Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Blue-Away"

While shopping at CVS for the giveaway earlier this week, I couldn't help but get a little something for myself! Plus, there was a "Spend $10 on Sally Hansen, get $5 extrabucks rewards" so I had to take advantage of that. They basically gave me $5 to spend later! I'd never tried the Insta-Dri polishes, so I picked two of those. I got  Blue-Away and Rose Run.

 I'm always looking for blue polishes, so that one was a no brainer. It's very similar to China Glaze's "For Audrey", but "For Audrey" has a bit more green in it.

I have very few pinks/red in my collection (just not "my" color), though, so it was a little surprising that I was drawn to "Rose Run". It's a pretty mauveish pink. I've got it on my toes now, and I love it, but I'll spare you that picture. ;)

 I literally threw this polish on while trying to get a very stubborn 2.5 year old to nap yesterday. It's not perfect, but this is typical of a Desi mani...I'm too anxious to move on to something else to let it dry properly, so it's almost always immediately smudged or chipped.

 I was a little put off by the brush at first. It's short and rounded and kind flat--not at all what I'm used to--but it applied the polish very smoothly and easily and I had very little clean-up to do. That's a winner in my book!

After a day's wear (playing with my boy, doing housework, etc.), they're already a bit chipped and dented, but like I said, that's par for the course here. Still, you get the idea. Love the color, formula, & brush, so I'll definitely be looking to add more Insta-Dri colors to my collection!

Bust a Mauve!

Just a quick one. After the mess on my water spotted nails, I decided just to put on a color to hide the blue stain on my naked thumb nails (thanks to a lack of base coat the other day).

I chose Nicole by OPI - Bust-a Mauve.

I choose to describe it as a mauve glitter bomb with a few other micro glitter colors, like orange and blue.

It's pretty, but took three coats to cover completely.

Back later with a new indie!

Water spotting during nap.

When I saw an online tutorial for water spotting your nails (kind of like marbling), I wanted to try it ASAP.

Today was the day! Yes, I was excited. I didn't want to do a super funky bright and bold combo, but rather a more muted lol and only on a few nails to test it out.

Enter Essie - Merino Cool (a dusty purple) and Zoya - Amanda.

I gave three fingers two coats of Amanda, a pink beige color. The rest got two coats of the Essie color. When Amanda was dry (haha), I taped off the skin around the nails, got out my medicine cup and a bottle of Victoria's Secret body must, filled the cup with warm water, put about five drops of Essie on the surface, then spritzed it with body spray. Chose a spot and dipped the taped nail (nail side down) into the polish floating on the water, waited for it to dry, swirled a toothpick to get the excess off, pulled the finger out and took off the tape. I did it two more times.

I let them dry and covered with NYC mate top coat (like I often do). The boys were both newly down for naps when I started the process which hadn't taken long at this point...

And as Murphy (think: law) would predict, Collin woke up prematurely and was irate.

So, my almost dry nails all got damaged.

I took a picture anyway, to show my first attempt. Lots of smudges and funny textures. Thanks, baby boy.

This would have looked great on Sunday. I have a shirt these colors I could have worn to church. Maybe I will try it again. We will see.


I think it would have worked better if the cup I used were a bit bigger and the spray must not quite so fine. I might try to just flick drops of diluted rubbing alcohol on it next time and hope for more and smaller holes in the polish.