Fake Nails Galore

My nails have taken a beating over the last few months as we've been unpacking and moving furniture around and such. In an effort to not have to look at the poor damaged things and protect them at the same time, I've turned to fake nails quite a lot. Fortunately, I have a stash of those as well, most picked up at clerance prices.

Maybelline Color Show Nail Falsies in the Foil Fusion design were the first ones I grabbed, figuring I'd better wear these short fakes while my own nails were still short. (Some of the Nail Falsies are short and square, some long and oval.) These have a white base with silver streaks at the tip. I rubbed off some of the silver filing the remnants of a tab off some of the tips, which was unfortunate; I can't decide if that was more or less unfortunate than seeing the remnants of the tabs I didn't file off so completely. The base curve of these is a pretty good fit for my own nails, though the width of some of them was too generous.



The oddest thing about these nails is the base plastic was not white, as one would expect, but black. This meant that tipwear looked really obvious. Here's my right hand after six days; I was able to touch up with a silver chrome polish, but it didn't stick to the plastic very well, so that would wear off, too. The good news is the fakes did protect my real nails from impact, and since I was wearing a treatment polish under the fakes it was like a spa week for my digits. The adhesive tabs that come with the Nail Falsies are on the thick side, which isn't idea since they lift the fake off the real nail more than a thinner tab, but they do hold pretty darn well unless they get very wet, in which case they get soft and the nails start to slide around. (I did a full review of this line way back in 2013, so I'll stop nattering on about them now.)



For my next fake look, I chose some lilac imPress Gel Manicure nails I'd gotten on clearance (I think from Walgreens, but I'm not entirely sure on that). I hadn't used this brand before, so was interested to see how it compared to the ones I had. This design is called Funky Town, which seems wrong; lilac with accents in delicate white plus faint silvery glitter seems more fairy than funky.



These came with a "prep pad" (wipe saturated with alcohol to clean the nails) and a tiny file, pictured here with my nails adorned in Sally Hansen Age Growth Miracle, the discontinued treatment I decided to lay down under the fakes this time.



The adhesive for these is already on the nails, covered with easily removed plastic, so you don't have to deal with separate sticky tabs.



These were easy to apply and stayed on quite well, which was good since there were no spare adhesive tabs to sitck them back on like with the Maybelline ones. I wore them for a full week with none popping off. I didn't love the shape of these; they were a bit wide, with the curve at the base of the nails not rounded enough to match my own base, and they weren't long enough, especially since they were "oval edition" and the curve for the oval started too soon, leaving my own nail showing on the sides in a way they hadn't with the more squared Maybellines. I also didn't like that color of the accent nails didn't quite match the plain ones but wasn't far off enough to look intentionally mismatched.





Fing'rs Prints in the Rock Rebel design came next; these were marked down at Rite Aid. I didn't get a picture of the package as I put these on in the car just before heading in to a party. (I got some other designs, so maybe I'll remember to take their picture before applying.) Like the imPress, these nails were pre-glued; unlike them, the sticky stuff wasn't covered in plastic, so it was hard to try them on for size before sticking them down. These fit my nails pretty well as far as the curve at the base and overall width; the only fit issue was length on some of my digits.



I only wore these for a day, so I'm not sure of their long term durability. I have some doubts based on how some of the nails cracked and broke when I was removing them.



I know press-on nails are looked down on in some circles, but I don't care. They're fast to apply, don't make me wait for dry time, cover up my torn up real nails, and protect my tips when I jam my hand into things, which I seem to do with alarming regularity. Yeah, they can look fake, sometimes really fake. So what? When I do a manicure with liquid polish, I don't do it with the aim to fool people into thinking my nails are really that color, so no reason I should worry about my false nails not looking real, either.