How to prevent nail polish from 'bubbling'

---

You’re sitting home on a Thursday night and you decide to paint your nails while watching re-runs of The Office. You choose your polish, a nice mint green, and shake the bottle. You then start applying as soon as the opening credits begin. By the time the episode ends, you’ve finished painting your 2-3 coats and you can finally sit, relax and fan your hands dry. But wait a second. What is that?, you say to yourself. You notice by the time 30 Rock has ended that your nails are littered with air bubbles!
If you’re like me, this happens all the time. It is one of the most frustrating things to cope with when painting your nails. It is also one of the hardest things to figure out how to prevent. So I compiled a list of things to try to help your at home-manicure look (almost) as spotless as the salon version. Here is a short list of things to can try to help prohibit your nail polish from bubbling.
Roll the polish between the palms of your hands instead of shaking it like a bottle of hair mousse. While I almost exclusively use this technique, I’ve never really seen any improvement in my nail-drying, but others assure that this works. Rolling it in between your palms is supposed to decrease the likelyhood of air bubbles from forming inside your polish bottle.
Keep your hands cold Before applying, try dunking your hands in a bowl of ice water for a few minutes (it is said that heat will expand the nail polish’s molecules and opens them to air). Just be sure to dry your hands completely and wait a few minutes for any moisture on your nail bed to evaporate before applying.
Thinner, fewer strokes Try to get as much polish on the brush to apply three, thin strokes on your nail. Applying the thinnest layers possible allows the gases in your polish to escape more easily. If not, the gases will form bubbles as each coat dries. Also, the more coats you apply, the more air you put into your polish.
Let it dry completely Nail polish needs do dry completely before applying additional coats. Also, keep in mind that the increased pigments in darker nail polish colors will take longer to dry, so allow more time for your black or blood red colors. If you happen to use a quick-dry spray (like OPI Rapid Dry Spray), do not hold the spray less than about a foot away from your hands.
If you’re still not having any luck, try these extra tips:

• Keep your nail polish cold; store them in the refrigerator. This will also keep them from going bad faster.
• Look into preparing your nails like they do at the nail salon by priming your nails. Do this  by removing the oils from your nail bed by swiping some nail polish remover onto your nails.
• Apply a base coat. A calcium gel base coat is best. The calcium gel will strengthen and help nails to grow faster. A top coat will also help to make the polish adhere to your nails better.
• Keep hands out of the heat or a draft. Air bubbles come from, well, air and hot temperatures and any blowing air can cause bubbles to form on your nails.
• Look into a different nail polish brand. I’ve heard a lot of good things about OPI and Essie nail polish and my personal favorites, Revlon and Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Fast Dry as well as Complete Salon Manicure.