One of my beautiful friends, who has a beauty supply hookup, recently gave me a set of Essie’s new Sleek Stick nail strips to try out. I’ve only used nail strips one other time and was eager to see if this experience would be more pleasant. Read along to find out!
I received the pretty design Over The Moon, which has slightly raised silver circles that go on the moons of your nails.
The base color is a pretty, taupey mauve. I love the festive bling, and think it’s neutral and classic enough to be worn for a nice occasion {I saved these to wear to my boyfriend’s annual company dinner}.
Onto application. There are several shapes and sizes included, and I had a pretty hard time finding something for each nail. Some worked better than others, but none were perfect. The main problem was the cuticle shape and the width of the decal {being to narrow/not covering the whole nail or too wide/overlapping to skin}.
Next: the hunt to find the closest shape to your nail, and try your best to apply it straight. I had to take them off and realign several times. It gets a tiny bit easier the more you do, but still hard as every shape is different.
Once you line up and firmly press down the strip to your nail, bend the excess over the nail tip to ensure the nail is fully covered.
Then you use the enclosed nail file to remove the extra part of the strip by filing straight down, perpendicular to the nail.
This part can be a bit jarring, but the end comes off fairly quickly. The straighter up and down you hold the file, the smoother the end of the strip/your nail will be.
Here is my final result. There were still some slight ridges around the ends and the cuticle areas were far from perfect. From a distance, though, they looked great! I’m a texture person and loved feeling the 3D bumps.
The edges were slightly jaggedy and uneven, but much better than my previous nail strips.
These definitely had the wow factor that I wanted for the evening I wore them.
These strips claim to be “UV Cured”, so I had high hopes for long wear. I was worried about the ends snagging on things {hair, clothes, etc.} and peeling off, but thankfully that never happened! The longevity, however, was disappointing. These below pictures were after one day of wear {I didn’t even do dishes!}.
Though they didn’t peel, they wore off completely at the tips. You can see in the photo above how poorly the thumb fit, too.
I took them off the next day because of the unsightly tips. I just peeled them off, which as I recall {don’t quote me!} is what the instructions said to do. Sadly, they were pretty destructive to my nails. Lots of peeling.
To summarize, I enjoyed the nail strips for the small time they lasted. The design {color + decoration} was great, but the difficulty in application and quick wear mean I will not be purchasing these in the future. I’m thankful to my friend for gifting me these to try {I would have been really disappointed if I paid $10 for these}. Maybe the rest of you will have better luck!
