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Nailene Skinny French Tip Pen
by abbadabbado I've always wanted to achieve the perfect French manicure at home, but I always struggle creating a perfect finish when using my left hand with the varnish brush. Being right handed is cumbersome when trying to achieve perfection on a right hand, and I expect left handed people feel the same the other way around. When I spied this ... French manicure pen I knew I had to try it. It had to be easier than using a nail varnish brush to create great white tips didn't it? ==Packaging== The pen looks like a shorter stubbier version of a normal pen. The lid has a little clip just like your standard pen, it's just designed to look like a beauty product rather than a writing implement by being shaded in a stark white colour. Once you take the lid off the pen which is a nice fit and secures with a good solid click, you are greeted with a chubby tip, much like a child's first felt tip pen. This is your drawing implement for your nails rather than paper. Overall the product is nice to look at and you wouldn't get too confused between this and a writing pen. ==How to use== The first time you use this pen you will need to create the flow of varnish before applying to your nails. To create the flow of varnish, the packaging advises you to hold the tip down on a surface for 30 seconds until the tip fills with varnish. I found this to take longer than the required time, but it was easy to see when the varnish started to flow through. Whilst it didn't spill over the top of the nib, I would suggest you used a surface such as a scrap piece of paper. Once the pen is ready to use, you can then apply to your nail tips. You can use guides but these aren't included in the packet so would have to be bought separately. I found the varnish to be a good consistency which wasn't too runny, nor too thick. I did find it quite easy to create a thin tip with a steady hand, but getting to the corners of rounded nail tips are quite difficult to achieve smoothness with the chubby tip of the pen. Some cleaning up time is needed with an orange stick dipped in nail varnish remover or such like to clean up quickly, as I found the varnish to dry very quickly. Once your tips are done, and I would suggest a couple of minutes between doing each hand, it dries quickly for you to be able to apply clear nail varnish over the top. Without adding clear varnish the tips looks too stark and bright and very fake in appearance. They are also quite rough to touch which isn't a nice feeling, and very different than if you were to apply white nail varnish from a manicure set. The finished product looks quite nice when the whole look is completed, but sadly I have found the nails to show flaws very quickly after finishing. When only doing your average daily use with hands, I saw chips and cracks in the white tips very quickly after only a few hours in the day. This made my hands look tacky and like they needed re-doing. I would have preferred a couple of day's perfect finish from the polish before having to re-apply. ==Cost== The product will cost your £4.99 which includes the pen and a small bottle of clear varnish. Made by Nailene, I really don't think this product stands up to other products on the market designed to give you the same effects. Read the complete review |
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Nailene French Tip Pen Kit
by blackrose_ By some miracle, my usually "too short to do anything but buy fake tips" nails have managed to grow into a reasonable state over the summer! I was delighted about this, but wanted to protect them as well as "make the most of them", so decided to invest in some new polishes and bits and bobs in order to do ... this. I am a huge fan of the look of a French manicure; I think not only does it make even pretty short nails look elegant and attractive, but it helps to keep nails looking "clean", as well as goes with more or less any outfit and is suitable for just about any situation. Having said that, as a former "fake tips only" nail person, who also tends to suffer occasionally from shaky hands, I was less than confident in my ability to be able to re-create this look by myself at home! Armed with more optimism than expectation, I took my trusty "Advantage card" into Boots to try to find a kit that would help me to achieve the desired results! -THE KIT- This kit comes in a few different guises with slightly different shades and packaging. The one I opted for is described on my receipt as "natural", although there isn't any shade referencing on the box that I could find! It is comprised of 3 polishes; 13.3ml of "Acrylic strong, protecting base & top coat" in a typical nail polish glass bottle with a screw lid and brush (this is clear in colour), 13.3ml glass bottle of a pale pink polish described as "Hard & Healthy French manicure", and a 2.9ml "White Tip French Tip Pen". It also inclueds a sheet of adhesive nail guides, which essentially are curved, sticky pieces of shiny white paper, intended to make applying the white tips neatly easier. For some reason you get 42 of these little "guides", which seems rather an unusual number to choose but I suppose there is some logic in the company's thinking somewhere! The whole kit is contained in one cardboard box with a clear plastic front to enable you to clearly see the contents of the kit before purchase (except for the nail guides which are hiding behind the rest of the stuff in the box!) -PRICE- I paid £9.69 for the kit in Boots, although it was part of a "3 for 2" offer, and I also received a couple of £5 off vouchers when I used my Advantage card (for fragrances and the No.7 collection), so I felt this was a fairly reasonable price for the contents of the kit with all the "bonuses" thrown in on top! -USING THE KIT- The main reason that I opted for this kit over the many others available was the fact that the white polish in the kit comes in the form of a pen, which in theory makes application a lot easier and helps even a novice such as myself to achieve a "professional" finish. After applying the clear base coat, which was a little bit runnier than polishes I am used to, but easy enough to open use and came with a decent sized brush, I "prepped the pen" as per