Hip Chic Semi-Cured Gel Nail Strips

I haven't made display hunting a priority for a while, what with so many mainstream beauty brands no longer putting out seasonal collections meaning there's not much to find and thus no dopamine hits for me. Still, habits are hard to break, so whenever I'm in a store that carries nail polish, I tend to drift to that section regardless. On a trip to Fred Meyer, I stopped at the clearance bins and found a whole bunch of boxes with Hip Chic Semi-Cured Gel Nail Strips in them. I'd never seen them at full price, so that's a sign I am shopping way less often than I used to. I figured it was a sign I should try them, so I bought a starter kit with the LED lamp in it (despite having at least two other LED lamps somewhere in my stash) and several sets of strips. I've now used these strips three times over the past two months so felt it was time to share. There was still plenty of snow around when I tried these the first time, so I chose the Freezing Blossom set, which has light blue with silver microglitter strips with two kinds of accent nails: white with snowperson faces and clear with white snowflakes.

 

 

The lamp that came with the starter kit was wide enough to get four nails at a time in, then my two thumbs side to side. The legs fold flat for storage.

 

These strips were even thicker than the Dashing Diva Gloss Gel strips I used earlier this year. That was good for covering the ridges in my nails but made it more difficult to remove the excess length of the strips. Rather than folding and filing as I usually do with strips, with these clipping as close to the end of my nails as I could and then filing worked better. I used only the blue and clear strips for my look, mostly because I didn't like the placement of the snowperson faces on the white strips.

 

 

I liked the look of these, and after they were cured felt almost as hard as fake nails. Unfortunately, they also popped off like fake nails. I lost the first ones just a few days after I'd applied them. The clear strips seemed most likely to pop off. With the first one, I tried reattaching like I would a fake nail, but that didn't really work, as they just popped off again. Fortunately there were enough extra strips that I could just put a new one on and cure it.

 

A few days after the popping off started, I got some chips, like sometimes happens with traditional polish. Here you can see one on my thumb that I'd tried to disguise with liquid polish and one on my index finger. I removed these shortly after I took these pictures, using oil to loosen the bond of the strips and then gently prying them off with a manicure stick per the instructions. Six days of wear wasn't too bad, I suppose.

 

The instructions caution against using these strips continuously (bit a of a warning sign there?), so I waited before trying the next set, My Dear. This has solid red strips, red with white hearts, red with red hearts on a clear background in a sort of reverse French mani arrangement, and red and white checkboards with hearts.

 

I did mostly the solid red strips, with one accent nail per hand. I thought maybe I'd overcured the first set; the directions said to use the lamp 2 to 3 times, so I did 3. I did 2 rounds of 60 seconds with these and they held up better. Whether that was because of the reduced curing leaving them a bit more flexible, or the lack of full length clear strips, or what, I'm not sure.

 

 

I used the strips from the starter kit most recently. These are called Be Born and are all solid warm beige. I did have issues with these starting to pop off after a few days. Maybe my natural nails are just too thin and flexible to make a good base for these.

 

I did have issues with this last set starting to pop off after a few days. Maybe my natural nails are just too thin and flexible to make a good base for these, or maybe I was just too hard on them this time (I was at a craft conference where I was doing a fair bit of macrame). I'd never used this type of strip before. I like the concept; they're easy to apply and with the curing, should hold up better than strips that don't work that way. Similar to the Sally Hansen Salon Insta Gel Strips but without the hassle of a liquid gel topcoat. I do wonder if they're not good for my nails. I'm back to shorties now because when I took the last set of these strips off my natural nails were in rough shape and I had to file them down. I can't be sure that's the strips' fault, though, as I've battled weak nails and peelies what feels like forever. I'm thinking I may try removing them like gel polish next time—roughing up the surface to break the seal then doing the foil method—rather than popping them off and potentially taking the top layer of my nail surface off with the strips.

NOTD Round Up

The last time I did a nails of the day post was back in April. Depsite all that time passing, catching up on my NOTD looks isn't going to be difficult, as I've worn something other than a treatment coat exactly three times since that last post. I've been swatching right along, yes, but when it comes to doing a full manicure, I've been slacking. I blame pandemic malaise. I'm not seeing any of my friends who expect me to have interesting nails so I haven't bothered. After a swatching session, I'll usually just slick on a treatment and call it good. Still, I did make at least a little effort a few times in the last several months.

