A “Dashing Diva” in Ballet Flats

It hasn’t been too terribly long since I started hearing about Dashing Diva nail products and salons. Sure they opened their first salon in 2003, but that was in New York, and it can take a while for news to spread up here to the secluded Inland Northwest. “The selection of colors is amazing” I was told, “A trip to their salon is like nothing you’ve ever done” they raved, but with salons limited to New York with a few locations in California I was resigned that I would never get to experience any of the things people were raving about. Then I received my very own bottle of Dashing Diva polish in the mail. Yippee!

I received a bottle of “Ballet Flats“, a coraly pink that claims to be shimmery but has very little noticeable shimmer at all. The color isn’t  exactly the same as I remember my ballet flats being oh so many years ago, but in the sun it is almost exactly the same as the center of a strawberry Charleston Chew candy bar. This would be a nice complimentary color to lightly tanned skin, a little bit of unexpected color without being garish. While this isn’t a color I’d normally choose for myself it gave me the opportunity to try something new and I like that. This is also a good color for shorter nails, since it made my long nails(which I can’t bear to trim!) look a little like pre colored press on nails.

I wasn’t thrilled about the application. The color isn’t quite highly pigmented enough to get full coverage in one coat, but is too pigmented to use this as a sheer. You pretty much have to make time for multiple coats, no slap and dash. Now, I’m no professional, but I shouldn’t have to be to paint my nails. I had a hard time getting the color to lay evenly, I kept getting random streaks of heavy color. Further attempts to smooth it with the brush helped a bit, but it was obvious from the first coat that another coat was necessary. I actually ended up with three coats of polish, something I generally try to avoid because of the time involved in drying. And this is no rapid dry formula to be sure. I sat on my couch while watching a movie and still ended up with sheet indentations. In a salon this probably isn’t a problem with dryers and such at their disposal, but in a hectic home like mine you need something that dries a bit faster.

Speaking of hectic…I’ll admit it, I’m pretty rough as far as moms go. Lots of cleaning and scrubbing and digging in the dirt, my hands take quite a beating. I’m busy and clumsy and a little bit inattentive sometimes. If you want to test how tough something is, let me carry it around for a week, it will experience all sorts of abuse. This is great when it comes to testing nail polish.  I have to say, 5 days later I have some wear around the tips, but absolutely no chips. Not a single chip or ding in sight! If this is what I experienced after a home application of 3 coats, I can only imagine how long it would last with a professional manicure and a proper top coat, wow. The only problem I’ve had with wear is that I want to take it off to change colors but simply can’t justify  it because the polish still looks so good.

The home use of individual polish colors seems to be hit or miss, with some people saying they got great coverage with one coat of some colors, and others, like me, saying several coats were necessary with other colors. Having tried only one color I can’t say with surety that this wasn’t just operator error, but I have been using nail polish for almost two decades now.  I wouldn’t pass on using Dashing Diva in the future because of this, but I would definitely research reviews a bit and choose color more carefully. The long lasting wear makes this worth the effort, especially if you don’t like to change your polish often.

The CEO of Dashing Diva was also co-founder of KISS nail products, so they’re no newbs in the nail business. Some of their salon touches are very well thought out, like using individual sinks for pedicures. These are much more sanitary and easy to clean than standard whirlpool footbaths, and they also autoclave their metal instruments for thorough sterilization. The highly successful chain of salons shows that you really don’t have to cut corners to provide quick service.  It might be a while until I’m in New York or Pasadena, so a salon trip is out of the picture for at least the immediate future, but it’s definitely on my list of things to try!