This post is a story of woe and frustration and horrible nail fails.
When I first saw these nail foils on Born Pretty Store, I knew I had to give them a go, you see, I have never used nail foils before and since working with Born Pretty, I have really enjoyed trying out new things. Most of the new things I try, I tend to get on with eventually, but nail foils have got the better of me.
Look at that beautiful holo! The foil comes in a little tub much like the old camera film tubs and when you take it out, it is a long strip of about 100cm and about 4cm wide. It feels very delicate when you are handling it but you can twist and pull at it and it is very difficult to rip or ruin, trust me, I tried.
The tube doesn’t come with instructions but the instructions can be found on the Nail Foils page on the Born Pretty website.
Using these instructions, I set about my first attempt, full nail coverage, with a base of GOSH Holographic Hero.
As you can see, it didn’t go very well. It wasn’t the most horrible thing I had ever done but it just wasn’t good enough. You can see patches where it didn’t transfer, patches where the foil pulled up a bit of polish as I removed it and just patches, everywhere. I had started with my thumb and one finger at a time, worked my way along to my pinkie and in my opinion, application improved with each finger.
I wondered why I couldn’t get it right, was it the epic migraine I have been battling for the last few days? Was it that I wasn’t waiting long enough for the polish to become the right amount of tacky? Was I rubbing too hard with the rubber hoof? Was it because my nails were too curved? Or was it because I just wasn’t skilled enough?
Honestly, I think it was a mixture of all of these factors, but I wasn’t going to give up. If the full nail thing didn’t work, I would try to do some smaller areas and maybe use a different polish in hopes that there would be some acceptable nail art in there somewhere.
So next I tried to do some half nail designs with a base of Barry M Matte Black. This went much better, with a lot less patches (still a few) and even looked much better against the black.
Maybe I was starting to get the hang of it.
NOPE! For my next attempt I tried a kind of angled, quarter nail design, using both the GOSH Holographic Hero and the Barry M Matte Black. Oh the patches :'(. But this wasn’t the worst of my attempts.
Triangles, triangles were a horrible mistake. As you can see, the pinkie was the best one, all the rest looked a mess. One thing I will say that was easy, was the clean up of them, any bits of foils that went over the skin or cuticle, came off easy with a few swipes from some polish remover on a brush and when removing the whole design, they came off just like the polish.
I will admit that I gave up at this point. I think I am destined to have a love/hate relationship with nail foils, they are so pretty and elegant but I just can’t master it. Plenty of people have, just look at the customer images and review on the product page, there are some absolutely gorgeous manis on there.
The foils are a fab product and I will break them out every now and then to see if I can build my foilage skills to a better level. If you are interested in trying the nail foils, you can buy them here for $2.88(£1.73) a tub, there are 10 patterns to choose from.
Use my code CBAQ10 for 10% off your entire order and remember when adding it all up, you don’t have to factor in shipping because it is free shipping anywhere in the world.
What do you think of this type of post? Personally, I like when the bloggers I follow post some fails every now and then, I find it makes you feel better when you just can’t master something yourself, sometimes that product just isn’t for you.
How have you gotten on with nail foils in the past? Have you never tried them before and are now looking to try? I would love to see some nail foil success stories.
:)x
The nail foils in this post were sent to me for review purposes. All opinions expressed are my own, honest opinions.