Are Lee Press-on Nails Responsible for Your Nail Obsession?

We are smack in the middle of a major nail art uprising. Never before have nail fans worldwide had so many options, ideas, and designs ready at their fingertips. Every month the newest trends hit our fingernails like a flashmob full of sticker art, 3D mini sculptures, and holographic glitter—yet we are still left wanting more!

While we wait patiently for the next big thing in claw couture, lets have a look back at our past nail obsessions. Our first polishes and products were really just an introduction into the full blown nail infatuation we indulge in regularly today. What sparked your fingernail fancy? Check out of few of our nail-worthy confessions.

SALON WINDOW ILLUSTRATIONS

Driving by nail salons while growing up, we couldn’t help but gaze at the lovely ladies that decorated each and every door and window. These racy illustrations featured blonds and brunettes with wildly undone eighties hairstyles and feathered bangs that seemed to be caught in some sort of deliberate breeze. Their pink lips glowed neon under the fluorescent salon lighting, and tangled in their matching fingertips they inevitably held a single rose. These salon women were like Barbie to us, but a grown up-version off limits until we were old enough to pay for our own manicures. Until then we could only dream of airbrush nails.

PEEL-OFF POLISH

Tinkerbell “BOPO” or “Brush On Peel Off” nail polish was the first peel-away nail color to hit the market in the early ‘80s. The "no remover needed" claim was a big draw for moms with beauty conscious kids, but the rubbery formula would rarely make it through a day without being lifted from our tiny nails during long car rides or Disney movie sessions. The petite triangular jars of cherry red and powder pink felt like more than simply a nail color, and indulging in them during our miniature manicure sessions had no doubt the biggest impact on our nail polish addiction to date.

SCENTED MANICURES

The best accessory match for our fruit-flavored lip balm was the chemically enhanced scented nail polish that hit stores in the mid ‘90s like a fragrant formaldehyde bomb. These perfumed polishes were usually glitter laden with a sheer finish that would only be right on our filed down preteen talons. The plastic fantastic scents ranged from strawberry to chocolate to kiwi to grape, and always were colored along to match for a candy coated experience more worthy of a Mr. Yuck sticker than any of the bottles under our kitchen sink.

PRESS-ONS

Before our precious gel manicure obsessions begun, press-on nails were the easiest way to get a lengthy french mani fast. Our parents hated the tacky white square tips we insisted on wearing in our early teens, but our plastic manicures somehow made us feel older albeit, not much wiser. The nails were prone to popping off at the most inconvenient moments in our high school days—a tube of nail adhesive was a must in our makeup bags. Looking back, the many times we managed to glue our fingers together wasn't so much of an annoyance as it was an essential part of the experience.