What the Hubby Chose: Wet 'n Wild Back Alley Deals

I think I may have mentioned the week before last that the hubby and I were going out for our big birthday celebration with our friends.  Or maybe I didn't.  The past few weeks have been a blur, lol.  Anywho, the hubby and I have birthdays exactly a week apart (and also a few years), so we decided to celebrate them both with some of our closest friends in a big birthday dinner at P.F. Chang's.  Mmmmm...P.F. Chang's.  Since it was closer to Hubby's birthday, I let him pick out my manicure.  He originally wanted a "Saints-themed manicure," since they were playing that night (I don't even want to talk about it.), but we just couldn't really make that happen, so I had him pick something else.  Leave it to him to pick the glitteriest glitter that ever lived.

Wet 'n Wild Back Alley Deals is the queen bee of glitters.  Pardon these photos, because they're 1) not color accurate (and I tried REALLY hard to adjust them to be) and 2) not even a shadow of how awesome it is in real life.  It's a polish of smaller round purple/fuschia glitter sprinkled with larger red hexagonal glitter.  It's a really cool color combination.  The hubby said it reminded him of the Joker from Batman.  I'm totally picking up what he's throwing down.  Definitely click to enlarge these photos!  SO gorgeous!

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All that being said, this is not going to be a completely favorable review of this polish.  It's absolutely stunning on the nail, but HOLY BAJEEZUS.  The application was HORRIBLE.  HORRIBLE.  HORRIBLE! I don't even know how I can articulate how bad it was.  I wanted to cry.  Thick, gloopy, patchy, impossible to work with.  I put up with a lot of crap for a good polish, but DAMN.  


Then, it ate top coat like a MOFO.  I kind of expected that, but what I'm showing you is TWO coats of Gelous, followed by Poshe, and the next day I had to add another coat of Gelous and Poshe, and it STILL felt gritty.  I need Lynnderella's Glitter Tamer like WHOA.


As if that still wasn't enough, THEN it chipped like crazy!  I had major chips in less than 24 hours.  That's a huge nail in the coffin for me.  I could maybe handle it with a polish that had flawless application, but not from one that I fought with so much.

So, what do you do when a polish looks SO amazing, but sucks so bad?  You look for dupes!  Luckily, Back Alley Deals has not just one, but TWO dupes!  The first is Deborah Lippmann's Flash Dance.  The bad news is that this one is a mini that comes as part of the Dance Music trio set.  It's $29, but as Jessie already showed us, Dancing in the Streets is totally worth it.  The other is Nails Inc. Bloomsbury Square.  , which is a little more accessible.  It's $9.50 and available at www.sephora.com.

While I would tell you to run FAR far away from Back Alley Deals (Ha!  Makes sense, right?  lol), I would more than recommend picking up one of the dupes!  DO IT!  ;-)