Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips: Helping Ladies LIke Me Look Grown-Up and Put Together

I am terrible at many things. Like Calculus (only subject I ever almost failed. If I had been better at it I might be splitting atoms right now instead of talking about Journey songs). Pushups. Basketball. Also chess, but that's because it's impossible for me to go about anything in a roundabout way.

I am also terrible at painting my fingernails. Terrible with both hands! I always end up looking like I used a paint roller to do it while I was having some kind of seizure. So I always leave them bare. But I read so many fashion magazines that I feel like I'm not completely put together. Like, outfit-minus-one. It's the one thing I'm bad at that I have a little bit of a complex about (well, the Calculus too, but only sometimes). Are grown-up put-together ladies looking at my fingers and saying, "oh the outfit looked so good but...missed it by an inch"?

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Strips let me live like a grown-up.


These are the things that look like stickers. They should be harder to manage, right? They're not tricky at all. Practically idiot-proof: even I can make them look great.

Image via SallyHansen.com

For starters, every thing you need comes in the box: cuticle stick, three-way nail file/buffer, 16 strips. And easy-to follow instructions: they walk you through all the prep work so that the strip will stick correctly.

The strips come in different sizes, so you pick the one that fits your nail the best. They're sealed in two packs of eight strips each, so there are plenty of sizes to choose from. Then all you do is peel off the backing, put it on your fingernail, stretch it out a little and press it down, and file off the excess.

Plus there's no dry time so you don't have to worry about smudging them. It's so fast and easy I did a touch-up at the last minute on my way in to work in the morning.

Plus, here are some tricks I've figured out:

• If you've got shorter nails, you'll be tearing off enough "excess" from each nail to be able to use it to do another nail, and get two out of each strip. Which gives you more than enough to do all ten fingers in one pack, so you'll split a $10 box into two uses.
• If you run out of the smaller ones, use a bigger one and use the sharp edge of the cuticle stick to take off the excess around the edges.
• They don't chip for days, but when they do you can sometimes fill in the chip with regular nail polish. I made the butterfly pattern last longer by filling gaps in with white polish.

The downside is, if you don't get them pressed down reallllly well at the base, there's a chance you could be running your fingers through your hair and get a hair stuck under the nail strip and shivers down your SPINE. Get them securely sealed down! Also, since the strips are made with polish, once you expose them to the air you have to use them or throw them out, so you can't open the second 8-pack and keep going to it for re-dos. Which, $10 is less than a manicure, but more than my previous $0 fingernail polish budget, so. But, they come off easily enough with polish, so it's not like it's that difficult to change up the look.

And every single day I had them on, at least one person grabbed my hand wanting a closer look. They are foolproof and amazing. And they come in regular nail polish shades as well as crazy patterns, so I can use them for normal looks and wild ones, and look like an adult. Finally!



Andrea is not paid to endorse any of the products in this post.