Tuesday, September 11, 2012

New Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fall Shades

I "blamed" Scrangie for luring me into buying 2/3 of polishes from the last post.  She's 3/3 this time!

Starting off with the 'big fuss' shade again, In A Flurry...


Oh yeah...fuss deserved!  There is a lot going on here.  In A Flurry has a deep, almost black, green or teal base and TONS of sparkle in colors ranging through greens, yellow-greens, purple, and blue.  It's really complex and one of those shades that could make you walk into a wall.  ...but...


The brush on these is...awkward.  I like a wide-ish, flat-ish brush, but this takes all the "-ish" right out.  If you've never used an Insta-Dri before, you're in for a shock when you take the cap off.  The idea with these is that you only need one quick coat and you're painted away.  That's a big promise and I think the odd brush is part of the attempt.  Trouble is, it's awkward on curved or narrow nails...and my pinkie is both.  The bottle is also kinda...off.  It's very tall, which makes dipping the brush feel...off.  Still, a color like this is unique enough to put up with an odd brush and bottle.  The coverage is great.  I know a lot of people don't like thick formulas, but I'll take thick over thin any day!

It's not just my 'magic lamp' (more on the Janso lamp soon) that makes it sparkle, it's just as flashy under standard florescent lights.



Purple Haste is also fairly unique.


The base is a standard enough dark purple shimmer, but there's a bunch of little blue fleck shimmer in there.  The flecks look blue/purple duochrome in the bottle, but that doesn't translate to the nail.  I didn't mind.  The shimmer is still eye-catching.


The whole 'one coat' idea fell waaaay short on my bottle.  This was three!  I've seen a few reviews that call it thick.  Not mine!  This is the thinnest Insta-Dri I have.

I took these photos during the day, so I had that rare chance at a sunlight shot.  The blue really pops in the sun!


...as much as I loved it, I had to sponge it to maximize that sparkle...I do seem to sponge everything lately.  It becomes *exactly* what the bottle suggests when sponged.  Some of the flecks even flash purple!
 


For me the real wow factor polish here is Freeze!, which just glows and shines like crazy.


The blue glow is so strong that my skin actually reflects it in these photos!  Freeze! earns that silly exclamation point.  It's just BOLD and metallic and shimmery and WOW!!!


I loved it so much that I bought it twice.  Later the same week, I happened on a bottle of OPI Swimsuit...Nailed It! and I just had to grab it.  I wore that a month ago and really suspected a similarity between these two.  They're not just similar.


Can you even tell which is which?  Swimsuit...Nailed It! is on my ring.  They're virtually identical, down to the exclamation point.  They also both stain like nothing else I've ever used.  I used a 'new' removal method and it was horrible.  Tragic.  I soaked in warm, salty water because sometimes that helps.  Turned the water blue!  My fingers were still blue.  I did a sugar scrub.  Still blue!  I wound up having to nip the perma-blue     (dead) skin or I would have had to stop swatching for DAYS at the rate it was going.  You can actually see a little blue in my skin on some of yesterday's swatches if you look too close.  Please don't!  *hides*  I really adore these twin stainmonsters, but I'll be careful removing them and diligent about my cuticles to reduce staining.  *sigh*

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