Actually, that's not entirely true; I did go to our local renaissance faire here in the Austin area, Sherwood Forest. I've been a huge renn faire nerd for a very long time, so perhaps I'll do a post about them - and getting all dorked up for cheap - soon; how does that sound? For now, let's get down to the business at hand...
I have made a firm decision on what is the absolute best cheap nail polish on the planet. And the winner issss...
(I betchall didn't even know there was a contest, didja?!)
...going to be revealed after the jump, suckerrrrs!
Sinful Colors!
Holy cow this stuff is unbelievable! Basically every single thing about these nail polishes is superior to anything else I've tried, from designer label to bargain bin. They're better than I've really ever thought was reasonable to expect from a nail polish. They're thick and smooth and shiny and pretty, and they last forever.Seriously. Forever. I've been wearing the polish I currently have on - ONE coat, mind you - for over TWO WEEKS now. LOOK AT IT!
Where was I? Oh yeah, so these Sinful Colors polishes glide on smooth as silk. They dry fast, so my clumsy fool ass has less chance to completely fuck my nails up before they dry. Did I mention they're shiny (in both the regular and the Firefly sense of the word)? I'm talking mirror finish. I could go on and on, but I think the best thing would be to try them for yourself.
Comparing them to their closest rival - in my heart, anyway - they've got everything over e.l.f. nail polishes. I love you elf, you know I do, but these guys have got you beat here! The most notable difference is that SC pots are consistent. In elf polishes, there is a marked difference in thickness, viscosity, and sturdiness between colors and types. Their paler colors tend to be thinner when wet and chip more easily when dry, and their nonstandard types like glitter or metallic are just all over the place (though their metallics are excellent). With Sinful Colors, I've found that I can trust that each pot will be just like the last, regardless of color or content.
The most important difference, though, is that the SC polishes leave my nails in MUCH better condition than elf - or any other that I can even remember using, frankly - polishes do! They don't ruin my natural nails; they leave them HEALTHY. When I remove SC nail polish, the naked nails underneath look as though I haven't been wearing polish for a week. They are clean, they are not stained or yellowed, they're not thin and peeling or chipping. Elf and other cheap polishes always leave behind horrible, unsightly, and often (as is the case with reds) scary looking staining behind that no amount of acetone can remove. They're yellowed, they're peeling off in layers, and they're just wretched. Now I won't say my nails they are thicker or healthier after wearing SC than if I'd not worn polish at all, but I can definitely say that the polish has not done any immediate damage. Long term? Oh sure, probably, but that's the price we pay to be so fucking chic, isn't it?
And no post of mine would be complete without this statement; They're cheap, too, of course! I saw some SC polish at my local grocery store over the weekend for less than 2$ a pot. They're generally about 1.50-2$ anywhere, and you can find them on 2-for-1 offer shockingly often, too! For a polish this sturdy, one that stays on without much chipping, that is as smooth and shiny as these, that's a fucking $TEAL man. And there's another bonus: you can get them almost anywhere: at the grocery store, Walgreens/CVS type places, Target... basically anywhere you're already shopping.
Oh, and did I mention that they have some colors? Cause they have some colors. There is a wide variety indeed.. a plethora, perhaps, of polishes. Behold:
This is not my photo but one I found on the google, as evidenced by the url there. It does the job though.
In conclusion, next time you're out at the grocery store or pharmacy or Target, go grab a couple pots of Sinful Colors nail polishes. You won't even notice them on your receipt, they're so damn cheap, and you will not be disappointed when you use them. They're worth every one of the 150 or so pennies you'll pay for them! <3
EDIT/UPDATE: Oh dear! It turns out that not every single Sinful Colors pot is perfect! I recently bought a handful of new colors (for the USA/Portugal World Cup game) along with a glitter polish: blue, white, and glitter blue. The regular blue, break away, is just a normal pot of nail polish and is therefore excellent, just as described above, so I won't go into detail about that one.
