Thursday, May 12, 2011

Sally Hansen Insta Dri French Manicure Duo

***18-May-2011: This post was lost in the Blogger outage; this is a restore from a draft so may not be quite the same as it was, but the gist is there. Still waiting to see if the lost comments will be restored.***

Way back at the beginning of the year I bought one of the (then) new Sally Hansen Insta Dri French Manicure duos, which package two colors of polish in one oval container. I picked one of the classic French mani pairs, Whirlwind White and Petal Pusher.





Maybe if I'd picked one of the brighter combinations this wouldn't have sat in my swatching queue for so long, but in any case I finally got it out to give it a try. I did not get off to a good start. The first time I twisted right and pulled up to get at the white, the whole cap came off in my hand. I did get it back on easily enough, but after that first pull I never quite trusted it to behave.



The brush in these (it's the same shape on both sides) is not the same as the regular Insta Dri brush; this one is angled in only one direction. It's still on a wide stem like the regular bottles, though.



The brush shape worked okay for applying color to my tips, but I did have a hard time getting it on evenly. It was hard to wipe the brush to keep from getting too much on it because of the way the opening is configured—it's hard to see where the brush is relative to the level of the polish in the bottle and hard to see how much polish is on the brush until you lift it up out of deep opening in the bottle.



I didn't like the cap and brush at all for applying the sheer color over the white tips. I think the asymmetry of the brush contributed to the streaks I got, and the chunkiness of the cap combined with the stem being offset to one side felt awkward to me. I was so unhappy with the result that I didn't bother to clean up or use the lightbox to take pictures.



My issues working with this duo might just be lack of dexterity on my part, and it could be that practicing with it would make it easer, but since it doesn't do anything I can't do with two regular bottles of polish, I won't be buying any more of these.

7 comments:

  1. thats nice, i like the final look

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  2. I always look at these and wonder if they are easy to use because they don't look it. Thank you for this post :) I don't think I have the patience to deal with it lol

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  3. Every review of these duos turns me off. I think that Sally Hansen flunked this one by putting something gimmicky out there, without caring for the brush and bottle issues. Other than that it does look nice on you :-D

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  4. I was wondering how these worked. Thanks for the review.

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  5. Umm I have been so afraid of those thingies since I first saw them.
    I don't understand how they can possibly work right.
    Thanks for the review!

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  6. Ughh I hate it when the cap comes off like that.
    -You french mani doesn't look bad but I'm sure the angle brush was difficult to lay Petal Pusher. Thank you for the review, I don't think I'll be picking this up anytime soon either

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  7. thanks for the review! probably won't be trying this now..

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