Beneath all my manis....

I don't usually do my manicures in one sitting. I like to spread it out over a few days. I usually wear naked nails around for a day...or well, nearly naked. I do my manicures in steps. Because:

• I don't have enough spare time to sit for more than 20 minutes at a time and do my nails. 
• It gives my base-coats a chance to dry before I begin layering polish or art onto them.  
• It takes me a good long while to decide what polish I'll be using. 
• It gets me around a week out of each polish change. 

Here's my routine for day 1 of my manicures: 

1. I take all my polish off with acetone and felt. 
2. I apply a cuticle removing cream and push back my cuticles with my thumbnails (they work better than any pusher and they won't scratch your nails). 
3. I then wash my hands with an exfoliating hand scrub. I use a brush to help exfoliate my nail beds. 
4. I will then shape and cut my nails with baby nail clippers. They make teeny tiny sharp cuts and are great for "rounding" your nails. They don't work well at all for squared nails. 
5. I use a buffing block to simply buff the free edge of the nail that I just cut, so the edge is smooth. I do this just a few seconds per nail. I don't like doing any unnecessary filing. 
6. If needed, I use cuticle nippers to remove any hangnails torn cuticles. 
7. I then apply a nail treatment, usually one coat. 
8. I put 1-2 layers of a ridge-filler base coat to smooth and strengthen my nails. 
9. Finally, I add oil to my nail beds because it moisturizes the nail beds and dries my polish. 

And here's what my nearly nude nails look like. I am in love with Orly Ridge-filler. You can see little fibers in it! How cool! It's a huge bottle and it's cheap!

I am always changing products or steps in the routine. What's your routine? Do you follow any of these steps? What steps of your own do you add in?