Review: Sally Hansen’s Real Polish Strips - Glitz BlitZ

After the long wait, Sally Hansen have finally brought in the Real Nail Polish Strip product in! As always, you’ll find newer products being released overseas and boy, do they take some time just to arrive on our shores. Or worst, sometimes they wouldn’t even be sold over here. So, I couldn’t be happier when Yuberactive picked me to review this product in Glitz Blitz. :)

These polish strips are something similar to the stickers. All you got to do is stick these fancy designed strips on your nails. And, that’s it! You now have a very professionally done manicure. Easy peasy, right? Well, that’s the concept anyway. But is it really as easy as it claims to be? Does it last?

When I first opened the sealed box of the strips, I was greeted by the familiar smell of nail polish. So, in actual fact, these strips are really nail polish and not printed ones because the latter may come off as a bit fake. In each sealed box, there were 8 sizes of nail strips to choose from. To be honest, I felt the sizes were a little limited and most of them didn’t fit my nails. Also, these 8 strips are supposed to be for five fingers. Which leaves me to ask, “What do I do with the strips that do not fit my nails?”

It also comes with an instructions booklet, mini file and a very useful cuticle stick. I won’t be going into the details on how to apply the polish strips because this is a review of the product (heh) and also, the given guidelines were quite direct and easy to understand. However, there was only one confusing part on whether I need to peel the strips off the paper after removing the protective layer. I found out later, that you do indeed need to peel it off and it wasn’t easy to peel it off at all.

But I must admit, that the process of applying and sticking the strips were quite a fun one. In fact, the very idea that I don’t have to apply and wait for my nail polish to dry appeals very much to me. As much as I enjoy putting on polish, I have to admit sometimes it can be a tedious process. Especially when the polish need a few coats more, and it would take forever just to dry. Thanked God for my Seche Vite top coat, which dries nail polishes almost instantaneously.  Speaking of which, the only thing you’ll have to paint for this manicure, is a top coat to protect the nail strips. I must warn you that it is very fragile without it.

Overall, the polish strips is pretty easy to use. However, they are essentially stickers, so you have to be careful when sticking the strips because once you stick the strips, you cannot adjust it. This means it is important to stick it right and to try to not pull/stretch the strips. The designs may be distorted then. As you can see in the picture above, the strip didn’t really fit my last pinky’s nail and also my middle finger’s nail.

So far, the strips have gotten a mixed review from me. As much I loved them, there is one flaw in these strips that I cannot accept; they curl the moment I wash my hands. You can really see how it curls up in this picture. Close-up, it’s really hideous looking and it makes me feel like peeling them off already. I have to stop myself from doing so, like seriously. It would have been an almost perfect product if it wasn’t for this flaw.

Anyway, I fell madly in love with the design for this strips (Glitz Blitz) which is extremely gorgeous. It puts me in a partying mood whenever I look at it because there is tonnes of flakies in these strips. You can actually find similar nail polishes with flakies too, but to achieve the similar even coverage like the strips would require a lot of coats. And that would then make the application of the nail polish uneven. Also, the many coats of nail polish will make it even harder to remove. Hence, I stay away from flakies and glitter all together.

In conclusion, I would say that this is an almost awesome product because of that one flaw that I cannot overlook. But other than that, it would have been close to perfection. However, it retails at RM45.90 which is about the price of an OPI nail polish. These strips only last about 10 days max, but a bottle of nail polish would definitely last longer than that. But if you’re someone who frequents the nail parlour, then, these polish strips can help you achieve the professional manicure with much less hassle.

And, I finally figured out how and what aperture is and does! Haha, I know I have been shooting for some time and I am expected to learn the basics of this. But really, I couldn’t understand them earlier, until Joe who shot me for my recent photoshoot illustrated to me what aperture was using circles. Heh. A few pictures in this post were the result of my experiment with the aperture. I shot in both f/2 and f/8, just to see the difference. Can you spot which pictures are they?
I took a few other pictures that I want to share with you. :) They are however the usual's poses; with an apple and the lip pose. Heh. Also, the lip pictures are edited and so, it doesn’t show the actual colour of the polish strips.