Review: Essie’s Sleek Sticks

Product Review

In an effort to share my love of all things hair, makeup, and nail related, I’ve begun to include reviews of some of the hottest new beauty lines. For the first round of reviews, I’d like to introduce you to the new Essie “Sleek Sticks” nail appliqué collection from their Nail Effects line. Essie kindly sent them over for me to try out and share my thoughts with you on how well they work.

If you’ve never tried nail appliques–in a nutshell–they are basically stickers for your nails. Quite frankly, when I first heard Essie was doing some I was a bit apprehensive to test them out as my experience in the past with other brands had more misses than hits. However, I LOVE Essie polish ,so I figured I’d give them it a go…plus the designs really caught my eye.

Essie Sleek Stick nail appliques, come in a variety of designs (12 to be exact, and listed at the bottom of this post); they are UV cured and said to last up to 10 days. In my history with other appliques: they usually don’t last more than a day without at least a little lifting. I didn’t have these on long enough to test out the wear time, but I’ve heard they are the best with staying on and you can get a good 4-5 days out of them.

Let’s get to it!

Each Sleek Stick package comes with 18 nail appliques, which are just enough for a full mani and a few extras in case you mess up. For me one of the biggest issue I come across is whether or not there are enough sizes in the package to accommodate the different widths of each nail bed. That being said–these we’re all large enough to work.

Essie additionally includes a small nail file, cuticle stick and easy instructions.

The directions are fairly simple:

1. clean and shape nails.
2. select the correct size strip for each nail, peel away film.
3. press on nail and file of the excess.

NOTE: Some product users will suggest that a top coat may allow for your appliqués to last longer. However, those that have tried get a shriveled up mess, so you might want to leave the top coat alone on this one.

These were very easy to apply and literally took less than five minutes; they were thin enough that I was able to stretch them just a tad to cover my entire nail and quickly file off the excess. I think the only one that really gave me an issue would be So Haute! as it was a little thicker than the others and most textured one.

My favorites out of those that I tried look wise would definitely be Oh My Gold, Don’t Cheetah on Me, and Stickers and Stones.

As much as I love the look, I personally can not see myself wearing these as a full set–especially if I was looking for my mani to last all week. I think you could do a lot of fun and easy nail art just by cutting a few, or even just using on an accent nail while polishing the rest of your nails with your favorite Essie color.

VERDICT: I’d say these are probably the easiest, and my most favorite nail appliqués out the few brands I’ve tried so far. In fact, I will be buying a couple more as I really want to rock A to Zebra and Love to Love You!

Essie Sleek Stick nail appliqués come in 12 designs and are available in nearly
any drugstore or whereever Essie products are sold for a suggested retail price of $10.25.

Product Review