My Holiday Nails - Sally Hanson Nail Strips

I use the holidays as an excuse to have über snazzy nails. So when my mother asks me why my nails are always done (my parents have an odd aversion to nail varnish et al.) I justify it by saying, “oh mum, lighten up, it’s the holidays… a special occasion you know? And then she gets off my case.

For the past week I’ve been rocking these Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail polish strips in “Ama-zen”. Hopefully the people who created these names got good year-end bonuses.

The print of the nail strips is a black flower design over a pretty gold base. The set came with a cuticle stick, a mini file and buffer, and 16 nail strips so you can choose which strips fit your nails best.

Nail strips have often have this reputation for making bold claims about their ease of use, and ESPECIALLY about their wear time. So naturally I wanted to see if these particular strips lived up their claims. Sally Hanson (or their marketing group, whatever) claim that these have no dry time (no shit they’re stickers) and that they last a whopping 10 days. I don’t know about you, but on average, my nail polish lasts at most one week before seeing its demise.

Because I’ve used nail strips before, I knew how to apply them, but Sally Hanson added diagramed instructions on the side of the box for convenience:

Here are some application tips:

-You need to find the strip that best fits your nail (try not to choose one that will overlap onto your skin or cuticle as I find that this will decrease its longevity). Sometimes I had to trim the sides and bottom so they would fit perfectly to my nail.

-The sticker is sandwiched between two pieces of plastic protectors (like those temporary tattoos we used to have as kids), so you would take the top layer off, then the bottom, and then align the strip so that it just meets your cuticle.  

- When sticking them on your nails, always smooth them from your cuticle upwards, as the bubbles tend to develop near the top

-These strips were exceptionally thin, so once they’re on your nail, don’t even bother peeling them off to readjust, they’ll just rip off (it happened to me)

-And finally, and probably most importantly, DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT FILE THE STRIPS FROM SIDE TO SIDE as the diagram suggests. I cannot stress this enough. Not only will filing them side to side cause unnecessary ripping, but it also creates a rough edge to the nail… and who likes that? Instead, after smoothing the strip at the tip of your nail, bend it over the edge of the nail, and file DOWNWARDS in small strokes. Trust me, it makes a smoother, and neater edge.

As an added step, because I go OCD crazy when I don’t have some sort of topcoat, I just tipped off the strips with my Essie Good to go Topcoat, just so the edges are even smoother. And voila, here is the finished work:

I liked these strips a lot, for the sole reason that they were so thin, that it didn’t look like you stuck a sticker on your nail (cough cough Maybelline). These started chipping at around day 4, and only on my index and middle fingers. By the 10^th day, I had some minor tip wear on most of my fingers. I’d say that these results show a win for these strips, as they were a breeze to apply and lasted pretty nicely as well.  Bravo Sally Hansen!!

P.s. You know how people have knobby knees? It just dawned on me that I have knobby finger joints. So awkward.