I love painting my nails. To be more accurate I should say that I love having painted nails, but painting them is such a pain in the backside. I have two big drawers full of nail polish, some bottles being a few years old, that I don’t ever get through or only use twice or thrice. The agony (I’m just joking) associated with painting nails and waiting for them to dry is just not worth the pretty look.

I have tried using some drops and some spray to help speed up the drying process, but that is it. They only speed it up. They don’t make the polish dry instantly. I have used some speed-dry polish but it’s more expensive and some brands don’t have good speed-dry polish – it still takes a while to dry.

I have had a few successful nail-painting jobs, though. I painted my nails like watermelons that one time.

But now nail wraps have become a thing. They are like nail stickers that cover the whole nail. I am not sure why they are called wraps, apparently because they wrap around your nail, but I still don’t have a mental image of these things ‘wrapping’.

I tried some a while ago, in a shiny tiger sort of print. My mum had given them to me about a year ago but I never tried them. Since I was lazy to paint my nails, I gave them a go. I don’t have a photo, unfortunately, but they looked pretty cool when I finished sticking them on my nails and filing them down. The bad thing was that the stickers were quite thick, so they crinkled really easily and didn’t stick well on my nails. I ended up removing them. :(

I discovered SCRATCH recently, an online store for nail wraps that also offers a subscription for $30 a month. They have some amazing designs on there. It’s quite obvious when you wear these nail wraps that they are not real nail art, though – you can sort of tell that they’re stickers of some sort. I was keen on trying this subscription, willing to fork out the money to replace using nail polish, but I decided to hold off for a bit.

My cousin gave me some as a gift when we went to Indonesia in October. They are by SASAnails_id on Instagram but they don’t have a website, and their account is private. I decided to try one of the nail wraps she gave me. I wasn’t a huge fan of the design because it was too crowded, but it had dogs and teal – favourite animal and favourite colour (though my favourites alternate between those, and octopuses and red, haha), so why not.

The whole time I put them on, I was thinking, shit this is so cute, but I bet it’ll rip off in the shower. Which is essentially what happened with the tiger print ones I had previously tried. I was pleased that these nail wraps didn’t crease as much as the tiger ones did. They were quite thin in comparison. I had to cut a few of them shorter before applying them because I wanted a certain part of the design to be on my nail and not be filed off.

https://twitter.com/georgiecel/status/673380562120216576

I painted a clear top coat with some clear polish. After waiting for the top coat to dry I admired my handiwork. I washed the dishes, albeit with gloves on, but didn’t try too hard to be careful. My nails still seemed OK. Awesome.

When I washed my hair I took a bit of extra care while massaging shampoo on my head. I wasn’t too careful when I washed and dried my hands, but they stayed intact. Overnight? No dramas either!

The only thing I have noticed is that the nail wraps seem to shrink down or slide down from the top of the nail, exposing just a tiny bit of the tips of my nails. I am not sure if that is from the coat of polish causing it to contract when dry, or the heat from hot showers loosening the surface of the wraps, but once I press down on the nail wrap and gently rub up to pull the wrap back to the tip of the nail, it stays put for a while.

I guess I will be on the hunt for more good quality nail wraps – I might try SCRATCH once I have run out, but I think I’ll be farewelling nail polish for a good while unless I am bored.