Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips

I first found out about Sally Hansen’s Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips after seeing their ads in some of my favorite magazines.  I thought it was a really cool concept: Real nail polish strips that you can easily peel and apply to your finger nails, with no dry time, and that last for up to 10 days. As I’ve mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I love to paint my nails, but I’m absolutely dreadful at doing a pristine manicure as I don’t really have the patience to let them fully dry. So I was rather excited to try out this new product. I went to a bunch of local drugstores and they were all sold out of the patterned strips. The nail strips come in a variety of colors and designs and the only ones left on the shelves were the solid colors. At around $10 a box for 16 strips, I was only interested in buying one of their funky patterned designs as I could easily do my own nails with a solid color. After a few weeks of looking ( if they were sold out at various locations, I was optimistic they were worth the wait) I finally found a drugstore that had my desired pattern -(350 MISBEHAVED)- a fishnet stocking type design that would have required airbrushing at the salon. Here are the results:   

My MISBEHAVED Nail Polish

 Ok, I can only imagine the perplexed looks you must be giving right about now.  To be fair this picture was taken after 2 days of having applied them and after a fun filled weekend in Atlantic City.  To be even more fair, due to my recent hectic schedule, the only time I had to actually apply them was on the car ride down to Atlantic City (yikes! I know!).   If you’ve ever tried painting your nails in a moving car…applying nail strips is just as hard.  The actual process of applying the nail strips (if I were in a stationary room of course) is really not that difficult.  After making sure you have clean nails and have pushed back the cuticles and nail bed, you peel the strips off their backing and apply from the bottom of the nail bed straight to the end of the nail.  Once the strip is firmly secured and you have applied pressure to ensure that it is firmly sticking to the nail, you simply file off the excess.  Pretty easy.  The pattern was pretty stellar and added an extra “funk-i-fied” edge to my outfit.  I did notice peeling after a few hours and I don’t know if that was due to the way I applied them, or if they just have the tendency to peel.  I’m willing to try these out again considering that I didn’t really apply them in the most favorable conditions.   I’m looking into their awesome denim pattern for my second attempt.  However, considering that you can get a basic manicure for $8 at some nail salons in the city, $10 for a box of 16 strips seems a little pricey.  I definitely recommend trying them, especially if you want to mix things up and add a little bit of ”fun” to your typical nail routine.  I can’t say that you’ll be blown away by the results, but it’s a fun beauty experiment.   I’ll keep you posted on the results of  my second attempt. xo