I always look at my hands to become lucid... and it works for me. I think it is also the best auto-suggestion one can make: "I look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming" It isn't abstract as "I have a lucid dream". Until you become very profficient in lucid dreaming it is quite an unusual thing to have a LD - so maybe your subconsciousnes doesn't know what you are actually asking it to do.

On the other "hand" (pun intended) I think that my subconsciousness is helping me out to get LD's, I think that I already might suspect that I'm dreaming before I look at my hands and so makes my hands look weird. I always have to look at my hands to be totally convinced that I'm dreaming - so it could be a case of dreamcontrol from my side. (like you have to strongly believe to make things happen in dreams - eg. I am able to go through that wall)