I used a set of Incoco nail polish strips called Sweet Surprise from back when they sold seasonal designs at Walgreens. These have a pale pink base scattered with tiny silver glitter, square silver holo glitter, and multi-colored bar glitter. I added Sally Hansen Insta Gel UV topcoat to them and wore them for two weeks (they didn't look great at the end but like I said, not many people see me these days).







I mentioned back in April that I'd decided to lay off the fake nails for a while in light of all the handwashing. Well, I've now decided to go back to them. I feel like I can get my hands clean enough while wearing them, and since I so seldom go out of my safe zone, most days I don't have to wash my hands any more than I did pre-pandemic when I wore fakes quite a lot of the time. I kicked off this new regime with a set of Fing'rs Prints called Simply Chic. This artsy French design with silver tips adorned with swoops of black and white creme and silver glitter isn't my usual style but I figured there's no better time to experiment than during isolation. I did not take that experiment so far as to use the rhinestone charms in the set; maybe another time. After I got them all on, I noticed that the swoops on my index fingers were going in the opposite direction from my other nails ... I'd failed to notice that the sizes were in pairs, one in each orientation, and had switched the ones for my index fingers. Oh well. These lasted a week before the grow out at the base annoyed me. They stuck pretty darn well; I'd wear this brand more if they came in a longer length.





I followed that set of fakes with another, this time one from NailBliss MagicPress that I'd grabbed from the clearance section at Sally Beauty. Hot Stuff has medium pink plain nails with silver glitter accents (not my idea of "hot" but okay). I wore these for two weeks, sticking them back on with a thick treatment polish when they fell off. They looked pretty ratty by the end, with a wide gap at the base and worn edges on the tips, but that's pandemic times I guess.





The ski resort I call my home did open for summer season, with distancing and other precautions in place, so Mr. K and I have been riding the chairlift up and hiking the trails at the top a lot of days. That's helped my state of mind, for sure.



As I type this, I'm back to just clear treatment on my nails, though I have some sets of fakes nearby and am pondering which one to put on.

Social Distancing Nails of the Month

I last left the county I live in on March 11th because I'd read enough news about the coronavirus to make me think that cutting way back on my activities to reduce exposure was prudent. On March 12th, I decided to stop wearing fake nails because though I hadn't seen any guidance on it, I felt that the crevices around and under them could be good places for germs to hide from handwashing ... and even if they weren't, I was washing my hands way more often than usual and have found that can weaken the adhesive on some of the press-on tabs.

I kicked off this new regime with Zoya London, one of the textured Pixie Dust polishes. I chose it because textures are easy to touch up and grey is a neutral that would be appropriate in any situation and wouldn't clash with any of my clothes (why I thought this was a concern I do not know, given that at that point I'd pretty much decided to stop going anywhere people would be noticing that sort of thing). I put this on on my front porch instead of in my studio where my lightbox lives so the photos are not up to my usual standard (and that standard is far short of perfection to start with).





The Zoya was looking a bit ragged after a week, so I decided to got the strips plus light-cured gel topcoat route with Sally Hansen Salon Insta Gel Strips in Pinkies Up, a rose and silver glitter I'd gotten on clearance when Walgreens stopped carrying the line. The glitter on the strips is chunkier and less pink than that shown on the box, but that's okay; I like glitter regardless.



After a week, the gel topcoated nails still looked pretty good, so I stuck to that strategy for my next manicure, though this time I used regular Sally Hansen Salon Effects strips rather than ones packaged with the gel topcoat, as I'd never been able to see any difference between the regular strips and the ones in the Insta Gel line. These are Queen Cobra, a brown and gold snake design with tiny pops of holo glitter that only show up in certain lighting conditions (none of which I managed to capture on camera).



I went back to Insta Gel strips for my next manicure, the one that's still on my nails as I type this, a solid brownish rose called Plum's the Word. The gel topcoat makes them nice and shiny, for sure. You can see that my nails are getting shorter by the mani ... polish and strips just don't provide the same protection as fakes, plus there's all that exposure to extra handwashing and alcohol based hand sanitizers (which yes, maybe I'm overdoing given how rarely I'm going out). I cannot recall why I decided to leave such large gaps on my index and middle fingers; maybe I just got extra distracted by one of the podcasts I listen to and wasn't paying attention to my mani.




I'll wear fake nails again in the future I'm sure, definitely once the pandemic is over and perhaps before then if I can reassure myself I can sanitize around them sufficiently to ease my anxiety (or wear them only during stretches when I know I'm not going to be in higher risk situations). In the meantime, I've got my strips and regular polish, and that's working out just fine. I'm hoping to do a fresh manicure this afternoon ... choices, choices.