China Glaze Real Nail Polish Appliques - with Loop Hole swatches!

{overheard conversation between two random people one of whom is obviously an asshole}
What?! Lisamarie is doing nail wrap reviews?! Where's Elvira, Elvira always does these - Lisamarie is too spastic and loser-ish to be able to get these suckers on her fingers!
I know right? But there you go, miracles happen, heavens part, angels sing yadda yadda so shut the hell up and enjoy the review and if the fates align properly you will see a review from Elvira next week!

China Glaze Real Nail Polish Appliques - $11 - come in 12 designs and promise to be easy to apply - of course when they say that they mean easy to apply for people who have normal sized nails and aren't moronic which generally means - not for me! But since my usual nail wrap tester is running behind I figured this would be an excellent test of how easy to apply these things actually are!

In theory it should be fine: push back cuticles, shape nails, prepare nail surface and wipe off dirt and oil - all of which I am already qualified to do! Now comes the tricky part when I have to pick a size and remove the cover and apply it to my nail except I forget to remove the backing as well and couldn't understand why the strip was so thick and wouldn't bend! Finally it's properly on my nail and I just need to stretch and smooth it, crease it at the nail edge and file off the excess - then repeat 9 more times and finish with a top coat!

My issue with these strips are usually that they are so wide that I would have to cut them down so much to actually fit my nails that they end up a mess but I guess because these ones are stretchy, they don't make them as wide so I didn't have to butcher them at all!

All things considered, I'm pretty impressed with myself and how they turned out - looking at the picture I can see a couple of places I should have stretched them out a bit more, but overall, it's pretty good for a nail wrap virgin - even my husband likes them, he says they look like the kind of wallpaper that Roger Sterling would have in his office - at least I'm assuming that's a compliment...!

It's true I will be picking bits of wrap out of the carpet and couch for months but that's a small price to pay for proving to the world that I am NOT a nail strip loser!

They are supposed to last 7 days - I'm on day 4 now and they are still going strong - no chips or rips so I'm fully expecting them to last out the week!

You can check out the whole selection of designs and pick up some of your own here: http://www.nailpolishcanada.com/categories/nail-art/nail-polish-strips.html

- Lisamarie - 

China Glaze Magnetix - Drawn To You and Pull Me Close swatches!

China Glaze Magnetix Nail Lacquer - $10.50 in 6 shades: Attraction, Cling On, Drawn To You, Instant Chemistry, Pull Me Close and You Move Me and to go along with them a 3-in-1 Magnet - with star, stripe and arrow design - $10.50

I have none of the creative abilities as some of the nail experts I admire - they can do all kinds of amazing things with their nails so I love tools like this that make getting a bit more than a regular mani fairly idiot proof. I say "fairly" because they didn't count on as big an idiot klutz as myself. With the magnet you have to get it close to the nail but not actually touching and you don't want to know how many times I screwed up the wet polish by touching the magnet with it! It's a learning process, that's for sure! It also works much better if you polish and magnet each nail one at a time, the polish dries too fast to do the whole hand at once!

Drawn To You - the little finger is straight polish so you can see the colour - I found with this lighter colour that the designs didn't show as well as they do on the darker colour below. I couldn't get the star to show very well at all but I do love the stripe effect!

Pull Me Close - the design payoff is much better with the darker colour - the other thing I did find was because I have especially small nails, it was hard for me to center the design as I expect the magnets were made for "normal sized" nails. I kind of like the way the star looks off-centre like that anyhow so no biggie!

Pick up your own for $10.50 each or save yourself a couple of bucks by buying the whole collection with the magnet for $63.

Available at Nail Polish Canada - http://www.nailpolishcanada.com/magnetix-collection/

- Lisamarie -