Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in 'Flawless' review

About a week ago I made a trip up to my local Walmart to buy 2 things in particular. One was, uh a pair of earrings, but the other was the Sally Hansen Diamond Strength polish, specifically in the color 'Flawless.' Since this is a clear, I had in mind to use it as a topcoat, and basecoat if it allowed. On the bottle it points out that the polish is "NO CHIP." My mission was to test this product for a 5-day week.

I had recently gotten another Sally Hansen polish that I wanted to try. It was a Sally Hansen Hard as Nails product in "Sun Kissed."
Anywayyys, I applied a basecoat with the Flawless polish, and let that dry. I really don't have too much to say  on the application of the first coat. It took a little longer to dry than I'm used to, but Sally Hansen products tend to take a while to dry, or at least in my experience. Next I applied 2 coats of Sun kissed, letting it dry between each coat. I then applied one more coat of the Flawless over top of the color.
One thing I need to tell you about it, is it takes FOREVER to dry! I'm not even joking. It took about 20 minutes to dry to the touch, and then for about 3 hours after that it was still in the "dent-able" mode. Any slight   bump would make a small dent in the polish.


Let's talk about the bottle for a second. Some people may not care what the bottle looks like or how it feels, or anything to do with the exterior packaging for that matter. I'm kinda in the middle. I don't buy products just for how it looks on the outside, but I think the packaging does have quite a bit in the decision making for buying it or not, or at least for me.

The bottle has a really cute fake diamond on the front of the bottle, advertising the "Diamond Strength" that the polish has, which is also the brand. One thing I absolutely love, and I think all brands should have this little feature, is the cap. I wouldn't really think this from looking at it, but after using it I am sold on it. The shape of the cap is incredible! Haha.
It is really easy to get open, and fits very comfortably in your hands, which makes the applying all that easier. I absolutely love the design of it, and whoever came up with that is a genius. Of course some people may not like it, but after looking at some other reviews, it seems as most of other people like this feature too. What makes this cap so incredible is the 'hour-glass' shape of it. It just fits so comfortably in your hand.

I took pictures everyday for 5 days to show you what my nails looked like after each day. Keep in mind that each day I was fairly hard on my nails. The average, I guess. I wasn't trying to be hard on my nails, but I wasn't doing everything I could to stop them from chipping. I was washing dishes, doing laundry, typing, etc.

Beware, theres like 50 pictures. I'm a true

Day 1: (the day after I painted my nails, since I painted them on Monday night.)

Left Hand:

Notice there is no tip-wear. (Tip-wear is when the polish starts to wear/chip at the tip of your nail and also the part of your nail where you file them.) The lack of polish on the sides at the top is not chipping; it's from poor painting by me.

Day 2: 

Left Hand:

A tiny bit of tip-wear on the part where you file your nails. I can't remember if I painted that part or not, but I don't think so, so I'm pretty sure it hadn't started chipping any yet.

Notice the tiny chip on my left thumb.

Here you can see a little bit of tip-wear starting on my left pointer finger.

Right hand:

A tiny chip on my right hand pointer finger as well. These aren't that noticeable from the average person just seeing your manicure. In other words, there hasn't been chipping that you can see very well yet. If someone just looked at your nails for about 20-30 seconds, which most likely they won't look at them for longer than that, then they won't be able to see the chips that have started.

Day 3:

Left hand:

Seeing tiny chips on my middle and pointer finger. 

 The chip on my thumb is a bit bigger, but still not extremely noticeable, and there is also some tip-wear starting on the right side. (5 stars for dog in the picture??)

 Right hand:

The chip on my pointer finger has now gotten bigger and has started to go a bit further down my nail. On my right hand I'm also starting to see some fading in the orange color at the bottom of my nail. 

 Tiny chip on my thumb.

 In this picture you can kinda see the tip-wear on my other nails.

Day 4:

Left Hand:

The chip on my middle finger has gotten a bit bigger.

 The tip-wear on my pointer and middle finger.

 Right Hand:

The chip on my pointer finger has gotten a little bigger since the day before.

 My middle finger on my right hand has also begun chipping just a bit. I also noticed a little more color-fading at the bottom of my nails. I mainly only saw that on my right hand. 

This is kind of what all of my nails have been doing; tiny little chips on the sides of my nails and a little bit of tip-wear. 

Day 5: (final day)

Left Hand:

 Those little chips on the sides of my nails are also on my left hand.

Quite a bit of tip-wear.

 Right Hand:

The chip on my pointer finger has gotten considerably bigger.

 All of the chips have gotten bigger.

You can also see the tiny dents in my pointer finger. This illustrates my point about the topcoat being in that "dent-able mode" for a few hours. There are also some tiny cracks at the side of my nails, but those are hardly noticeable when you just look at your nails.

As you can see, my nails did chip. I think what I should do if I want my polish to last longer is to re-paint the topcoat each day. The chipping wasn't too bad in real life, actually. I got really close with the camera so you could see even the tiny chips. There weren't any huge chips, just little ones. The main ones you could see were on my middle finger on my left hand and on my pointer finger on my right hand.

Note: I am right handed, so there was a bit more tip-wear and chipping on that hand.

Also, sorry about the dryness of my skin. It's getting cold and that's when my skin starts to get dry. 

Here's a bit more on this product:

How much was it? I got it for $4.

Where can you get it? I got mine at Walmart, but they have it at a bunch of drugstores.

Rating (1-10) - I'd say about a 4.5 to 5.

Would I buy this product again? I probably would.

Things I liked about this product? It made my nails SUPER strong! I think the main thing they were focusing on when making this polish is that it will make your nails stronger. It's a very good nail hardener/strengthener, so if your looking for just that, I would totally recommend this product. It also made my nails super shiny, and did protect my nail polish more than if I wouldn't have applied it.

Thing I disliked about this product? For one, I still did get chips in my nail polish. I wasn't expecting no chips whatsoever, but I had heard people saying it kept their polish on with no chips for a 7-day week. It didn't do this for me. It also took a while to dry, and if you don't want any dents in your polish, you will have to be very careful for about 3-4 hours after applying it. I did see some air bubbles, but they eventually went away after a day or two.

What will I use this for in the future? I'm probably only going to use it as a nail hardener, and not necessarily as a topcoat, however I may use it for a topcoat every now and then. 

Would I recommend this to a friend? I probably would, but I would make sure they knew what to expect. I think if your expecting a really good topcoat out of this product, you wouldn't be very satisfied with it. However, if you are using it as a nail hardener, I think you would love it 100%. I found my nails are very strong and grew pretty long really fast. 

All in all - I absolutely love this product as a base coat/nail hardener, but not so much as a topcoat. BUT I have heard people say they got no chipping and really loved this as a topcoat, so I think it works different for different people.       

I hope you benefited from this review and have made up your mind to buy, or not to buy, this product! Let me know your thoughts on this polish and whether or not you would purchase it again. 

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the company that makes this product. I bought this product with my own money and everything I said was my 100% honest opinion. I am not getting paid to do this review and the company doesn't even know I did this review.