Sally Hansen Salon Effect Nail Polish Strips Review

I brought these cheap online and thought they were soo pretty! It took me a very long time to get the strips looking right on my fingers and wasted quite a few strips trying to get them looking right! I also used my LED light and top coat. Most of these pealed of overnight and I ended up just getting rid of the ones that did stick! I cant see how these could have ever lasted for long

I was really excited to use this product, however I was a little disappointed. The finish was good but I felt they didn't adhere very well to my nails. They had started to peel a few hours after applying. Looking at the other reviews I'm wondering if I did something wrong. At this point I would prefer to stick to traditional polish!

I have been experimenting with nail wraps/stickers at the moment. I don't have much spare time but I love having my nails done so I thought I would give these a whirl. I've had heaps of success with some other brands so I thought i'd try my beloved Sally Hansen (I am obsessed with their gel colours!).

I picked two colours "Pink A Dot" and "Beat you to it". I was so excited to try these. I cleaned my nails with a swipe of acetone over to make sure their was no trace of anything on my nails. The pack comes with two packs of sealed nail wraps, a cuticle stick and a mini nail file/buffer. I buffed my nails and pushed back my cutices and got ready to apply.

Application was fairly easy, open one of the packs of the sealed packages - I found the smell of these quite overpowering it smelt like nail polish strong nail polish (I havent encountered that with nail strips before) find a nail strip that best fits your nail pull the clear plastic off the top and remove the backing line up on the nail press into cuticle and stretch out the sides with the cuticle stick flat side if needed. Use the flat side of the cuticle stick to flatten out any air bubbles and stick it down. I went over and pushed on it a bit more to make sure it was stuck down. Pull the silver tab off the end and file away the ends of the strips in downward motions.

I thought these were super quick to apply and looked amazing on my fingers Pink A Dot was my favourite. Unfortunately by the next morning both my index fingers had come off and I have no idea where that happened.

That drove me insane so I thought I would use the extra's that were in the pack (they come in packs of 16) unfortunately once the silver pack is unsealed the strips dry out so I could not use them so being me I had to take all the nails off which came off far too easily.

These for me werent a winner at all they look great but had zero staying power on me.

Sally Hansen Effect Nail Polish Strips in "Fly with Me" have a pretty, summery butterfly design and come in a box of 16 strips. I'm guessing that the extra strips are to allow for mistakes, different nail sizes or to use as accents.

Inside the box was a page of instructions, a small orangewood stick, a small pink file/buffer with two different grits and the nail strips. Following the instructions, I buffed my nails to create a fairly smooth surface and filed them to the shape that I wanted, before washing my hands to remove any nail dust and hand lotion before cleaning my nails again with nail polish remover.

I selected the strips that best suited the shape and size of my nails and lay them out. Working one at a time, I pulled the silver tab and peeled the strip away from the backing, lined it up with my cuticle and smoothed it onto my nail, pressing firmly before peeling off the clear protective top layer. I used orangewood stick to go over each nail, getting rid of any air bubbles but be careful while doing this because I did gouge a hole in one of the strips. File off any excess at the free edge (tip of your nail) with the nail file, using downward strokes to wrap the strip around the tip at the same time.

I managed to get two nails out of each strip by cutting them in half and I'll admit that I did top mine off with a clear top coat, just to make them a little more durable, as I felt the polish strip was quite 'soft' and I didn't want to damage it. I got a weeks wear out of them on my hands and nearly a month on my toes.

I did put the excess strips back in the box and saved them for a future manicure, even though it said on the box to discard any unused strips (which I felt was a waste). The next time I did a manicure, I found out why. The unused strips were exposed to air, which made them dry out and go brittle, causing them to shatter when I tried to remove them from the backing strip.

There was a solution to this problem. I simply heated the strips up for a few seconds under my hairdryer. This softened the polish strip and the glue and allowed me to apply them to my nails. Don't try heating the strip up against a warm coffee mug (like I did with the first one). I ended up with a butterfly design stuck on the outside of my favourite coffee mug and it stuck like crazy and went hard like concrete as soon as it was stuck! It won't budge, not even after being in the dishwasher!

Would I recommend them? Yes and no. They're easy to apply and fun to wear, especially for someone who doesn't like painting their own nails but if you don't get the application right, they can be frustrating and might not wear well. Would I buy them again? Probably not, unless it was for a special occasion where I only wanted or needed that design for one night.

Am I the only one who finds these incredibly difficult to use??

They come in multiple different sized nail shapes so that you can pick the one that is best suited to your nail. Now I either have really weird nails, or these are really random shapes and sizes. I found that every single one of them, with the exception of my thumb was bigger than my nail.

