All For A Quid

It's that time of the year again- it's August, raining, and I'm going to the fabulous Reading Festival tomorrow (yay!). It's pretty much inevitable that there'll be cider involved, it'll pour with rain, and I'll be caked in mud, so I thought that as well as bringing a pack-a-mac and giving the wellies their first outing since winter, I'd try something new on my nails. With all the things listed, it's probably not worth doing my nails and making them look pretty with nail polish- the end result probably being chips galore. I can't stand it when my nail varnish chips- it's one of by biggest bug-bears- and there's no way I'm going to stand re-doing them whilst listening to Kasabian, so I bought these cute nail foils from Primark.

My local Primani is pretty small so there wasn't much choice in design with these nail wraps, but for £1 (yes, £1!) I wasn't too fussed. I've been wanting to try Nail Rock's wraps for a while now, but haven't been able to justify spending almost £7 on them when I can just do my nails myself. So, when I saw these when in the queue I thought I may as well give them a go- these two, the Union Jack design and the metallic leopard print, were the only ones available so I bought one of each.

You get 20 foils in each packet, 2 of each size, and although you'd think you could probably get two separate wears out of them, it wouldn't happen as the sizes range from super-skinny to quite big (annoying as you could easily cut them down to size if they were too big). I've never applied nail wraps before, so was expecting the results to be pretty shoddy. And I was right. After a few go's it'd probably be easy, but for a learner it was a bit faffy.

Applying them onto a clean nail, you have to rub the nail foil to heat it up before peeling it off the packet, then stick the rounded part onto the cuticle. Once it's on, you smooth it down, going from the centre outwards, until there's no crinkles. That's where I went wrong- I faffed about too much when getting it stuck onto the bottom of my nail that after moving about to get the perfect position about 10 times, the rest of the foil had crinkled up beyond repair. This happened for almost every nail, but it's not that noticeable unless you run you finger over them.

 When they're on, just cut off the excess and file them down a bit. I personally think the design looks a tiny bit tacky, but for Reading Festival, I don't really mind too much. The actual foils tear very easily too, so you have to be really careful when applying them- I don't know whether this is a general nail wrap thing or because these are so cheap.

I ended up putting a coat of clear nail varnish over the top of these as they don't stick particularly well- I did the washing up a while after and they just started folding back off my nail. They seem pretty easy to take off too, although seeing as they're already trying to escape off my nails I don't think that was ever going to be a problem.

But, overall, despite the poor quality and the shoddy application on my part, I don't expect them to last long- as long as they get me through Reading Festival they'll pass the test. And for only £1, a quid, 100 pennies, I may just be stocking up on a few more, especially if more designs come out!