It’s pretty obvious we are big fans of nail polish strips/appliques/etc around here. Sally Hansen Salon Effects are my favorite, but I also quite like the OPI appliques as well as others. The ones I like the best do have one thing in common; they are always made from real nail polish and are not just stickers.

Between loving real nail polish strips and my eternal desire to try a splatter manicure (and not have to deal with the clean up…) I finally decided to give making my own polish strips a try.

The way I went about making these polish strips was a combination of a gazillion tutorials I’ve seen for this over the years. For an entire tutorial check below the jump!

What you need:

A plastic sandwich bag Nail polish. Obviously you can do any design you want. I used Maybelline Black Onyx, Essie No Place Like Chrome and Orly Rage. A top coat

How to make the strips:

Use your base color and paint strips on the plastic bag about the width of your nail and significantly longer than your current nail length. Make sure the strips are far enough apart so they can later be cut into individual strips. If you are going to do a design add that. I did a splatter design. This involved dipping a cocktail straw into No Place Like Chrome and Rage then blowing air into the straw to create the splatter effect. Let the nail polish dry for several hours. I let mine dry overnight. Just don’t let the strips go too long without using them otherwise the polish will entirely dry out. Cut the design into individual nail polish strips.

Application:

Apply one coat of the base color to your nails. Let dry at least partially. One at a time carefully peel the polish away from the plastic. Line up one end with the cuticle and press down in the middle of the nail moving from the cuticle to the tip. Then do the same for each side. File off the excess with a nail file. Apply a top coat (making sure to wrap the tips)

Turns out this was fun to do and alot easier than I thought it might be. I love the result (even though my nails do kind of look like my kitchen counter….) and of course the possibilities are endless!

This is also a great solution for those of you that have trouble doing nail art with your non dominant hand 🙂

As far as wear goes…this wears slightly better than normal polish though nowhere near as long as what you get from store bought polish strips.

They are easily removed with normal polish remover.