The Stickey Sandwich: Yum Yum

It's unlikely that you'll find it on a lunch menu alongside any of Rachel Allen's swanky new concoctions for O'Briens, but The Stickey Sandwich is a hot topic on nail discussion boards all across the interwebs. It's something I've been meaning to sample for a while now, and the recent spell of stay-at-home Arctic weather provided an ideal opportunity to give it a whirl.

Advocates of The Stickey Sandwich, made with my favourite CND Stickey base coat, say that it's a sure-fire recipe for longer-lasting manicures. Apply Stickey as a base, follow with two thin, even coats of your chosen colour, and add another layer of Stickey before topping the whole lot off with your chosen top coat.

To give it a proper trial and find out if it really is the Holy Grail of extended manis, I did nothing special either during or following application. I used a Barry M nail varnish - Mint Green, vay nice, except that it took three coats to get it to bottle colour without streaks, which is an issue I always have with Barry M. To finish the whole thing off, I used Seche Vite's Top Coat and toddled off about my business as usual.

And the results? Well, while I can normally only expect to get 2 full days out of an at-home mani (I'm really, really hard on my nails!), I'm pleased to say that it was the morning of Day 5 before chips appeared when I used The Stickey Sandwich method. Apparently, there's also a version that's a bit like a triple-decker, with Stickey layered between each coat of colour as well as below and above. I'll be trying that next to see if I can stretch a DIY paint job out to 7 days!