Sally Hansen Salon Gel Polish

I feel like it's been a long time since I've posted!  But I come bearing pictures!

(Maybe I forgot to mention that my camera doesn't like reds particularly well... Oops.)

This gel is a new one I found at Ulta; it's Sally Hansen's gel version of their "Salon" line of regular nail polishes.  Their selection isn't that great, but they do have some colors that coordinate with their regular polish shades.  They also sell "gel strips" too, which are a gel version of regular nail polish stickers/strips, but those don't capture my interest as much as regular old brush on polish does.

Anywho, I bought two colors, and the one I used on my nails is Sally Hansen "Red My Lips".  Since I don't have many plain reds I decided to pick this one up, but when I used it, I realized something: it's EXACTLY like my OPI Gelcolor in "The Spy Who Loved Me" minus the gold shimmer.  It even applies very similarly to the OPI Gelcolor!  I also happened to have received OPI Gelcolor in "Big Apple Red" recently, and I wouldn't hesitate to say these are also dupes, although I haven't applied "Big Apple Red" on my actual nails to test it out.  If you can't get OPI Gelcolor or want to pick up something in-person, I would try out this Sally Hansen color instead--and you can even add some fine gold cosmetic shimmer between layers if you wanted to make your polish more like OPI's "The Spy Who Loved Me". 

This post is about the Sally Hansen gel and not dupes, though, so I'll finish up: The formula of this polish is very jelly like.  But the jelly-ness isn't even visible from arm's length or even in my pictures--from farther away it just looks opaque.  However, if your nails are prone to getting dirty underneath, have some discolored bruises or blood spots from misuse, or if you really don't like any hints of visible nail line (or VNL), you won't like this.  But I think the jelly quality is very neat!

It applies super easily and evenly, it only took two coats for what you see here.  The color itself is a perfect cherry red. Even though my camera focus freaks out over red, I still think the color representation in pictures is pretty accurate. It's slightly blue based and a little bit pinker on the first coat, but by the second coat it looks classic.  If you see this in store, it matches the color on the box very well, although the cap on the polish itself is a bit more grey-toned or brick colored than the actual polish. 

I'll be back soon with an addendum or two to this post. I'm thinking I need to do more "how x gel holds up after y amount of days" types of videos/reviews to explain how the gels have lasted on my nails, but we'll see.