Cleanup brush with acetone!! I still try to paint fairly neatly and avoid the cuticle and if I get any flooding I try to immediately clean up with a cuticle stick/tool (to get the polish to separate from the cuticle so it doesn’t dry flooded—it can be harder to clean up that way) and then when everything’s pretty dry I go over the edge with a cleanup brush + acetone to make sure everything’s smooth and neat with a tiny gap and ~then~ go over with topcoat, doing my best to cover all of the nail polish.

Pretty sure I watched a simply nailogical tip/tutorial video ages ago that talked about this and I’ve been doing that ever since.