Sally Hansen Costume-ize Your Nails

Today I've got the Insta Dri and Fuzzy Coat colors from the Sally Hansen Costume-ize Your Nails display they put out for Halloween: Fur-ankenstein, Night Fright, OMGhost, Pumpkin Queen, Scaredy Matte, and Witch-ful Thinking. One could make a very strong case that I should have left all the Insta Dri colors in the store, as they are all cremes, and I have plenty of cremes in my stash, way too many cremes some might say. But as I mentioned when I posted the display, I was hoping the white was a match for the discontinued Whirlwind White, my holy grail white creme, so I had to get that, and I use a lot of black creme for undies, both on my nails and on wheels, so the two blacks would get used, and as long as I was getting three of the four I might as well complete the set. That's the sort of thinking that has led to me having a lineup of Helmers in my basement.



The first order of business was comparing OMGhost to Whirlwind White. I bought a bunch of bottles of the latter when it was on clearance, because a good white creme is hard to find. Top to bottom below (2 coats each): OMGhost, Whirlwind White, OMGhost, Whirlwind White. OMGhost is not Whirlwind White's equal—it's better. Whiter. More opaque. Long term storage, even in a drawer away from light, had not kept it safe from yellowing. Worn by itself, the slight yellow tinge might not be noticeable, but next to the fresh OMGhost, I could definitely see it. The formula also seemed thinner than I remembered, which doesn't entirely shock me, as I've had polishes thin with age before. So yeah, if you want a good white creme, grab OMGhost while it's here, and use it while it's fresh if Whirlwind White is any indication of its future.



Post-comparison, I put OMGhost on all my nails as a base for the two Fuzzy Coat colors. Top to bottom (2 coats over the white): Witch-ful Thinking, Fur-ankenstein, Witch-ful Thinking, Fur-ankenstein. Like the previously released Fuzzy Coat shades, these have small matte bar glitter in a clear base; Witch-ful Thinking has black and light orange, while Fur-ankenstein has black and light lime green. The base in these glitters was fine, and it layed flat enough that I didn't add topcoat to my swatch. I'm much more comfortable with bar glitter now than I was in summer of 2013 when I swatched the original release of Fuzzy Coat. I still don't want to wear it all by itself but as a topper, I can see the appeal.



Pumpkin Queen is a straight up orange creme. Two coats gave me full coverage, and it was shiny even without added topcoat.



I tried the Fuzzy Coat colors over Pumpkin Queen, too. The light orange in Witch-ful Thinking blended too much with the orange base, I thought, but Fur-ankenstein over the orange made a very Halloween-appropriate combination. I still need to work on my bar glitter application technique, as I tend to get clumps when I try to push it around to ensure that the bars are pointing in sufficiently random directions.



I'm a bit surprised that Sally Hansen included two black cremes in this collection, one shiny and one matte, instead of doing a fourth color, perhaps a swampy lime green to coordinate with Fur-ankenstein, and putting their Big Matte topcoat in the display. But two blacks it is, so two blacks I swatched. Top to bottom: Night Fright, Scaredy Matte (maybe they just wanted to use this name, which I admit is a good one), Night Fright, Scaredy Matte. Both of these were nearly one coaters; I mostly needed the second coat to smooth out my ridges since I didn't put on any basecoat.



I used the blacks as a foundation for some colorblock dotted nail art incorporating the other two cremes. Taping off the colorblocks would have been neater, but I freehanded them because I was feeling impatient (and I need to practice my freehand skills). Dots of the opposite color from the diagonal block and topcoat finished the look.



Just for fun, I matte-ified the whole thing before I took it off. I didn't jot down which matte topcoat I used; given my mani box, it could have been one of several I keep in there.



I will probably buy a backup of OMGhost before this display disappears because it is quite a nice white (why they can't keep a white in the core line, I've no idea; that seems like a basic color to me). I hope I can find some time to experiment with these Fuzzy Coat shades over other bases, like the forest green and darkish orange that Jasmine at The Happy Sloths used. I wonder if we'll see red and green Fuzzy Coats for Christmas.