The Makeup Anarchist

I’ve been meaning to type this for a while, but school started and I had to get settled.  Anyway, a while back I was looking for a green nail polish and couldn’t find any I liked… I checked out the Sally Hansen website and they had a big thing about their HD nail polishes… and there it was… the green I wanted.

They actually had a gorgeous assortment of colors limited only by the rainbow (or a variation of)… very bright and very happy looking colors.  When I finally made my way to a store during daylight hours, I picked up Hi-Def (the green) and Cyber (the purple)… I assure you I wanted to grab up the whole lot, but 1) I’m not much of a nail polish wearer since I can’t go without picking it off for more than a few hours and 2) I had no idea if I would even like this product.

Before you really take my review for anymore than a personal experience, I have to warn you… I’m not a nail person… I’ve never had a manicure or pedicure, I keep my nails short because I type a LOT, and I pick at my nails when I’m thinking.  I also don’t keep my nails in mind when doing ANYTHING… so they get destroyed very quickly.

That in mind, the only true pro I can say about these polishes are the colors.  They *ARE* gorgeous, but in my experience, the formula SUCKS.

First off, I never use top coats or base coats.  It’s not worth my time.  These polishes at minimum I would say need a topcoat.  It took 2 entire days before they nail polish was as hard as a nail polish is supposed to be… meaning it was easily dented and knicked and that was without my interference.

It also took forever to dry for me. Now that might just be me, because I’ve read many reviews saying it dried pretty instantly.  Personally, I put on a thin coat (as I always do) waited about 5 minutes, then took a blow dryer on cool to them for another 10 minutes and I could still scratch off the polish if I tried.

Another thing that irked me was it took too many coats to get bottle color.  In the green, it took 3 to 4 coats.  in the purple, I could kind of get away with 2 coats, but a third was desired.  This in combination with the slooooow drying? Not fun for me.

My first attempt at putting on the polishes, I did one coat at a time (obviously) and waited then blow dried as I said above.  After I finally finished, I waited about 2 hours before I hopped into the shower. Since I’m a very messy nail painter I just let the polish come off my cuticles after they’ve soaked in the shower.  Anyway, in the shower (remember, 2 hours after I finished painting them which took forever to begin with) the polish pretty much just came right off.  I’m not sure if I did something wrong so I surely didn’t want to write a review without giving them a second go.

The next day I tried again, and it came out better. I’m not sure if I did anything differently, but it stuck to the nail better.  Still soft, and still a long wait for drying, but didn’t wash off in the shower… got a little dented up by the scrub-puff… but still wearable.  A good 48 hours after the painting, they seemed much more solid. Although I can’t give you any definitive review on how long they can last, because as I said wayyyy at the beginning, I pick at my polish… it’s like therapy for me… takes my mind off the world.  And with my total disregard for my nails, it probably wouldn’t have lasted long anyway…

The colors are great… they’re very frosted, almost metallic… I don’t see anything special that would scream HD though… The colors are even more gorgeous in the sun.

So pros:  Awesome color

Cons:  formula is very thin and sheer, took a ridiculous amout of time to dry (for me), dents easy

Again, this was without basecoat or topcoat… I would probably highly recommend using both, then again a basecoat + 3 or 4 layers of polish + topcoat would be 5-6 layers of polish… so maybe not.

I’d buy this again if I found a unique color that I had to have… otherwise I’d stick to finding something similar in a different formula or brand. I’m fairly disappointed in them, but the colors will probably cause me to use them again… although I won’t be purchasing more.

I’d show you pictures, but I didn’t bother taking any of my nails themselves… the color really does come out true to the bottle if you get enough on… if you really want to see my nails you can check out my last two videos on YouTube.com/makeupanarchist.  Speaking of which, I uploaded another video about a week ago, I haven’t posted it here yet because I’m testing something out, but I’ll post it soon… feel free to go look in the meantime.