Claire's Pre-Glued Nails
I went to a Claire's in what I'd consider an upscale shopping center about 3 hours away from me a few weeks ago, and found these. I absolutely hate the idea of putting glue on my nails, but these "pre-glued" nails caught my eye. The cashier said they had JUST come in, so I grabbed two packages (it was buy one, get one half off) and was waiting for nubbins to try this out. The package of 24 nails cost $5.00 US, which was pretty awesome considering that a manicure of fake nails can be up to $30 around here.
This seemed like a simple design - a white tip French with pink and blue stamped flowers and a blue shimmer top coat over it.
First complaint. You can see my nails underneath. I went ahead and pointed out the painfully obvious to you with arrows. Granted, it probably wouldn't be seen by the average person, but it annoyed me to no end.
Well, not even 10 minutes in having these nails, and I decided (not so smartly) to run my hands through my hair. I nearly died as my nails got STUCK in my hair - the hair wrapped UNDER the nails at the cuticles and got stuck in the glue on several of them. I wanted to die.
At this point I wanted to rip every single one of them off, but I decided to wait and sleep on it so I could get some sun pictures.
Left Hand - This is after around 12 hours of wear (or so). As you can see in the light, my original nails are showing, which again, irritating to me!
Right Hand - More annoying - do you see that the glue almost made a "bubble" on my middle finger? My pointer finger cuticle is all messed up from when I had a wart removed as a kid, so that wasn't fun. But also check out the ring finger. I originally put that nail on my pointer finger before realizing it was WAY too big, so I tried to peel it off and put it on the ring finger. Instead I got all those weird gross bubbles.
CHECK OUT THAT LIFT. No wonder my hair got caught under there. OW.
I mean seriously, this was just plain painful.
It even lifted from the sides of my nail. The "pre-glued nails" don't have glue all the way out to the edges, so the result is that the nail is lifted on the sides. The insert says to slightly "buff" your nails with a file to maximize adhesion, but no way was I scoring my nails with a file.
Removal wasn't too fun either. I totally misread the instructions - you're supposed to soak your hands in warm water for 10-15 minutes and peel the nails off from the side. Instead, I put my hands under hot water for 15 SECONDS and peeled these suckers off. I was left with some glue because of it, but my Zoya Remove+ got rid of any excess glue.
Verdict? If you're in a super rush for a photo shoot, totally use these. If you're planning on keeping them more than an hour, no freaking way. I don't feel like it was a TOTAL waste of $5, but it was close.
Claire's is available world wide or online [official website].
