ThumbsUp Nails - Awe / Nail Wraps

I've been following ThumbsUp Nails on Instagram for a while now and even though I'm not the biggest fan of nail wraps, there are two particular designs that caught my eye. I got them last week and decided to try one of them right away. This one is called Awe and I think it's inspired by minerals. I love the design but I think I just need to stop buying nail wraps, no matter how cute they look. I just really don't like the feeling of wearing them and they never look as perfect as nail polish to me. But well, my bad. I didn't have time to apply top coat over these, so I'm not sure how that would affect the nail wraps but I'm definitely going to try it with the next design. You can find ThumbsUp Nails here. They also have some nice special offers every now and then. How do you like these? The design is compelling, right? 

Essie: Sleek Sticks - "So Haute!"

I received six of the Essie Sleek Sticks Nail Appliques as part of my prize as an Essie Girl a few months ago. I never really got around to trying them and I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to like them. My experience with nail stickers (not including water decals or real nail polish decals!) isn't the best and I prefer real nail polish. But I decided to try my favorite design called "So Haute!", which is a textured red with small golden dots. It looks really elegant and it is definitely a design I would want to wear. Since these are (probably) made for people who don't have a lot of time and want to have beautiful nails for a long time, I wanted to wear them for some time to get a good opinion. They're advertised to last up to 10 days. So what I have for you today are pictures right after the application, pictures after one day and pictures after two days. 

First off: To my surprise the application was super easy. Against my expectations, they were quite flexible and I could easily fit them on my nails with almost no wrinkles at all. The part that keeps me from using stickers is filing off the excess. This just goes against all my principles of doing nail art, because it will most definitely leave you with what looks like tip wear and a ripped design. For what it's worth, this can be overlooked if you use a matching nail polish to cover the tips of your nails. That's what I did and this is how they looked super cool for about one day. After that time, the stickers started to tear and they got caught in my hair and everywhere all of the time. So on the second day I decided to use top coat, even if I read that this was going to ruin the design (on blogs, not as an advice from Essie!). Well, it did really look worse with top coat, the textured effect disappeared and weird wrinkles appeared all over the design. The picture from Day 2 is with one coat of Essie - Let It Shine. Removal was really easy and the nails were in no way damaged. 

So this is a lovely idea for a short special event. But which event is so special that you want to spend CHF ~20 /~10 € on nail stickers? And if it is that special, wouldn't it be cooler to have your own design, which will last more than just a day and is way cheaper? 

New, right after application

After 1 day

After 2 days, with top coat (Essie - Let It Shine)

NOTD: Essence Nail Fashion Stickers - Glitterastic (Crazy Good Times LE)

Well after I've seen some really great pictures of longer nails and those nail fashion stickers from Essence I decided to give it a try anyway. These are called "Glitterastic" and are sold for 3.50 CHF. You will receive 14 different sizes. 

I started with one coat of black and then figured out which size would fit best for my nails. I had some trouble with that, but more because of their width. They were just about the right lenght for my nails. I had to cut some but I would recommend that only if you are talented in such stuff, because I'm not. And it was messy. And it took me about half an hour or more to do all my nails.

Well, they might appear pretty on the pictures, but that's just because I took them from a flattering angle. You can clearly see the black basecoat on the side of the nail and the rough surface in the front. And it was impossible to apply them without wrinkles on my thumb and index finger nails. That's why I added one coat of BTGN Top Sealer, which changed the appearance a little bit.

I think they're looking awesome on the pictures but that's not enough for me! I bought the purple ones as well (yeah, of course I did) and I will still try them, maybe I can improve my technique a little.