review: sally hansen salon effects nail polish strips

Over New Year's, I visited a college friend who currently lives in Chicago. She saw these nail strips on sale and bought a box for each of us to try out for fun, and try we did! Late one night, we busted these out and went for it with 004 Hisss-Terical, an emerald teal-green snakeskin pattern.

I had seen these around Target and drugstores for a little while, but I wasn't sure what to expect from them. They were actually pretty easy to apply though, and they look surprisingly good! Each box is a little kit with pretty much everything you'll need, including:

• 16 nail polish strips
• Cuticle stick
• Mini nail file & buffer
• Instructions

There are extra nail strips, because they give you eight different shapes per hand. Some are really wide and some are really skinny, and you're pretty likely to find something that fits the shape of your nail. Not all of them are a perfect fit, but it's at least enough to get away with!

With the sale price, it's a pretty good value. *Tip* The way I applied mine, I could probably get another manicure out of the strips, and/or a pedicure in. I did mine by taking the nail polish strip off its plastic sheet like normal, holding the center down at the top of my nail, (here's the differen part) then taking the plastic sheet and fixing it to the bottom of the extra hanging off my nail, using that to grip and pull away from the nail while also getting the extra back on the original plastic strip. There's a lot of extra, so if you do it right, you basically have enough for another nail.

Here are how my nails looked today, a few days after application:

Sorry for the dry skin... Winter is not my friend, especially not to fingertip callouses,
and I am not a diligent cuticle cream sort of person anyway!

I'm pretty rough and careless, so I was afraid about them getting worn away, but they don't seem to chip at all, unlike regular polish. Also, as advertised, there is no dry time - super convenient for all us impatients out there. OH! The only thing is, they do smell kind of funky. When you open the little plastic box the nail strips are in, you'll smell that chemical stench reminiscent of nail polish. I wasn't expecting that, so I was a little thrown off by that initially. (Basically, smells gross.)

It's been a fun sort of surprise every time I look at my nails now! I usually don't do manicures, since I like my musical instruments and crafts and so am constantly trimming my hand nails. The process wasn't too difficult, and I would actually recommend this product, especially with its sale prices.

Most of the patterns are kind of funky, but if the flower power one ever goes on sale, I may just pick up a box. For the fun factor and the way they last, I recommend!

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Visit the Sally Hansen site to see the official product. This review was done without any affiliation or compensation, was personally written and expresses my honest opinion on the product. Full emiliewho Disclaimer & Discosure.