Review and Swatch: Essie Sleek Stick nail appliques in Stickers and Stones and Embrace the Lace

While these nail appliques still retail for around $10 at places like Target and the Essie website, they have been popping up at dollar tree’s across the US! So, of course I had to buy up the ones I could find. According to my mother, who bought me some of these also, they were still more at the store so I might just have to pick up more doubles…

The ones that I bought are: Stickers and Stones, Embrace the Lace, Over the Moon, and Show me your stuff. The ones I have worn so far are the first two designs so I’ll go more in depth with them.

Stickers and stones is a medium grey with metallic silver bumps.

Embrace the lace is a semi-sheer rose gold with white lace pattern overlaid.

How these are applied is simple. They come with 18 stickers of various sizes so you have your pick to find which size is closest to which nail. You then peel off the sticker and place it on your nail, smoothing it out and then fold the remaining bit over your nail and buff it off with the file included. The package also includes a plastic stick to push back cuticles. I find all of this very easy since they are pretty sturdy stickers and don’t flop over or try to stick to themselves like many stickers. I do get folds in them because I am horrible at applying stickers, but they were not that noticeable, especially from a distance, I had less with my second set once I got used to the process.

They are marketed as lasting around 10 days. I wore them for a week. They didn’t peel off or fall off during this time even though I did shower. I didn’t swim or wash a lot of dishes so I do not know how that would affect wear. What did happen was some serious tip wear. The stickers are made of what seems to be three layers: the bottom sticky layer, a middle layer wear the design pint is, and the top “hard” shiny layer. When I wear them for a while the top and center layers by my nail edge lift a bit and while it doesn’t get ground off or lift too far, the paint design gets scrapped off. This means the edge is now just a clear bit of plastic. This doesn’t bother me because I am used to much worse chipping and peeling from my nails, but someone who likes pristine polish may be irritated.

tip wear

To remove, I simply grab an edge and peel off, no problems at all.

The only thing that annoys me is that each pack comes with 18 stickers. Since I have mid-sized nails and don’t mind if they are not perfect; I could use all of these stickers. But, since there are 18 not 20 I can only get one full use out of them. Would it be such a bother for Essie to put 20 or 22 sticker per pack so we could get two uses? I’m sure it’s a marketing ploy to get everyone to buy more pack and have plenty of left over stickers. What I’m planning to do is apply the 8 stickers that are left and just fill in the remaining nail with polish like a reverse accent nail.

Overall though, I really like these sleek sticks. The designs are so cool; many have three dimensionality and texture. They are also easy to apply and remove. I just hope I can find more because at the normal price of $10, they are just way too expensive for one wear. At $1 though I’ll be stocking up.