Review Time: Hot Designs Nail Art Pens
I wish, more than anything to be good at nail art.
And I've been practicing a bit with traditional brushes, dotting tools, and the polishes with the tiny tiny brushes built in.
We all know how well that went:
I mean, come on, those are adorable and we all know it.
So when I saw the nail art pens- I was super interested. Look at the pictures! Poka-dots at the drop of a hat, cool lettering, and stripes that are done with ease- I was all over it.
So these pen sets retail at places like Bed Bath and Beyond or Walgreens for just under $15.00.
They come with 6 colors built into 3 pens. This particular set was more of the basic colors- white, black, red, pink, green, and blue, which I thought might be more beneficial to me.
And inside each pack is a booklet sort of explaining how these work and then they have step by step ideas on how to make different nail art.
So the way these work is you can either uncap just the top, revealing a tiny metal pen tip OR you can unscrew the whole thing and use the polish just as traditional polish.
The polish brush is pretty nice, to be fair. It's a bit wide so it's more like an OPI brush, but the bristles are longer which sort of makes it a bit more squirrelly to handle.
The pen is super fine, which is nice too but the product LOVES to build up around it, so you constantly have to clean these off- especially before putting them away.
The actual line work on the pens is pretty tiny, but the consistency is SUCH a problem. Basically there are air bubbles that build up and when you squeeze the tube to push paint through the pen tip, it causes gaps in your art work or actual bubbles to come out (which pop at come point an splatter).
You can kinda see where the M was having air bubbles.
And oh my God, don't even get me started on the whole squeeze while you draw thing. I can't even get it together. I suck at doing that, and I wish it was because it's like a user error thing, but it isn't. The part where you're supposed to squeeze is up by your knuckles, so it makes this annoyingly difficult.
The polish itself started out ok but once you've opened the pens or the polishes up a couple times it gets HARDCORE goopy and thick. To be fair, these are supposed to be quick drying, but the answer is simple- DON'T MAKE IT USABLE AS A POLISH.
There's just no point! Every time I open the container, it's drying it out.
I just wish these were more consistent with accuracy instead of causing gaps in the art, or worse off (as you see in the above picture) it does these "burps" where suddenly a glob of polish comes out- OR BETTER YET, when the polish comes out with an actual bubble and when you pop it it makes a mess.
Making a straight line with these is so much more complicated than if I had just used a stripe-r polish or had just busted out an actual paint brush.
I wanted to like these, I really did. The idea was right and the price was right, but geez- these were just pretty terrible.
As a consumer user, I just didn't get it and really, using my left hand to draw on my right was another huge issue. Drawing lefty isn't too difficult if it's just easy stuff like stripes or dots, but when you add the squeeze element into it- it's bad. I ended up having Roger do my right hand once to see if it was just me being a spaz and even he said the same thing, "It's easy enough but squeezing the tube is annoying... why is this so goopy?"
(Side note: Rod used to paint his nails in high school when that was a cool 90's thing to do. So, he's a pretty good judge on nail polish).
And as a professional user- this makes your life way more difficult than it needs to be. I would just rather use my brushes.
All in all, if you're really into nail art, or you do it for a living- I would just splurge on brushes and dotting tools. There's plenty of places that sell them- you can find especially good deals through amazon, or if you're a pro, Cosmoprof and Salon Centric have plenty to choose from.
Hopefully soon, there will be a nail pen that suits my needs,
-SamanthaK
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