Twilight Zone: Nails III - Press on Nails - Part Four

[Ed: Dear Reader, please find a link to Part Three or Part One if you landed here via an exteral link.]  

 hile writing this mega post I went browsing in Amazon to see current prices and if there was anything I just ‘needed’ to buy after all this time. I still found as before an astounding difference in prices for different styles of imPress nails, they were ranging from 7 to 90 euros!
After a while I came across imPress mint nails for 11 Euros by a company in Switzerland. Ok I thought, as I have no resistance to anything coloured mint I added them to my basket. On browsing further I found the same nails going for 64 euros from a company in the US!
I just can’t understand how a Californian based company can justify asking so much (postage was ‘only’ two Euros to Europe)! Of course there are always ‘sellers’ out there that are charging exorbitant prices hoping someone would make a mistake and order and pay for them. On top of that they probably won’t get the goods either.
 

On the right side in the picture are the nails I ordered. It was only after I had hit the submit button did it dawn on me they would be sent to my home address! In the past, for all of Abi’s stuff, they went to my work address which of course doesn’t exist anymore.
Until they arrived it was a mixture of being worried and not being worried at all that they would fall into the hands of MrsA with the question what’s in it!
I had a sort of Plan B which would have been along the lines that they were for her as she doesn’t like the smell of acetone / varnish and that these were really really cheap to have a bit of fun with. If she wouldn’t buy it then I would say they were for me to try out, opening a can of worms in the process, of course without alluding to my past sessions.

Well they eventually arrived and I was not quick enough. She signed and took them from the delivery man just as I got there after running up the stairs from the cellar trying to be first to the door. Luckily I had ordered a number of small computer items from Amazon that started to arrive over the days leading up to the nails delivery. So before she could take a better look at the packaging I took it from her, said it was probably computer components and disappeared into the cellar again. As this was not Amazon prime I suspected the sender address would be visible on the delivery address label. Not usually a problem if she saw it, but in this case I knew that the word ‘beauty’ was in the company’s name! Trying to explain the connection between computer hardware and beauty would have been interesting but luckily not necessary..

If you have read my other Nail posts (I and II) them you may remember me ordering imPress mint nails way back that on the way to me via my cousin got lost between the Welsh post and Germany. The advertisement picture is shown above on the left side. It’s interesting that they both have the same code, but differ in the number of nails and the pattern of the patterned nails!
Also in the Net I can’t find the ones I ordered and lost in 2016. I take it as with the cosmetic industry in general nothing is lasting, always something new but not necessary better.
It’s the same with lipsticks. I have a bright pink lipstick from way back, one of my favourites. Although it’s very very old and not usable anymore for obvious reasons, I still have what’s left of the lipstick in the holder. I take it out now and then and take a whiff. The smell is still there and takes me back to the rare times when I had the chance to wear it.
 

What was also a disappointment after unpacking the mint nails was the overall size. These nails are shorter in length than the ones I have been going on about in this post. And as there is no extra labelling concerning the length on the packaging, as with the medium ones, I therefore suspect that ‘short’ is default and is therefore not mentioned on any of the packaging. I have no problem with trying short nails; it’s just that they are also overall smaller in width. This is only my impression as I have only two sets of short nails to compare to the medium ones. The other short nails, not from impress, I’ll come to later.
 

I would have expected that within the same company the width sizes would be the same. As you can see the largest is not really big enough to completely cover my thumb even when pushed down.
[Ed: Its length is ok for the piano though]
Yes it is, maybe they are not so bad after all.
 

That is until I came to the patterned nails which I thought - maybe wrong here - were usually for the ring and/or index finger. Well for my ring finger they were definitely not designed, more suitable for my pinkies! Which when I come to think about it would look rather cute. If I get round to actually sticking them I’ll write it up.
 

As I have mentioned on more than one occasion I’m partial to mint, especially after eight in the evenings. Although not imPress nails, I fell immediately for the mint/grey ones from L’Oreal shown left. As one can see they are of the short-ish type. Again I just had to have them.
Delivery followed a similar logistic to the imPress mint nails although a little less exciting this time in that I was at home alone when they arrived.
 
The selecting and sticking to put in mildly is a ‘little’ more complicated than by imPress in that the nails are not primed with glue. The glue is provided in the form of double sided sticky pads of different sizes. As I have not yet gone through the motions with these nails, I think the following is about right in carrying out the application.
 

First the ‘fun’ part, matching the pads to the nails. To help, there is a transparent reference sheet with the shape of the pads and a number. The nails are also numbered, that is the frame on which the nails are attached has a number and not the nail itself!
This is where it can get a bit tricky. One thing you shouldn’t do is remove all the nails from the frame for obvious reasons!
One first removes just one nail from the frame to match to a finger, you have to remember the number of the nail until you have made a match or not. You then note down the nail number and the finger, and then park the nail on the correct position on the reference sheet. This is then repeated for the other four digits of the same hand. The other hand is a repeat of the numbered nails and fingers. Without actually trying this, one could write the number on the underside of the nail with a fine tipped CD marker, especially on the ones which are rejected by matching.
Next comes the ‘sticky’ bit.
One selects the pad by shape using the reference sheet. I think it would be an advantage to use a fine tipped pair of tweezers when removing the pad. This would stop it sticking to all and sundry before it gets applied to the false nail and then the real nail.
If I get the opportunity to go through the motions with these nails, I’ll post a blow sorry stick by stick commentary on how it went.
 

Only one last thing which may be of interest. On browsing the net looking at sites about nails in general, I came across this table of different shaped nails on superdrug dot com.

I had no idea there were so many different styles!

They all look quite nice to wear apart from:
‘Edge’ gives me the itchy feeling I need to dip the tip in an ink bottle for some reason.
‘Lipstick’ looks like someone was drunk when applying. I wonder if you can get them for left handers like me?
‘Cut out’ looks like a case of nail biting and
‘Trapeze’ looks like someone sat on them before they were dry!

So that’s nailed it for now!
Sorry I went on so long. It was a lot of ground to cover.
Comments, critic and own stories welcome as always!