the instructions on the box by holding upside down, pointing onto a piece of scrap paper and pressing the tip into the pen for 30 seconds. This sounds easy, and it was, once I had located the tip to replace in the pen as this mysteriously flew off across the floor without my noticing when I pulled the cap off the pen! The tip is made of a "stiff sponge" type material, reminiscent of highlighter pens, and it was fairly easy to see where the polish was saturating the nib of the pen. The nib itself is shaped a lot like those found on chunky type highlighters...a sort of "wedge" shape. On my first hand, I decided to have a go at doing the tips without the guides, as I had watched a few youtube videos about French manicures before I set out to do this, and those mentioned that some people actually find "free-handing" easier than using the guides. I simply turned the pen until the wedge tip lined up with my nail, then (again following advice found online), dragged my nail under the pen rather than moving the pen in order to draw the white tip onto my nail. This was fairly easy to do, although I did have a couple of slightly wiggly lines at first these were only very slight and I guesstimate I only had to "go over" the white bit of my actual nail by less than 1mm to correct it into a better line. The first coat goes on quite streaky, although I expected this as the instructions with the kit do state to apply 2 coats of the white to the tips of the nail. I left the first coat to dry for approximately 5mins before attempting to do the second coat. For some reason I found this a fair bit trickier than applying the first coat. I am not sure whether this was because there was less polish left on the tip of the pen (so I pressed it in again upside down as to prep it to put a bit more on it), or whether the surface of the nail was less smooth having had the first coat of polish applied, but I did find this a bit of a challenge to do! The pen seemed to "drag" a little bit against the first coat of polish, and actually slightly scratched off the first coat in a few small patches. Being a novice, on the first nail I tried to correct this by pressing the tip in again whilst on the nail (don't do this...you get a "blob" of polish which is then difficult to spread out evenly, and I actually ended up having to take all the polish off this nail with nail varnish remover and start again from scratch on this nail!). My second attempt at correction was to "re-prep" the pen, and this did seem to work to some extent, but I still found it quite difficult to get a smooth and even finish on the nail with the second coat of white. For the second hand, I did use the nail guides. These were a bit of a swine to peel from the backing paper, as they are pretty small and thin, and haven't been cut apart all that well, so as you try to peel away one sticker, two or three others try to come with it, which leads to a bit of fiddling about as you try to seperate one sticker from the others without ripping it! Once I had one sticker, it was fairly easy to apply to the nail just under the natural "white bit" of my nail to mask off the area next to where I would be using the pen. The one thing I would mention about the guides though is that they are all identical, whereas obviously my nails are not. This meant that while the curve of the sticker fit some nails beautifully, on others (particularly smaller nails such as my little fingernail), the curve didn't really curve enough and left a fairly straight-ish line across the nail which wasn't really what I was hoping for. I think in some ways it may even have been better to just have a straight sticker, as then at least all nails would have a uniform line, but as it was, some nails had a fairly natural cirve whereas others were almost straight. I proceeded to use the pen with pretty much the same "lack of ease of use" as on the first hand, waited for the polish to dry, then removed the guides. To be honest, the result I got on the hand without the guides was a fair bit better than that on the one with....partly because of the shape of the curv/not curve, but also because on a couple of nails the polish had seemed to "collect" against the edge of the sticker, leaving a fairly obvious "ridge" between one side of the white tip and the other side. This wasn't even an "ending line" where no polish met polish, but more of a "mini hillock" between the two areas! Once I was not entirely happy, but felt that I had achieved the best tips I was likely to be able to get, I moved on to applying the pink polish. As with the base coat, the bottle was easy enough to open with a decent sized brush, with the usual odour of nail polishes, but again I found the polish looked very runny...whilst I had assumed that the base coat was runny as it was intended as a base coat, I was a little bit concerned to see the consistency of the coloured polish, but thought (as a novice), that this was perhaps not only because the polish had to go over a white tip, so maybe runnier wouldn't distort the white so much, but also as when you do a French manicure you have a fair few layers of polish, perhaps this was to minimise the thickness of polish on the nail? A little anxious but hopeful, I carried on! In the bottle, the pink looks quite subtle, very similar to the pink of my natural nail, but when I put it onto my nail I must admit I was less than ecstatic about the outcome; the polish went on VERY streakily for a start; I don't claim in any way to be a nail expert, but the way this polish went onto my nail it actually looked as though there were as many as 2-3 different shades of pink on the nail, some bits considerably more pink than others. I wasn't too put off by this though as again the kit said to apply two coats of polish at this stage, so I hoped the second coat would even this out. It didn't. If anything, not only was the streakiness still very visible, but the overall effect looked even worse, as the pink was so pink it made the white tips look a bit odd...the shade they went I can only really describe as "6yr old girl going to a party"...it was almost a "bubblegum" pink, it made the white a very childish colour and I really was not at all happy with this result, so yet again I took all the polish off poor nail number one