I peeled it back and pressed it on hoping that the sides would snap off, as they are supposed to, but it was really hard to get it into all the corners of my nails. The cuticle and tip I had no problem with, but the sides of the nails gave me hell! It's not that it is difficult to place them down, it's just difficult trying to make sure that it is straight, and there are no bubbles, or it hasn't curled up somewhere. It takes time, and it takes patience. And don't even get me started on my left hand.

When I was completely done, I found that the corners kind of rolled back up and away from my nail, and it was impossible trying to get them to stick back down.

You know what I ended up doing with them? Peeling them all off one by one, honestly, that was the best part of the whole process. All that effort, and they were only on my nails for 20 minutes.

Love these, super easy to apply, long lasting. I have one complaint: once the pack is opened, the strips dry out and can't be used later on. I like using the patterns on only a few nails and doing a solid coordinating color on the other nails. I'm bummed out that the leftover strips can't be saved.

I received a packet of these for signing up to a perfume website's mailing list. I've seen them around but had never tried them before as they seem to be quite expensive for such a small usage amount and I didn't think they would be too great.

My design was silver with cute little different coloured birds on it. I thought they were sweet, maybe not the first choice of design that I would pick but still wearable.

I did them one night when I was bored, I made sure my nails were completely free of nail polish and I resisted putting any handcream on. you need to choose which nail strip best fits each nail and then you peel off the backing and basically stick it on and then use the special tools that it comes with to smooth the sticker down and file off the excess. It's reasonably easy to do yourself but it does take a bit of time to make sure it is all done nicely. I did put a clear top coat over it, but I'm not sure whether that was necessary or not.

They lasted really well on my nails, they didn't chip at all. The only reason they came off was because I always pick at my nails when I'm not really doing anything otherwise I feel like these would last until your nails grew out rather then chipping off.

Overall, I was really impressed with these. I like the idea of being able to have cute nail art without having to see a professional or having a great right hand but wonky left hand! the only thing that puts me off is the price, you only get one set out of this plus a few spares you could use as feature nails. They are long lasting though and apart from taking a little bit of patience to apply, they are good for beginners too.

I have personally tried two different patterns of these, a black and white checkered pattern, and a grey lace-like pattern. The first I tried being the checkered pattern.

First things first, everything you need comes in the box, the buffer, a cuticle pusher stick, plenty of strips in different sizes, and a detailed instruction manual. So pretty much the only extra you may need is nail polish remover if you have polish on before you start.

When I did these, it was the night before Halloween and I needed to have them done by the morning to match my costume at work, so from memory it was about 11:30pm and I had only my bedside light on and I was sitting in bed. This is all setting a scene so you can see how easy and mess free these are to do.

After buffing, I lay out the strips (I had figured out which size I needed for each finger) and got started peeling and applying. I was worried that they would bubble underneath, but I was lucky to avoid any mishaps. Any that were slightly too big around the edges were easy enough to use the stick to cut away the overhang. You are meant to buff the overhanging tips off but I found that annoying so used the stick to cut the tips away too.

Obviously you will have a tiny bit of clean up to do, with the cut offs, but I lay a tissue under my hands so I had no fuss. I found they didn't last 10 days, but in saying that, I am a nail picker. The second time around I decided to put a top coat on, and it helped make it last a bit longer.

Good for a special occasion, though I probably wouldn't want to use them all the time. Heaps of patterns to choose from though!

When I first saw these in Postie a while back i was absolutely ecstatic, being someone that loves nail art and pretty colours, these seemed to be to good to be true!! I purchased a pack containing two different patterns in the foils range.

Opening the box i found two little packets with a foil cover, I decided to open both packets and apply the gold to all of my fingers apart from my ring finger which I then applied the gold with black lace pattern, I loved the way they applied super easily using the tab at the top of the strip to roll on to your nail, I used a size bigger for each of my fingers so that I would get complete coverage, using the cuticle stick to remove the excess from around the edges. The strips stayed on my nails for about 5-6 days before any wear started to show and they looked great, I got so many comments asking if I had done the design myself!! A couple of weeks later I had an event to go and had been planning applying the rest of the patterned strips and was really looking forward to it.... until i went to apply... I opened up the wee packet again and was stumped to find that they didnt have any stick left on them... after searching on the internet I found out that if left unsealed they would loose their stickiness, i was really quite disappointed in this as i had saved the ones i preferred for this event and by opening them to do a feature nail I ruined the lot... After scouring the packaging for anywhere that stated this was the case to no avail I was really quite peeved to say the least!! Lesson learnt and I have since used this product a few times again and will continue to use them remembering no to save my left over ones!!