Fancy Stickers

This past Christmas, I discovered something I wish had been invented 15 years ago: nail polish stickers! I had taken my daughter Christmas shopping and found them while browsing. I decided to buy one to try and really fell in love with them once I tried it. Why did I wish they'd been invented 15 years ago? They would have saved me a lot of headache and trouble as a teenager.

I'm a secret girly-girl at heart. As I've aged, I've acquired better style and taste, but sparkles, glitter, and all things shiny still have a place in my heart. When I was a junior in high school, I really wanted to try fake nails for homecoming. This was a big problem: I played piano. I'd been trained for the previous 12 years to cut my nails short and keep them short. The most I'd ever done was paint them with normal nail polish and no fancy designs, but my right hand always looked worse than my left, and it would chip, scratch, and look unkempt within 24 hours. 

Junior year. I told my piano teacher I wanted to try fake nails for homecoming and he glared at me and asked me why. I didn't really have a great answer...besides, "I just want them." He told me they had to come off by the next week. Great, I thought. I'll finally get the fake nails I always wanted. 

Of course, I wasn't going to pay money to go to a salon and get them done knowing they'd have to come off in a week. Instead, I went to the store, bought a pack of DIY ones, sat on my bathroom floor, and got to work. 

These nails are no joke to put on. The glue was like super glue, and these fake nails really added a layer of stuff to the top of your nails. I got them on, and marveled them, and liked the way they looked. Except I overlooked one crucial detail. After having short nails for nearly my entire life, I couldn't stand the way these felt on my fingers. They'd only been on for about 30 minutes when I couldn't take it anymore and wanted them removed.

If I had fully read the instructions before I started gluing them, I may not have gone through with it completely. These things didn't just pry off the tops of your fingers. You needed nail polish remover to soak them off. My inexperienced teenage self felt horror flow through my body as I realized the amount of nail polish remover I had left in the bottle: not nearly as much as I needed.

I don't remember how long it was, but that night, I painstakingly removed the nails by soaking them ever so carefully in the cap of the nail polish bottle. Somehow, I removed all 10 with about 2-3 capfuls of nail polish remover. I never ended up going to homecoming with beautifully done nails. 

15 years later, I discovered the wonders of nail polish stickers. They were really easy to apply.

Fancy stickers.

I'm typically not big on doing my nails or paying to have them done because I'm so rough on my hands, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the stickers held on. Yes, I can feel them on my nail, but they feel like a thick layer of nail polish, not an extra layer of "stuff" sitting on top of your nail. As you can see from the picture, I still keep my nails trimmed short. They'll never be Instagram-worthy nails, but I also didn't pay over $10 for them. 

I ended up keeping them on for 17 days! They would have lasted longer except my nail started to grow out so having the gap at the back of my nail started to look funny. 

Day 17. One fell off but that one
potentially had a user error when I put it on.

Jamberry was the first company to come out with nail wraps and it wasn't until after 2010 when nail stickers actually started hitting the markets. This was still a few years before that, so unfortunately, I wouldn't have any other options. I never told my teacher about what really happened, but it wouldn't have mattered to him. I went back the week after for a lesson and the fake nails were gone.

He would never have been able to say anything about fancy stickers. Oh well.