and had to start doing this one again from scratch! I decided not to apply 2 coats of the pink to the other nails, as I was so unhappy with the way that had looked, but at the same time I didn't want to settle for the awful streaky nature of the nail finish either! After a few minutes of sitting glumly and thinking, I remembered that I had a Rimmel Lasting Finish polish in "Icing Sugar" (a beigey-nude shade), and decided to try to apply this in the place of the second coat of pink, to try to even out the streakiness and also tone down what I thought was, even with one coat, a bit of a childish pink for someone in their 30s such as myself! I am happy to say this worked beautifully; the Rimmel polish did exactly as I had hoped and I ended up with a nice pearly and pretty even finish to the nail...I guess all is well that ends well, but at the same time, I must say I was disappointed to have to "add to" the kit with some of my own supplies in order to get what I felt was an alright looking finish. -OVERALL THOUGHTS- Although I was eventually able to obtain a finish which looks acceptable from around 10inches away, this was not at all easy and I really felt a bit let down not only by how tricky the pen seemed to make things, but also by the quality and colour of the other polishes in the kit. Despite my inital hopes regarding the pen, I honestly think it made things worse rather than better, and in future I would definitely not opt for this kit, preferring to "take my chances" with freehanding polish applied with a brush! On some of the nails I used the guides on, even after my attempt at salvage, the "hillocks" remained visible and made it look as if I had great big cracks in my nails. On the positive side, the end result did last well (although bear in mind it had a Rimmel Lasting Touch polish under a top coat, so whether this was the kits' polishes lasting or the Rimmel, I can't be sure..!) There is an option on the back of the box to return to base if you are not happy for a refund, but as the mailing address to do this is in the USA, I feel this would be a waste of time and money as it would probably cost almost as much to return as I may receive back! I definitely wouldn't purchase this kit again, nor would I recommend it. I would even go so far as to say it has put me off the Nailene brand in general! Read the complete review |
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Nailene Skinny French Tip Pen
by Joker25 I like having nice nails. And, if you're a low maintenance girl like myself, a French manicure is a good way to go as it lasts ages and the chips aren't as noticeable as if you'd used a dark polish. However, to get a really good French manicure, you have to have a long enough attention span to put on a base coat, two coats of ... colour, a white tip and a top coat. I barely have the attention span to dress myself properly, so all that fannying around with nail varnishes is a lot to ask. Plus, if you want to do the white tip properly, you either need a white pencil and a steady hand (as you colour in the underside of your nail) or you need those sticker guide-things and a bottle of white polish (and I always, always mess that bit up). This white nail varnish pen looked like the ideal hassle-saving solution. ~*~Appearance~*~ It's about the same size as a Bic ballpoint, but a lot chunkier. The actual tip looks a bit like one of those permanent whiteboard markers. ~*~Use~*~ In theory, the fact that it's a pen should enable you to get a much neater line and give a level of precision that's tricky to achieve with a regular nail varnish brush. To activate it, you press down on the tip to get the white varnish flowing, and then apply to nails that have had a coat of varnish. Which all sounds terribly straightforward until you realise that it's actually a bit more problematic than it should be. The consistency is very fluid and this wateriness means that it's difficult to control how much of the product is deposited on your nails and makes them look very messy. The nib is quite hard so you end up drawing on your nail, rather than painting on it and any varnish previously applied becomes wet and then gets dragged up, leaving big trails and ridges in your otherwise pristine nails. I tried applying this first, on bare nails, but as soon as nail varnish was applied over the top it went smudgy and the line at the tip of my nails looked blurry and indistinct. I then tried applying this the day after I'd put on the coats of coloured varnish, but the consistency of the white polish and hardness of the nib still meant that my nails became very messy. I couldn't find any way of using this that didn't leave my nails looking awful, so I ended up binning it after about 5 uses. I'll stick to nail guides and white polish or white nail pencils in the future. ~*~Price and availability~*~ I bought mine in Asda, where it cost £4.99. That's an absolute rip-off for a product as poor as this. Read the complete review |
Nailene Make Up |
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1 review Brand: Nailene / Make Up / Type: Nail Polish |
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2 reviews Brand: Nailene / Make Up / Type: French Manicure Pen |
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1 review Brand: Nailene / Make Up / Type: French Manicure Pen |
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1 review Manufacturer: Nailene / Make Up / Type: Hand / Nail Care |
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1 review Make Up / For fingers and toes, chip resistant, strengthens weak nails, and a salon perfect french manicure. |
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3 reviews Make Up / Nail Varnish - Get perfect white tips for a French manicure. |
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2 reviews Make Up / For a flawless French manicure! |
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4 reviews Make Up / Real French offers nails in a sporty, short length perfect for everyday wear. Shorter nails can be hard to hold during application, so each kit includes a nail application tool for precise placement. Simply press tip of application tool to the center of the selected artificial nail. Press ... |
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