Sally Hansen Insta Ombre Swatches

I hope today's post falls into the "better late than never" category rather than "so late you might as well not bother". The Sally Hansen Insta Ombre collection is a limited edition release that came out earlier this summer. It consists of eight shades of small glitters in a clear base described as "easy glitter ombre in a bottle". I will note that what they're calling "ombre", I and many other right minded people call a "gradient".



On the display, these were used by themselves, when I swatched them, I chose to put them over base colors, namely the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure shades that were new this past spring. There were seven of those, which wasn't ideal to pair with the eight glitters, but I'm creative so it worked out fine.

Matching up the greens was a natural. The mint creme Complete Salon Manicure Pardon My Garden took two coats, which I then topped with three of Insta Ombre Jade Fade, which has small silver and green glitter. I applied the glitter as per the instructions: one coat over the whole nail, the second from mid-nail to tip, the third to just the tip. I did add topcoat, too; the glitters are small and not especially bumpy, but topcoat is called for anyway to smooth the transitions where the coats start mid-nail or at the tip. I guess it looks sort of gradient-y, but it's not magic. I think part of the issue with this particular combination is the silver glitter gets lost on the light base.





My next combination also had a light base, the pale yellow creme Complete Salon Manicure Mum's the Word, which I topped with the copper and silver Insta Ombre Copper Cap. Clear topcoat finished the look





I was getting a bit impatient at this point, not looking forward to doing six more full hand swatches, so I did Skittles. Complete Salon Manicure base colors, top to bottom: Au Nature-al (3 coats), Aflorable (3), What in Carnation (2), and In Full Blue-m (2). These were topped with Insta Ombre (top to bottom): Scarlet Spark, Fuchsia-nista, Layer on Lilac, and Cobalt Coat. Again, clear topcoat smoothed everything out.





Two coats of Complete Salon Manicure Poof Be-gonia was the base for the last two Insta Ombre colors, Gold Grade and Gray-diant.





These are just glitter toppers with a marketing twist; there's nothing different about them that makes the glitter settle more toward the tip of the nail. I've made better glitter gradients with regular glitter toppers. I suppose if you don't follow the nail polish world, this technique might be new and exciting, though, so good on Sally Hansen for spreading the word to the mass market.