Sally Hansen Salon Effects Heart Breaker

In a previous post I tried out some OPI nail art stickers. This time around I'm going with the real polish version. Which is not what I thought it would be. I was expecting like, the polish on the back of a clear tab that you align on the finger then press it down and lift the clear tab off. These really are stickers. Sure, they're nail polish. And stinky nail polish at that. But stickers nonetheless.

I don't generally go for these because they're wasteful to me. Eight dollars for a one use item that generated a ton of trash and you can't even save the extras to use as an accent nail or something? When I pay the same...or less...for something I can use again and again? They're very cute, I give them that. And mostly a lot easier than doing polish nail art. But yeah. Wasteful.

However (whatever with your however), when I see cute ones on sale for a price I'm willing to pay I obviously grab them up. For when I'm feeling particularly lazy. Or as a mid week quick replacement for a polish that didn't hold. Today was the former.


They come in a box with a cuticle stick, dual file/buffer, and instructions. Sixteen total in two sealed plastic packets, eight in each one. That was my first twinge of guilt for being wasteful. Surely there's a way to pack them so that I only have to open the ones I want and can save the rest? -_-

It's just like any other sticker:  find the ones that best fit your nail, peel off a clear layer, peel the polish off the backing, rip off a little bottom tab thing, align it as best you can, smooth over the nail, file off the excess. Pretty standard. The instructions say to stretch it a bit to fit the nail better. I say balls to that and also to using the cuticle stick to smooth over the nail because wow do these tear easily. Be fairly gentle with them. Not only do they tear but stretching them distorts the design.

One nice thing I did like about them. You get one that fits the nail pretty well except wow, that cuticle shape is all wrong. With these, each sticker has two rounded ends so if one end doesn't sit quite right, the other end is probably better. Not always. But it was a nice touch.

They never fit just right. And there's no way they're really going to ever. You can get pretty close though if you take the time to align them well. I usually start to and then get irritated and end up just slapping them on. They survive the Monet test, and that is an adorable design (I think it was for Valentines Day--love and poison? Someone at Sally Hansen is my soul sister), so I like 'em well enough.

Garbage generated:

1. Plastic box
2. Dual file/buffer
3. Instructions
4. Two plastic/foil airtight containers
5. Ten clear plastic sheets
6. Ten white plastic sheets
7. Ten plastic/polish end tabs
8. Six unused piece that include numbers five six and seven still attached
9. Cuticle stick

Sorta smelly. Wasteful as all get out. My carbon footprint just got slightly bigger. But cute!

Jess