Sally Hansen Frock Star

I was very lucky before Christmas and won some Sally Hansen goodies from the very lovely Lynnie's blog, she of the most amazing nail art. I was delighted because I find Sally Hansen very hard to get my hands on locally. Included were the nail strips in Frock Star. 

I have never tried any type of polish strips before so was dying to try them. So on the eve of NYE, I sat down to attempt to apply them. In the packet you get, an orange stick, a combo file and buffer, 16 polish strips and an instruction leaflet (I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've got an instruction leaflet with polish!)

You get two little packets of strips each containing 8 different sizes of strip (so you've two of each size). This is where I ran in to my first problem, I've pretty small hands but never really realised how small (narrow) my nail beds are - the 3rd smallest one was around the right size for my thumb, the smallest perfect for my pinky and then the 2nd smallest was about the right size for each of my other fingers. I realised I was going to have to get 2 fingers out of some strips and use some that were too wide for my nail bed,but wasn't sure if that was going to work so started off. The upshot was I got all 10 fingers out of 8 strips with the 2 most mahoosive ones left over - had I been more forward thinking I could have used these for an accent big toe nail in my pedicure (but my feet are in full winter mode.....).

My Hand looks so awkward sans polish bottle!

Application was pretty easy, even if I made things difficult for myself by trying to get two nails out of some strips. The strips have plastic on both sides you have to remove and a little tab to hold on to while you remove the plastic. The easiest thing to do was apply the strip to my left hand with the tab still attached cut it leaving some excess and then remove the tab and apply the other half the the same nail on the right hand. Retaining the tab means that your not removing too much of the stickiness by touching the underside of the strip. You file of the excess after you apply and for some reason on both my index fingers, when I filed off the excess some of the strip on my nail came with it. I don't know if that's something to do with the fact those strips were too wide for that finger - I removed the excess with the pointy end of the orange stick.

Super dooper close up - Frock star full of lovely various colour glitter  

I'm on day 4, as I write this,  and they are holding up well, with a little tipwear on both my thumbs. The only issue is I feel that they never stuck flush at the cuticle end and when I'm tying up my hair I feel like it's getting caught underneath them.  I didn't apply a topcoat because I wanted to test the wear, but that would probably have sorted that out and the bumpy glittery texture.

I wore these for the full 10 days and I got compliments on them in pretty much every shop I went into, despite my sloppy application! They held up well, so well they were next to impossible to remove. They were absolutely welded on, so it appears that they are just as hard to remove as regular nail polish. Perhaps, one of the peel off base coats might be a plan for wearing under these next time.

Have you tried these or other polish strips? They are a pretty great idea if you are travelling as you don't have to bring any topcoat or basecoat with you, plus they don't take up your liquid allowance if you're flying, They also don't smell as strong as normal nail polish.