I recently tried the Sally Hansen Salon Insta-Gel Strips and I didn't get on with them as well as I had hoped. My nails are more rounded so they tended to lift around the edges. Anyway, I thought I would do a little experiment. The kits come with a bottle of the gel top coat and I had read that you could use the gel top coat on top of regular polishes as long as you made sure they had plenty time to dry. So last evening, I painted my nails with
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Purple Haste and allowed them to dry overnight (unfortunately, this also led to sheet imprints). However, I then did a top coat of the gel top coat this morning and cured for the allotted time. This particular polish has tons of microglitter glass fleck particles in it which doesn't really translate to the nails all that much. The gel really helps that!
Sally Hansen Purple Haste sans top coat.
non-gelled nail (left) versus gelled nail (right)
It is so hard to get this polish to focus properly, but you can kind of see the hidden flecks in the middle finger here. I'm a bit bummed that the dents show through the top coat but I suppose it serves me right for doing the painting so late last night.
I'll keep you guys posted about how the gel impacts the lasting power of the regular polish. Here's hoping it reduces the number of chips I get. I'm pretty hard on my nails which is why I tend to stray from dark or bright colors which make the chips all the more obvious. If I could manage a week of one manicure looking decent that would definitely make me happy!
