Recent NOTD: China Glaze Beyond Baroque Nail Polish Appliques

Much as I've grown to love the Sally Hansen Salon Effects strips, I'd never tried China Glaze's take on the idea, their Real Nail Polish Appliqués, until recently. The impetus to finally give them a go was seeing some on the clearance rack at Sally Beauty; I'm not sure if Sally is not going to carry them anymore at all or if these particular designs were just discontinued. I chose the Beyond Baroque, which has elaborate white scrollwork on a purple-leaning royal blue background.



The package has one sealed packet with 16 nail strips (attached side by side in groups of eight, similar to the Sally Hansen Pedicure Effects, though these strips are rounded at both ends), a nail file/buffer, a small orangewood stick, and instructions.



Compared to the Sally Hansen Salon Effects (for fingers, at least; it's been so long since I used the toe ones I don't remember them that well), the China Glaze strips were thicker and shinier. This made them easier to reposition if needed but harder to remove excess strip around the sides of my nails when the fit wasn't quite right. It was also harder to file them off cleanly at the end of my nails. You can see what looks like tipwear in the photos above and immediately below, but these were taken minutes after I'd applied them.



Here's what they looked like the morning of day six; I didn't use topcoat on them even though the instructions recommended it, since they were plenty shiny on their own and I usually use strips when I don't want to bother Mr. K with fumes:



And here's the evening of day six; I'd touched up the worst spots with a creme polish that matched the base color in order to get a bit more wear of out them.



Because all the strips are packaged together, I couldn't save half of them to do a mani at another time, so I also did my toes with them, and they strips are still on there two weeks later, looking not really any worse for wear.

I bought a few other designs of these China Glaze strips and will definitely use them the next time I'm in the mood for that sort of thing, but only if I'm also ready to do a pedicure, since I don't want to have to just throw out half the strips (the leftovers will dry out after a short while).