I haven’t made display hunting a priority for a while, what with so many mainstream beauty brands no longer putting out seasonal collections meaning there’s not much to find and thus no dopamine hits for me. Still, habits are hard to break, so whenever I’m in a store that carries nail polish, I tend to drift to that section regardless. On a trip to Fred Meyer, I stopped at the clearance bins and found a whole bunch of boxes with Hip Chic Semi-Cured Gel Nail Strips in them. I’d never seen them at full price, so that’s a sign I am shopping way less often than I used to. I figured it was a sign I should try them, so I bought a starter kit with the LED lamp in it (despite having at least two other LED lamps somewhere in my stash) and several sets of strips. I’ve now used these strips three times over the past two months so felt it was time to share.
There was still plenty of snow around when I tried these the first time, so I chose the Freezing Blossom set, which has light blue with silver microglitter strips with two kinds of accent nails: white with snowperson faces and clear with white snowflakes.
The lamp that came with the starter kit was wide enough to get four nails at a time in, then my two thumbs side to side. The legs fold flat for storage.
These strips were even thicker than the Dashing Diva Gloss Gel strips I used earlier this year. That was good for covering the ridges in my nails but made it more difficult to remove the excess length of the strips. Rather than folding and filing as I usually do with strips, with these clipping as close to the end of my nails as I could and then filing worked better. I used only the blue and clear strips for my look, mostly because I didn’t like the placement of the snowperson faces on the white strips.
I liked the look of these, and after they were cured felt almost as hard as fake nails. Unfortunately, they also popped off like fake nails. I lost the first ones just a few days after I’d applied them. The clear strips seemed most likely to pop off. With the first one, I tried reattaching like I would a fake nail, but that didn’t really work, as they just popped off again. Fortunately there were enough extra strips that I could just put a new one on and cure it.
A few days after the popping off started, I got some chips, like sometimes happens with traditional polish. Here you can see one on my thumb that I’d tried to disguise with liquid polish and one on my index finger. I removed these shortly after I took these pictures, using oil to loosen the bond of the strips and then gently prying them off with a manicure stick per the instructions. Six days of wear wasn’t too bad, I suppose.
The instructions caution against using these strips continuously (bit a of a warning sign there?), so I waited before trying the next set, My Dear. This has solid red strips, red with white hearts, red with red hearts on a clear background in a sort of reverse French mani arrangement, and red and white checkboards with hearts.
I did mostly the solid red strips, with one accent nail per hand. I thought maybe I’d overcured the first set; the directions said to use the lamp 2 to 3 times, so I did 3. I did 2 rounds of 60 seconds with these and they held up better. Whether that was because of the reduced curing leaving them a bit more flexible, or the lack of full length clear strips, or what, I’m not sure.
I used the strips from the starter kit most recently. These are called Be Born and are all solid warm beige. I did have issues with these starting to pop off after a few days. Maybe my natural nails are just too thin and flexible to make a good base for these.
I did have issues with this last set starting to pop off after a few days. Maybe my natural nails are just too thin and flexible to make a good base for these, or maybe I was just too hard on them this time (I was at a craft conference where I was doing a fair bit of macrame).
I’d never used this type of strip before. I like the concept; they’re easy to apply and with the curing, should hold up better than strips that don’t work that way. Similar to the Sally Hansen Salon Insta Gel Strips but without the hassle of a liquid gel topcoat. I do wonder if they’re not good for my nails. I’m back to shorties now because when I took the last set of these strips off my natural nails were in rough shape and I had to file them down. I can’t be sure that’s the strips’ fault, though, as I’ve battled weak nails and peelies what feels like forever. I’m thinking I may try removing them like gel polish next time—roughing up the surface to break the seal then doing the foil method—rather than popping them off and potentially taking the top layer of my nail surface off with the strips.
