Mani Party with Sally Hansen x Elle Magazine

A couple of weeks ago, I got to watch the Golden Globes in style with the lovely ladies of the Style Coalition. Sally Hansen and Elle Magazine hosted a mani party celebrating Sally Hansen's new Salon Insta-Gel Strips.

We got the chance to walk our own red carpet complete with mani cam after being treated to some gel nail treatments. I had a hard time choosing with 24 different colors and patterns to choose from I really wasn't sure what to pick. In the end I had to try Perfect Poison - a metallic silver snake skin that looks really luxe.

Although a nail technician helped me get my gel tips on, it seemed simple enough. After removing my nail polish and filing down my nails to the desired shape, the nail technician gave my nails a light buff, removed all excess oils with some a cleanser pad (all included in the kit) and then peeled off the nail strips and pressed them onto my nails carefully using an orange stick. She removed the excess strip using a nail file. When all the nails were complete, she did a quick coat of gel top coat before sticking each nail one at a time in the UV light machine where my nails took about 30 seconds each to be cured. The machine turns off the light when finished each nail so it is really easy to make sure you get it right. Once my nails were cured, we removed the excess sticky residue using a cleanser pad, just like at the salon. After that, my nails were fully dry! The whole process took probably 10 minutes or so.



After getting my nails done I had a blast sipping cocktails, tweeting like a maniac about red carpet fashion and hanging with some lovely style and beauty bloggers over some delicious hors' devours including some oh so appropriate golden globe cake pops (which I dutifully avoided). I admired and compared nails with some of the other ladies and found myself really attracted to the Spot On polka dot look color.

At the end of the night, I was gifted a Sally Hansen Salon Insta-Gel Strips starter kit and 2 colors of nail polish so that I can try this on my own - I can't wait to try more patterns.
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I decided to show you the results of the mani that is supposed to last for up to 2 weeks.

The results after 8 days were pretty darn good. If I didn't lift a printer at the office earlier in the day, I don't think I would have caught the edges that lifted from my right index finger and my left middle finger. Otherwise the mani is still shiny and in good shape aside from my nails growing out. Unlike regular nail polish strips or even Shellac, these feel firmly adhered to my nails and don't feel like they will all start peeling if you catch an edge.

By day 14 these are definitely ready to come off.  The nail polish stayed shiny and put for most part, but my nails grew out so much at this point, I wasn't crazy about how they looked. Next time I will try to get the strips closer to my cuticles than the technician did. While the edges I caught on my index and middle finger didn't seem to grow, some spots close to the base of the nails started to flake off a little. However, this nail polish can't be easily removed without an acetone remover, cotton and foil. Armed with these readily available products, you can get your nails clean in about 5 minutes.

Overall I was very happy with my nails. They looked fabulous and I received multiple compliments and people were asking me how I had achieved the unique python effect. It is a much more cost effective and time saving solution vrs going to a salon with results that are definitely comparable.