Recent NOTD: A Tale of Two Stickers

I'm combining two of my recent manicures/wear tests into this one blog post because they were both steps in my continuing effort to try different brands of nail strips. Both of the ones I'll be talking about today are the sticker variety (as opposed to ones made with nail polish): L'Oreal Nail Lingerie and Revlon Nail Art 3D Jewel Appliques.

Let's start with the L'Oreal, as I wore those first. I chose the Ladies in Waiting design from the limited edition Versailles Romance collection from this past spring (though the same designs also were in the more recent Made for Me Pinks display). This has silver swirls on a clear background.



The package contains a sheet with 18 stickers in a range of sizes. Unlike other brands I've used, no file or cuticle stick was included—which is fine, because I have plenty of those already, and the directions only call for a file anyway.



I applied these over a week old mani I'd done with Sally Hansen Hide 'n' Pink, from the Diamond Strength summer collection I had swatches of last week. (I got great wear; I just had a few spots at my tips I had to touch up after all that time.) The design on the stickers worked well for this, as I could camouflage the growth gap at the base of my nails by placing the silver swirls there. The stickers had the same sort of rubbery smell as the Essie Sleek Sticks and Maybelline Fashion Prints ones, though these L'Oreal ones seemed a bit thinner and more flexible, probably because the raised silver part of the design was airy and open compared to the denser designs I'd tried from the other brands. Some of the swirls were almost too long to fit on my nails (which were on the short side but not nubbins); I had to choose and place carefully to avoid having to file off part of the swirls. I did appreciate that they had mirrored the designs.





Making the stickers lay perfectly flat and filing off the excess cleanly were both a bit of a challenge; not terrible, but not as easy as it is with nail polish strips like Sally Hansen or Incoco. You may see a ripple or two in the photos below or some tiny bits of strip sticking off the end of my nails.







I used a couple of the stickers that were too big for my thumbs to plus my pedi (Sally Hansen Private I from that same Diamond Strength collection). The nonphobic among you can click to see a photo of how that looked on my feet here

I thought these looked quite pretty when I was done putting them on. Unfortunately, they didn't stay that way. I applied these on a Saturday monrning, and by Sunday night, I had this mess on my hands:



The ends of the strips didn't stay stuck at all (possibly because I'd had to file so determinedly to get the excess off) and were peeling up and shredding (yet they were still sticky enough to pick up bits of lint). On the plus side, they did peel off easily and didn't damage the polish underneath. Seems like Nail Lingerie is a fitting name; these are like a fancy lace teddy that's meant to be seen and appreciated for a short time before being removed.

Moving on to the Revlon Revlon Nail Art 3D Jewel Appliques, I picked Hyper Floral from the recent spring collection.





There were 18 stickers here, too, though these came on two sheets instead of one. This package did include a small file and a plastic cuticle stick.



Application of these was very similar to the L'Oreal, meaning I got a few ripples (despite using the cuticle stick) and had some trouble getting the excess off nicely. The 3D elements in this design are the silver dots on some of the flowers; the rest of the design is printed flat on the stickers.





I managed to keep these on my nails for six days, but it wasn't pretty. The busy-ness of the design helped distract from the messy wear at my nail tips or I would have taken them off much sooner.



Note that in a couple places my nails were peeling, which I'm sure didn't help the strips last, though the wear wasn't noticeably better on my nails that weren't peeeling. For instance, my left thumbnail was in fine shape, and here's what the sticker on that looked like morning of day 6:



Based on my experience with these stickers, I will save these brands for special occasions when I won't mind changing them out after a day or two. If (I kind of wish I'd only bought one set of each and tried them before I bought any more.) For manis I want to last, I'll go with Sally Hansen or Incoco.

Related to Incoco, when I did my review of their nail polish strips I mentioned that the only drawback was I couldn't save half for another mani the way I can with Sally Hansen. In a comment, the proprietress of NailsLikeLace said her Incoco strips had come with a long silver sticker she used to reseal the envelope the strips were in to keep them from drying out. I was reminded of that when I saw the Revlon strips had a silver sheet behind the strips to hide the file/cuticle stick from showing through the window in the box, so I dug through my mess and found that yes, there was a silver strip in the Incoco package, and it was a sticker. Next time I'll try using it now that I know it exists (the directions make no mention of it, just say to use the strips immediately or they will dry up, as is the case with any strip made from nail polish).

In unrelated news, my sponsored giveaway for Sally Hansen Sugar Coat was won by Kelly from A Thing of Beauty. Congratulations, Kelly!