Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color in Bronze Ablaze

Do you ever have one of those moments when you're in a drugstore and you see a new polish display, a bottle catches your eye, you pick it up, look it over, and then go "Ehh... it's not that cool." and you put it back? But then you can't stop thinking about that color, so you decide to get it next time you're at the store, only to find that it's the only color missing from every display?

This one was one of those polishes for me. I thought it looked really cool at first glance, but then I thought it would be one of those deceptive drugstore colors where the duochrome effect in the bottle doesn't show up on the nail, leaving me with a plain, boring shimmer that I already have several versions of already. I probably picked this up and put it back four or five times before I decided that I had to have it just in case it was as interesting as it looked in the bottle. Of course, by the time I decided to get it, it was gone from every place I had seen it before. I did eventually find one last bottle of it and I'm glad I did!

Okay, that was a long and pointless story. But come on... don't tell me you can't relate to that.

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color in Bronze Ablaze. This is late fall in a bottle. It's a brown-based shimmer with lots and lots of hidden color in it. It shifts from neutral brown to golden brown like a duochrome, but it also has flashes and speckles of tons of other colors. Pink, red, gold, olive green and grass green, even a tiny tiny glimmer of purple here and there. Definitely one of my favorite drugstore polish purchases in recent years. Very complex and pretty.

The only thing I don't like about it is the brush. It's ridiculous. I go through phases of liking and hating the Insta-Dri brush. If you've never used a Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, you're in for a surprise. It doesn't have a brush in the traditional sense... It has a spatula. Well, okay, it is an actual brush, but it's absurdly wide and flat, has an unevenly cut rounded edge and is very stiff. The stiff, flat brush tends to create bald spots at the base of the nail and pooling at the edge. It's not fun to use. But, if you get a good one that's cut nice and smooth, and it's in a color that's suited for this type of brush (like a plain opaque creme), it's great because you can paint your entire nail in one stroke. It's rare, but sometimes this brush works really great. Other times, it's like trying to paint your nails with a shovel.

Wow, this post turned into one giant wall of text. Sorry about that. Cool color, though.