Regular nail polish takes way too long to dry.
It's unacceptable. I'm a staunch believer in the fact that eight hours after I've painted my nails, it should not be as soft as boiled egg yolks — trapping the texture of fingerprints, dog hair, and my bedsheets in it like the amber from Jurassic Park.
So that’s when I spent a small fortune investing in a gel setup. 90 seconds under the lamp and it's dry. I still found this to be a pain in my rear end because gel polish is too hard to remove! You have to put your hands in those little anti-alien tin foil hats and wait around forever. Plus, over time, they made my nails really thin! The last time I had gels removed, I went to pick off the label of my Bath and Body Works candle so it could pass as a high-end brand, and my thumbnail bent in half — hamburger ways — backward. I almost blacked out.
Between the two, they never hit the sweet spot of how long I want nail polish to last: which is in the week and a half range. Not so short that by Wednesday, it’s looking sloppy. Not so long that I feel imprisoned by my color choice of three weeks ago. Dazzle Dry solves all of these problems.
How to apply Dazzle Dry
Dazzle Dry is a nail polish system that applies like regular lacquer — albeit with a very thorough application. Nail Prep removes any oil and strengthens. You then apply Base Coat. If you want, you can apply Transform, their ridge filler. I find that it gives a smoother gel-like finish. You apply two quick coats of lacquer, which, I kid you not, is the single most fast-drying formula I have ever used. With both the lacquer and the Base Coat, your first nail is dry by the time you finish your last pinky. Lastly, you top it off with another spookily fast-drying coat of Top Coat. It’s dry in five minutes. Not “dry-to-the-touch-but-still-warps-when-you-reach-in-your-cargo-pants” but hard-set, dry. From soup to nuts, you can start and have dry nails in 15 minutes.
How long does Dazzle Dry last?
Then, it’s on for up to two weeks. I’ve gotten a full seven days of wear out of an application — the only reason I even took it off was to change the color. Even on that seventh day, it was completely intact.
How many colors does Dazzle Dry have?
At the time of publishing, there were a hundred and a half different colors available. (Isn’t that a funny way to say “150”?) I’ve tried a few colors. Frozen Lemonade is a nice Irish butter color. Fame is a jelly-bean green color. The picture above (and what I am wearing as I write this) Is Silver Lamé — a metallic silver that, with three coats, gives you a full-on brushed chrome finish.
How does it work?
The secret comes down to their flexible basecoat. Throughout the day, your nails bend, expand, and contract. (Especially when they get wet! Have you ever noticed how your nails go to crap after a long shower or doing the dishes?) This weakens the integrity of your polish over time. Rather than creating a harder (and thus, more brittle) formulation, they embraced a flexible formulation that adapts all these micro-changes.
Not to be fake deep, but that’s a good metaphor for life, right? The more flexible you are, the longer you'll last. Whoa. Am I Rupi Kaur?