Lana Condor’s “Candy Village” Manicure Took Exactly 7 Minutes To DIY

Like many 24-year-olds, Lana Condor is into nail art. The pandemic inspired the actress to quit her former nail-biting habit cold turkey ("do you know how many billions of bacteria are living under our fingernails?" she asks me during our recent Zoom interview) and start making fun, colorful nail art her "thing."

"Now, I love, love, love nail art," the To All The Boys star raves, flashing a set of pastel half-dipped tips that look salon-grade but she later tells me are press-on gels she applied herself in 7 minutes. "Right now, I have a full rainbow across my nails — and the best part is that I didn't have to sit for two hours to get it."

Condor is wearing, and referring to, Dashing Diva's latest innovation in at-home nail art, the Glaze collection. The actress, a new ambassador for the brand, describes the system as a package of "semi-cured gels" that you stick on your bare nails, file to size, and then cure under a mini LED lamp (which comes free with any Glaze set). "It's very easy: You pick out whatever design you want — right now I'm wearing Candy Village — peel the gel off the sheet, press it onto your nail, cut off any excess, and then finish the gel cure under the light," Condor explains.

In terms of sheer convenience, the peel-and-stick strip gels sound like a time-saver, especially for a gel-manicure loyalist. That said, Condor's even more excited about the designs. "There's this one Glaze design, it's called Cloud Amber, and it has this amber-and-turquoise tortoiseshell vibe —it's going to be my next manicure. Then there's one that has teeny-tiny pressed flowers floating in the gel; it's so dainty and beautiful and looks like a nail tech spent two hours applying each tiny, dried petal," she says, "but in reality, you can apply these manicures in seven minutes." Yes, she timed it.