Kiss: XL Halloween Claws
Catch me eating candy corn with these candy corn nails.
What’s in the Box?
Kiss nail kits always come with an instruction booklet, wood stick, prep pad, a little double sided file, glue, and a sheet of adhesive stickers. While I personally don’t like the adhesive stickers, I really appreciate that Kiss includes them as an alternative to glue!
The Nails
Wow, these are long. Like, they’re so much longer than I normally wear — roughly 1" to 1.25". (0.75" is about my limit when it comes to nail length.) There are four designs: solid orange, solid black, black with silver glitter, and a candy corn gradient design with an opaque black crystal near the base. All four designs feature a glossy finish and the tips of the candy corn nails glow in the dark!
Now, Kiss did something incredibly smart with these nails — instead of only using one base color for the body of the nails, they used either black, orange, or white. (I’ll rave about this more in the wear test section.) The black glitter nails have a black base, the solid black and orange designs have an orange base, and the candy corn designs have a white base.
The Numbers
My kit included 30 nails total even though the box claims 28. From thumb to pinky, I wore sizes 1, 8, 7, 9, and 11. Here’s a breakdown of the sizes included in my kit along with the size breakdowns of the designs!
Solid orange — Size 1, 3, 6, 11
Solid black — Size 0, 2, 4, 10
Black glitter — Size 5, 7, 9
Candy Corn — Size 5, 7, 9
Size — Amount Included
0–2
1–2
2–2
3–2
4–2
5–4
6–2
7–4
8–2
9–4
10–2
11–2
Purchasing Experience
You can find Kiss nails carried in most drugstores, along with department stores like Target and Walmart. On the brand’s website, their nails mostly retail for $9 with more blinged-out nails priced in the $12 range. They also have a few sets on their site priced at $19 — they look extra blinged-out but I’m curious to see why they’re priced so high.
Kiss and its sister brands offer free shipping on orders over $30 and $3.99 standard shipping on all other orders. Last time I ordered from Kiss, it took a total of seven days (including processing time) to arrive.
Brand Details
Kiss is a huge brand with multiple sister brands. Two of those sister brands are Joah, a K-Beauty inspired makeup brand, and ImPress — a nail brand I reviewed a little while ago. I actually bought these Kiss nails alongside some ImPress nails and they tossed in a Joah lip gloss as a free sample!
If you want variety, Kiss has it. They have nails in solid colors, seasonal designs, classic neutrals, colorful patterns, and sets encrusted with gems. Most of their designs are medium or long length but they do have some short (and “real short”) kits! Most of the short nails they offer are classic square French tips. You can find the other lengths in coffin, almond, and squoval, and square shapes!
In addition to nails, Kiss also sells a variety of lashes and lash tools, hair color, and hair styling supplies.
The Wear Test
Listen, I didn’t expect to love these. I tend to fidget with my nails so extra long nails like these usually wind up driving me nuts. That being said, I absolutely adored these nails. I LOVED everything about them. The length was surprisingly workable, they felt sturdy and withstood all of my fidgeting with barely any damage, and they made me feel like a badass. I played through my very first Destiny 2 raid wearing these nails and was still able to (mostly) keep up!
The tips of the candy corn nails glowed so brightly in the dark — printing these nails on a white base was a genius move and gave that glow an extra boost. The candy corn nails also had an opaque black gem down near the cuticle! Now, I don’t normally love the look of opaque gems with no iridescent coating but this gem was so perfectly placed and fit the theme so well that I loved it. The gem facets added just enough sparkle to catch the eye and tied the whole manicure together.
I wore this set for a full five days and the only damage I saw was a slight bend mark on one of the candy corn nails and the black coating wearing off a bit unevenly on the edge of the black nails.
Now here’s why these nails got me so excited. Since the black nails were a black coating over an orange nail, I was able to take a file to those unevenly worn black edges and gently file the whole free edge to expose the orange. This made a super clean, delicate outline and turned a solid black nail into an orange and black nail that looked intentional and not damaged.
The Verdict
I cannot overstate how much I loved these nails. I loved how intentionally the base colors of the nails were chosen, I loved the glow in the dark tips and the black gem, and I loved how damage-resistant they were. I’m so glad I picked up a few other XL designs from this year’s Halloween collection and I will absolutely keep my eyes open for next year’s designs!
