These are my nails...

These are MY nails on Nail Envy.  Ok so I will start by saying that I have never been a big supporter of nail strengthening products.  There are two main reasons for this.  One: I have never had any real need of them.  My nails have always been strong and grow quickly without peeling unless I'm being really crazy with them (like the week I had three sets of student acrylics and a set of wraps put on and taken off them!!).  I would love to attribute this to my healthy, vegetarian lifestyle but...I probably just need to thank my wonderful parents for the good genes.  Two: they don't really work.  Now, I know some of you are thinking, but they make MY nails stronger.  Well...let me rephrase that for you.  They do work.  In a sense.  Do they add strength to your nails? Yes.  Do they prevent peels? They can.  But are they really STRENGTHENING your nails? No.  Nail strengtheners are a lot like split end "repair" creams in that they DO fix the problem but they don't really FIX the problem.  They work at the surface of your nail which is why if you want to keep seeing results, you need to keep applying them into forever.  I actually have a post planned which will discuss different strengtheners and why to use them or not to and how they work. That's not for today! Today I want to show you why I personally choose to abstain.  I got this bottle of Nail Envy by OPI for free and I have used it here and there when my nails have been wrecked. More so because I find that it feels soothing than anything else. But since I had two nubbin hands I decided, I may as well test out this theory!  I totally flaked on a pic of my nails before I started this routine but both were the same length and they were essentially just below the tips of my fingers.  I did exactly what the Nail Envy bottle said to do and applied two coats the first day and one every other for two weeks.  I didn't use any polish during that time on EITHER hand but left my other one completely free of polish or treatments.  I didn't see much change so I gave myself a mani at the end of the first two weeks and then started over.  This is four weeks of nail growth.  My middle finger broke early on so it's a bit shorter than the others but aside from that I had no serious problems. Now, you might be saying to yourself, those look pretty good, right? Well ladies and gentlemen...let me show you my OTHER hand:

This is pre-manicure so excuse my raging cuticles!  I did have one tragedy on this side as well and you can see it on the pinky. Looks like someone got hungry and took a bite! However, overall the growth is definitely better on this side than the other. Aside from the difference in growth I had another issue with the nail envy side...

Check out the tip there....hello peelies!  Yikes.  I don't think I'll use the Nail Envy again unless it's dire straights. One thing I would like to point out though is that using a nail strengthener on strong nails CAN make them brittle.  That wasn't the issue here but in the interest of full disclosure now you know.  I asked some of you on my Facebook how you felt about Nail Envy and there were mixed reviews.  Some of you mentioned Seche Rebuild, Nail Magic, Nail Tek and Rejuvacote.  I'll definitely be including some of those in my upcoming nail strengthener post!! 

Have any of you had better results with Nail Envy?