Hey everyone!

I was recently asked to try out some of the NCLA Nail Wraps. Having had only good experiences with such products before (the Sally Hansen Salon Effects in particular), I said yes. Now let me just preface this by saying that reviews like this one are always very difficult to do. But I know that as a blogger I have a responsibility to share my experiences, both the good and the bad. Unfortunately, this is one of the bad ones.


Let's start with application. First of all, I actually had a little trouble removing the wraps from the sheets. The thin cardboard backing always wanted to come off with the wraps. This was a minor issue, but still worth noting.

Next, although the set comes with a fair amount of different sizes, it seems that most of my nails are in between sizes. One would be slightly too small while the next one up would be just a little too big. This isn't necessarily a flaw of the wraps, though.

The application itself actually wasn't too difficult because the wraps are pretty flexible. I found it easiest to use the flat end of an orange wood stick to smooth out any bumps. I got the first few on and decided that I didn't like how they fit on my nails, so I planned to remove them and start over with different sizes.

That brings me to the removal process. These are not nail polish based, so they're not removed with acetone like some other similar products are. Instead, you're supposed to just peel them off. This was a red flag for me immediately because peeling glue off the natural nail is never a idea. So I was proactive and used my hair dryer to warm up the wraps and hopefully loosen the glue before removing them. I started with my ring finger and peeled it off as the directions say to. Not good. The wrap took pieces of my natural nail with it.

At this point I didn't even want to remove the others I had on because I didn't want to damage the rest of my nails. But obviously they had to come off. So working one nail at a time, I alternated back and forth between using an orange wood stick to gently push the wrap off and blasting it with some heat from my hair dryer to loosen the glue. Each wrap took a good 7-8 minutes to remove this way, but it was definitely worth it because those three nails are significantly less damaged than the one I peeled the wrap off of. Unfortunately, even those other nails took a slight amount of damage.

Below are two photos I took after removing the wraps. The first one is immediately after removing them, so there was still some glue residue left on my nails. The second one is after I removed the residue with some acetone. As you can see, my ring nail took a big hit. The others have a couple of small patches of damage, but definitely not as bad.



After that ordeal, I definitely wasn't putting any more of the wraps on my nails, so I don't even have photos of what they look like on. I apologize for that, but I just couldn't bear to put my nails through that again.

The only positive thing I have to say about these is that there's a good and unique variety of designs to choose from. The two I chose are really quite pretty. But frankly, I wouldn't recommend them. I think NCLA should consider redesigning their wraps so that they're polish-based and thus can be removed easily with acetone.