Essence: new products – nail stickers (fall 2010)

One of the new Essence products we got for review were also nail stickers.

After seeing preview of Essence nail stickers I knew I had to have some of them. I did hope they’ll be more like Minx manicure style, but they’re classical nail stickers. I guess it really was too optimistic to expect Minx nails for 1,99 EUR.

Let’s take a look at all the sticker we received:

Essence has a special Studio nails fashion file that is suppose to be used with their nail stickers. Darker side is for cleaning/preparing your nails and lighter one for removing excess sticker. Darker side smooths out the surface of the nail, so I don’t recommend you use it more than once in a while. But it looks it will be handy for removing those pesky light polish stains.

You get 14 sticker in package and this set of instructions:

1. be sure that your natural nail are clean & greaseless, if necessary push back cuticles
2. select correct size strip for each nail
3. apply the predecorated nail fashion stickers onto your nails – important: place rounded edges against cuticle line, but still leave a little space between cuticles and nail fashion sticker
4. press sticker onto nail while flatten the surface through gentle  rubbing
5. smooth excess over nail edge. gentle file of excess of the sticker with essence special fashion file – ready!

There were 2 out of 4 my most wanted stickers in the package we received: Trust Me! and Unexpected!.

First ones I used were Trust Me! stickers. Application itself was not as difficult as I expected but I did have problems with centering the sticker and wrinkles at the side of the nail. I guess most of those with similar nails as I have will have simmilar problems (my nails are kind of curvy at the sides) … we’ll unless you’re expert at applying nail stickers.

You don’t really see the crisscross design in real life, but camera picks it up. That is why I blurred the second photo.

If you look at the thumb, you can see the stickers are to narrow for my nails.

I took more time to apply Unexpected! stickers. I made progress with centering the design, but wrinkles were driving me nuts. So I asked my boyfriend to help me out. I suspected that the main problem was the thickens and in-elasticity (besides the shape of my nails) of the sticker. I did try to heat the sticker up … but with very poor heat source.

My darling didn’t hesitate and he immediately brought in the big guns … hair dryer. :D

He set the speed to minimum and quickly heated the sticker held by tweezer (too much of heat and you end up with roll instead of sticker). OK – I got that part. But then he vertically stretched the sticker! I lost my breath – I was sure the sticker is ruined. Well – it wasn’t.  I was stunned how easy it was to apply the heated and stretched sticker. Sides were no longer problem as now I could rube the wrinkles out. And since the sticker was just slightly stretched, the design deformation was slight one. Bigger problem/deformation occurred on the thumb, where sticker had to be stretched vertically and horizontally.  But cracked design is not problematic one, so the end result was still very pretty.

My last problem was filling of the excess sticker. I had poor results with Essence file and their instructions. So my boyfriend again came to the rescue and suggested I file up to down (only in one direction of course) with crystal file and it looked better but still not perfect.

The other thing I didn’t consider was the fact that stickers will shrink a little bit after the cool down, so you have to wait with filing a bit.

I managed to combined everything I learned when I reached my thumb (let’s call others practice fingers). Next time I’ll just ask my boyfriend to put them on – he does it better and faster. :D

I think I listed most of the problems that can occur if you heat the sticker, but as always when you don’t follow original instructions – use this method at your own risk.

MAESTRA tried out Just Say Yes! stickers.

It took me 25 minutes to apply stickers on all 10 nails. I had problems finding right shape for me, but I managed in the end. I centered the sticker with tweezers and then rubed the sticker to the side with orange woodstick. I filed with medium Alessandro file and finished with cristaly file. With top coat.

Even with top coat, the tips started to lift up the same day I applied the stickers.

MAMY tested the Drama Queen! stickers.

Essence Nail fashion Sticker: this is the first time I used nail stickers and I can say it wasn’t easy. I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes and follow the instructions.

Especially no.3: “place rounded edges against cuticle line, but still leave a little space between cuticles ans nail fashion sticker”.

And no.5:  watch how are you holding file while removing excess sticker. If you don’t – white tips will be visible. Enclosed picture is very helpful.

I’m not sure I like the stickers. Images are nice but application calls for time and precision. Those with smaller nails could encounter more problems than I did.

Top coat is recommended but I didn’t use one. Maybe that is one of the reasons the sticker started to come off at the tips.

I recommend you try them out – if for nothing else than just to satisfy your curiosity.

• If we draw the line under all the Parokeet reviews we can conclude that we  find the sticker appropriate for the occasions when we need special/stand out manicures like party’s and masquerades … when we need the effect and we’re not looking for staying power.

• Other group that could benefit from the stickers are little girls and pregnant ladies that are not suppose to be in contact with harmful chemicals.

• You can encounter difficulties with sizing the stickers (they’re to wide for Maestra and to narrow for me), but they did include 4 extra stickers so you’ll probably manage to find 10 of them in your size.

• Staying power seems to be poor mostly due to the filing of the excess sticker.  Maybe I should add that the heated stickers lasted longer and were as easy to remove as non heated ones.

The one thing that I miss the most is the gold foil look. I hope they’ll add that one in one of the future limited editions or products changes.

How do you like the stickers? Did any of the shown designs impress you?

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