HOWEVER! I also got their snow me white and one of their glitter polishes, hottie. The white is significantly lower quality than their regular polishes, but it's not too terrible. It's basically the consistency of White-Out (jeez... younger readers might not have any reason to even know what that stuff is!); it's thick and streaky, and it dries very quickly to a terribly tacky and chunky mess. Honestly, applying just the way I'd apply any other polish, I could barely get through half of a nail before it started drying and streaking and clumping. However, if I put it on thick enough, I could get through it and end up with a nice smooth nail. I suppose putting down enough to prevent it all from drying right away was the trick. So, like I said, snow me white (Oh, and can we talk about that name for a second? Snow me white? Um, seriously guys? That's stupid.) is definitely not up to Sinful Colors standards, but it's not the worst polish in the world. Ohh no. The worst polish in the world is...
The glitter polish was a fucking nightmare! I do not recommend this color at all! That shit was as chunky and gloppy as puke, and it was sticky and gummy and waaaaay too thick. It was never fully wet, so it could never fully dry - if that makes any sense - so I can't say that it dried too quickly even though it acted like it did. It came out of the pot extremely thick and impossibly viscous, yet also streaky and thin somehow. And the consistency wasn't even due to the presence of glitter bits - that I would understand - it was just yucky, like half dried glue, right out of the pot, just after shaking vigorously as fuck. Even the drops with little to no glitter in them were like... I don't know... un-blended pancake batter maybe? It really is difficult to describe how bad this stuff is!
It never settled and smoothed the way some polishes can do when you put them on thick; it stayed chunky and lumpy after drying, no matter how thick or thin I applied it. The glitter in it was very uneven, with one half of the nail covered in it and the other half an empty blue-ish blob. At one point, it globbed up at the end of my nail really badly, actually sticking out past the end of my nail in a big clump. I tried to use the brush to clean it up some by swiping sideways along the top of the nail. That only made it angry! In addition to the glob out beyond the end of my nail, an extra ~1/8th of an inch came away with it, leaving a nearly bare streak across the top of my nail. I never even thought something like that could be possible. I wish I'd gotten video. And it's not like it was almost dry; this pot had been open only long enough for me to cover half of a nail.
Once it dried, it wasn't much better, and definitely not worth the difficulty in applying it. While the glitter itself is nice and sparkly, the polish ultimately dried to a dull, matted looking finish. Even putting a nice shiny topcoat over it can't help its dullness, in fact it almost makes it more dull and flat and just sad. It sucks the life right out of the smoothest finishing topcoat I own. Alas. And the base color, the blue itself, is barely there, really thin and transparent. It looks sad and ugly, and it's almost as though the polish evaporated away (heh, or just retreated) to leave only a sandpapery layer of uneven glitter. I imagine that may have been the intent, to make it look not like nail polish but like there is only glitter on the nail... hmm, maybe that's why the base color is so lame. That's a cool concept and all, and I've seen it done well, but the execution here is terribly flawed. I haven't actually applied it by itself, though; I've only used it so far on top of solid colors, namely blue break away and snow me white. Honestly, this stuff sucks.
AND! The two colors, from the same brand, mind you, didn't even play nicely with each other! I tried putting the blue glitter polish on over the white polish - note: after it had been completely dried for hours - and the blue stuff pulled up the white and streaked it, the way acetone would!! The glitter polish completely wrecked the white polish under it. I can hardly believe that two colors of the same brand would be this incompatible. Though I will say it does look pretty great on top of their break away blue as long as you don't wash it out with an otherwise shiny and lovely top coat.
OKAY OKAY, enough slagging off. First, I only tried ONE of Sinful Colors glitter polishes, hottie in blue, so I can't and won't say that the horrors described here apply to all of their glitters. Second, solid and true white nail polish is apparently very difficult to get right. I've never found a brand that could do it much differently from this stuff (though, admittedly, I haven't tried very many). It's not like SC just really fucked up something simple or anything with the white. Honestly, I can't even say I don't recommend the white; it's just tricky. And, remember, every single other color of theirs has been amazing: smooth, solid, long-lasting as fuck, and very pretty.
So all that said, Sinful Colors is still the
HEAVYWEIGHT NAIL POLISH CHAMPION OF THE WORLD
! ! !
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