Review: Nailene Perfect Tips stickers

I've seen this image bounce around the internet for the last couple of months:

I think it might've originally been from an ad for Maybelline Color Show nail polish (or possibly a different brand?  If anyone knows for sure, please let me know!)

Anywhooooo, ever since I first saw it, I desperately wanted to do some nails with colorful French tips.  Unfortunately, I don't (yet!) have the skills necessary to freehand such French tips.

Enter: Nailene Perfect Tips stickers.

I'd been looking for something like this for a couple of weeks (Amazon has a couple options), but they always seemed a little expensive (especially for something bought online, sight unseen).  Then, on the same chance visit to Rite Aid when I got scored the marked down Cover Girl nail polishes, I happened upon the Nailene Perfect Tip stickers.  They were something like $1.99 for 96 stickers, so I figured they were definitely worth a shot.



I started by painting my nails with two coats of Revlon Impulsive, followed by a quick-drying top coat (Essie Good to Go).

[Aside: Revlon Impulsive is currently my favorite go-to purple.  As I write this, Lisl is using it right now.  I dearly love Essie and OPI, but in my opinion, both are seriously lacking in the purple department.  I will almost certainly write a post about this in the  future, as it is near and dear to my heart.  Here ends my soap box rant.]

I waited til I felt like SURELY my polish must be dry, and applied the stickers.  (Before using the stickers, I stuck them on the back of my hands a couple times to loosen their stickiness.)  Then I painted two coats of Butter London Fiddlesticks on my tips. 

Please excuse my messiness in the picture.

I tried to remove the stickers as soon as possible, but I think using two coats of tip color caused there to be some trouble getting the stickers to detach from the pink glitter polish.  Plus, even though I waited for the bottom coat polish to dry and tried decrease their stickiness, they still stuck a little to the base coat and distorted the polish.  Here are some pictures before I applied my top coat:

Here, you can see some of the distortion to the base color caused by removing the sticker.

And here, you can see how the tip color didn't lie flat after the sticker was removed.

But, don't despair!  A top coat can work miracles, and this was no exception.  After applying Essie Good to Go, you could barely tell there'd ever been any problems!

I'm going to give these stickers a tentative recommendation.  Obviously they weren't a miracle worker: there were issues removing the stickers from a bottom coat of polish.  Luckily, those defects were easily covered by a top coat.  I will definitely be giving these another try in the future.  I'm especially interested to see how they work when doing a traditional French manicure, or if they can  be used to do a half-moon reverse manicure.  I'll keep you posted!

If anyone has a brand of nail tip stickers they'd recommend, drop us a comment!  I'd love to try them out!