YTJ Nails: Cheap, Adorable, Flawed
You get what you pay for but man, are they cute.
What’s in the Box?
This tiny, compact kit came with the nails and a set of adhesive stickers. Sweet and simple!
The Nails
These nails are precious. The strawberry milk theme made me feel so freakin’ cute. These glossy nails were a medium length and a rounded square shape. There were four nail designs in this kit — three printed nails and one plain gradient. These nails are translucent so they show a bit of natural nail underneath.
The Numbers
The box said that there were 24 nails in the kit and my kit had exactly 24 nails included. From thumb to pinky, I wore sizes 1, 7, 4, 6, and 8. There are four nail designs in this kit — I’ll include a size breakdown below!
Double Strawberry design: 0, 2
Single Strawberry design: 7, 8
Milk Drip design: 4, 5, 6
Simple Gradient design: 1, 3, 5, 6, 9
Size — Amount Included
0–2
1–2
2–2
3–2
4–2
5–4
6–4
7–2
8–2
9–2
Purchasing Experience
These nails were two whole dollars (only $2!) from Shein — here’s the specific listing on their site! Shein has a wild variety of nails — pick a length, shape, and style and they’ve got you covered. These nails were a part of a larger order and it took a total of 8 days (including processing time) to arrive. Totally reasonable!
One huge red flag you can find on Shein involves misleading product photos. Some press-on listings on their site show a set of professionally done acrylics as the main product photo and you need to click into the product page to see photos of the actual press-ons. It’s clear that with these listings, the press-ons are inspired by the professionally done nails but the lack of transparency bothers me and I‘m not comfortable purchasing from these pages.
Another note: the brand of these nails, YTJ, isn’t included anywhere on the product page in Shein. This was also the case with the other set of nails I purchased from Shein!
Brand Details
Shein is a gigantic company — it’s a low-cost, clothing-focused online department store. I’m sure their stock of press-on nails changes rapidly but as of writing this, I see coffin, square, squoval, almond, stiletto, and oval/round shapes. They carry short, medium, and long lengths — it seems like the majority of the longer nails are coffin or stiletto shaped.
Shein carries sets with designs, bulk sets of plain colored nails, holiday themed designs, trendy styles, and more classic styles like french tips. You can also find nail art supplies like clear tips for real acrylic nails, practice fingers, manicure tools, and UV/LED lamps.
The Wear Test
As a reminder, these nails were two dollars. In this case, you get what you pay for.
Three (our of four) of the single strawberry nails I wore had red ink from the strawberry design smudged on the back of the nail. Two of these also had dots of green ink from the strawberry leaves visible outside the design — they weren’t coordinated and they weren’t on every single strawberry nail so they were definitely accidental.
These nails also weren’t completely smooth — there was a slight bumpy texture underneath the shiny top coat. Here’s the best photo I could get!
Since these nails were slightly translucent, you could see where they were lifting or where I missed a spot with the glue. I have a love/hate relationship with translucent and clear nails — they look so cool but I can never get the glue perfect. I did a pretty good job with the glue on this set!
The length of these nails was also notable, specifically because they weren’t all a uniform size. Usually, the widest nails are a bit longer but the rest of the nails in a set of press-ons are generally the same length. These had a variety of lengths — the single strawberry nails seemed to be the same length but the middle finger nail was a bit longer and the thumb was the longest. This worked out great, however, because my pointer finger was shorter than expected and that was wicked convenient.
So, some context here: one of my piercings is acting up and I’ve been cleaning it with alcohol. Some plastics, usually acrylics, will crack when they’re exposed to alcohol — unfortunately, these nails must have been made of that type of plastic. After cleaning that piercing, I noticed a crack in my middle nail. Over the course of the next few minutes, seven out of ten nails cracked. My natural nails were absolutely fine but the press-ons were obliterated and I had to gently remove them with a lot of cuticle oil.
The Verdict
Did I feel absolutely adorable wearing this design? Yes. Were they super high quality? No. Were they wearable? For a short time!
These would be great for a short wear (maybe for an event) but you do essentially get what you pay for. Also, do not go anywhere near alcohol.
