Hansen Insta-Dri ($four.39, drugstore.com) is the best for this, as it melds all your layers of polish into a single super-shiny, super-hard varnish.

Begin by taking all the smooth off your broken blast and ensuring that all cuticle oil or hand lotion is removed. Cut the superlative off the tea handbag and empty out the leaves, then cut a rectangle out of the tea handbag that's virtually the length and width of your fingernail. Some people tell you to encompass the entire nail; that'south a hassle you don't need. You're only going to desire it to be big plenty to cover your boom about halfway downwards from the tip.

Use your base of operations coat and wait for it to dry to a tacky cease. Then prevarication the tea handbag rectangle over the tiptop, ensuring that the break is fully covered, and smooth it down (either with your fingers or using an orangish stick) so that there are no bubbles in the tea pocketbook paper. Just to echo: it needs to cover about one-half of your nail, not the whole thing. This is to make sure the damaged expanse is left extra strong.

tea bag nail repair

Apply the tea bag to the face up of the nail, making sure the crevice is completely covered, and shine information technology down so that information technology adheres to the base of operations coat.

Once the smooth is dry, apply another layer of base glaze and scout the tea handbag plow translucent. Once that is totally dry, use your nail file to file abroad any tea pocketbook that's hanging over your smash. File in i management merely, and spotter the paper come right abroad.

tea bag nail repair

File away the overhanging tea bag from your nail.

Using the finest side of your nail file, file the face of your smash; you're now smoothing and blending the tea handbag into the nail, so that you tin't see any lines where the paper stops. Vitrify it to stop and make sure that everything is totally polish, so apply another layer of base of operations coat.

Hither is what it looks like when you're finished repairing the nail with the tea bag.

tea bag nail repair

The eye fingernail has been repaired with the tea bag—but you can hardly tell.

If you're looking at this and going "Hmm, this already looks pretty good," you're right, it does await pretty natural. Only we're about to make it look fifty-fifty better by painting over it!

Take your polish of choice and paint your nails exactly the fashion you normally would. Nosotros're using Zoya Nail Lacquer in Alegra ($ix, zoya.com), a brilliant fuchsia with gold microglitter that is perfect for summer. When you're washed and the shine is dry, utilise your top coat and voila! Your smash is repaired and stronger than ever, and you absolutely cannot tell the departure between your regular nails and the 1 y'all stock-still. This is why tea pocketbook wraps are the actual greatest matter.

tea bag nail repair

Ta-dah! Can you spot the repaired nail? (Information technology'south the third from the left.)

Some other reason they're the greatest: the tea handbag comes off with nail shine remover. There's no mucilage residue that needs scraping off or chemicals that require hardcore soaking. Just rub the tea pocketbook wrapped nail with a cotton pad dipped in ordinary remover, and it comes abroad beautifully.

You tin can as well use these to repair basically whatever smash issue. If your nails' tips are weak and need extra strengthening, these are perfect. If you accept a serious cleft, they'll help keep y'all in check until it grows out. And we can even ostend that if the tip of your nail breaks clean off, yous tin can use this exact technique to reattach information technology. The power of tea purse wraps are that potent.

And at present go forth with your wonderful nails and run this new week!

All photos by Tiffany Hagler-Geard.

More: Your Guide to Pace-Past-Pace Total Body Exfoliation.