Favorite Sally Hansens

I have 40 Sally Hansen polishes altogether, and I had a nail wheel with 15 swatches left, and so I filled that up with Sally Hansen swatches that I thought were candidates for favorites. I didn't swatch the two that I have that are very hard to find (see the second picture for those) - I've swatched those enough and I don't want to waste the remaining polish in those bottles. I eventually came up with a list of five, plus the two I didn't swatch, plus two honorable mentions - so it's basically a Top Nine. I know, it doesn't have the same ring to it, but whatever.

Here's the Top Five I settled on - in which Insta-Dri predominates:

L-R: Disco Ball, Quick Jeanius, Chop Chop Copper, Cocoa A Go Go, Royal Invite.

(I'll link what I can find links for, and probably do new posts for most of the others. I don't think Disco Ball or CCCopper have been swatched at all in my neverending swatch project, so I'll try to get those, especially, up soon. Added: Chop Chop Chopper is up, and Disco Ball is scheduled for Monday night.)

I'm not sure if any of these are current polishes, and in fact I'm pretty sure at least three of them are not. Quick Jeanius and Chop Chop Copper were from one of those LE seasonal sets - I think it was the same season, back a few years ago - and I think that the Diamond Strength line is now discontinued. However you may be able to find some or all of these on Amazon etc.

Here's the other four:

The two "honorable mention" polishes were my other Diamond Strength polish, Private I, and Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink. (Actually I decided looking at them that Rockstar Pink may just be the same glitter as Disco Ball but with a pink base.) And then the last two are the HTF ones that I declined to reswatch but I already knew I loved, Pumpkin Spice and the old version of Pacific Blue. So I guess if you look at the nine altogether, Xtreme Wear wins as favorite (sub-)brand because I have four favorites there, and Insta-Dri comes in second with three. (I have also talked about Insta-Dri recently as a polish brand that is undeservedly ignored. They have nice colors and many of those are one-coaters and they really do dry really fast, so they're great for when you need to slap something on your nails and go.)

I have 40 Sally Hansen polishes altogether, from a whopping 12 different polish lines, if I'm counting correctly. Some I only had one or two of, some I had many. In fact, I have it in front of me so I'll give you the list:

• Complete Salon Manicure - 3
• Diamond Strength - 2
• Gem Crush - 1
• Hard As Nails - 2
• Insta-Dri - 8
• LustreShine - 1
• Miracle Gel - 2 (not counting the top-coat that goes with it)
• Nailgrowth Miracle - 1
• Salon Formula - 2
• Satin Glam - 1
• Triple Shine - 4
• Xtreme Wear (which is technically a sub-line of Hard As Nails, I think) - 13

Sally Hansen really got carried away with the different lines for a while there. I notice they've tightened it up some recently.

For the record, here's the whole 40:

1st row (across the top): Grape Going, Cherry Fast, Unbreakable Heart, Steely Gaze (which lost its label somewhere along the line)
2nd row: Expresso, Ivy League, Emerald City, Blue It, Glitz Gal, Punk-ish Purple, Mad Women, Black and Blue, Gray By Gray, Forbidden Fudge, Azure, Taffeta
3rd row: Royal Invite, Celeb City, Wet Cement, Purple Potion, Gray Area, Indi-glow, Jet Set Jade, Plummet, Mermaid's Tale, Pearly Whites, Vanity Flare, Mist You
4th row: Private I, Posh Plum, Rockstar Pink, Pumpkin Spice, Pacific Blue, Disco Ball, Quick Jeanius, Chop Chop Copper, Cocoa a Go Go, Wavy Blue, Slick Black, Plum It

(This is the same surface I take most all my pictures on lately - it's the back side of a serving tray - and I just barely squeezed all 40 polishes on. A few are really hanging off the edges!)

I'm having trouble making myself do discards in large numbers, but I decided that this bunch, at least, can go, out of the 40. I may add a few more later.

(L-R: Mist You, Azure, Celeb City, Unbreakable Heart, Steely Gaze, Gray By Gray)

Thinking about Sally Hansen's pricing: I grew up wearing mostly Revlon polish, which always cost a little more although it was also a drugstore brand, and I think I believed for a long time that a polish that was only a dollar or two couldn't possibly be any good. So Xtreme Wear in particular was my gateway in recent years into the cheaper polishes (followed later on by Sinful Colors and Wet n Wild, etc.). On the other hand, SH seems to be concentrating their newer products on the high end of drugstore pricing - specifically Miracle Gel and the newer Color Therapy (which I haven't tried yet). I do like Miracle Gel but it's expensive enough that I'm very choosy about which ones I buy, just like I am about other polishes in that higher price range.