My First Franken!

 

I am very pleased to share my first franken creation with you.  As my polish collection grows, I can’t help but realize there are certain colors I’m lusting for that just don’t seem to exist.  Being of the DIY mindset I figure why not make them myself?  To get acquainted with the world of frankening I turned to a fantastic tutorial by Dr. Frankenpolish.  She calls this franken Angel Tears.

Welcome to my franken lab.

I followed the tutorial pretty faithfully.  Although I didn’t have the same clear red that she did, I used an old L’Oreal Jet Set Shine color called Very Cherry.  Maybe because of that substitution my finished polish came out looking too brown, so I added about 20 drops of a Sally Hansen creme, Cherry Red, to bring the balance back to deep red.

On the nail it is a gorgeous burgundy or blood red jelly, with suspended green shimmer that can be seen in any light.

I’m delighted how this turned out!  All the components mixed together effortlessly.  I’ll give you a mixing hint: if you don’t have BB’s laying around to plop into your frankens, use beads!  I added two small, round, stone beads that are the same size as the BB’s, and they work great as far as I can tell.

Like most jellies, Angel Tears required some patience to build up opacity.  I used 4 thin coats here, but you could maybe use only 3 if you lay it on thickly.  A coat of Seche Vite added crazy shine and helped it to dry.  P.S. I would give this polish the slightly grosser name of Bloody Borealis 🙂   Now, I’m really tempted to go dump out all my old unwanted polishes and make a franken army!

What do you think – would you try your hand at this franken?

 

~ Allison ~

 

Random Multicolored Lacquer Swatches for You

I am so behind on my swatches.  Enjoy six quickies!

 

Milani Totally Cool

Royal purple jelly with rose gold foil.  I found this one in the K-Mart 99 cent clearance bin!  Although this polish is really pretty it’s a bit sheer.  Even with the 3 coats I used here my nail line is still peeking out – boooo.  Still, that color.

 

Milani Feisty Flames

Cutest name!  Another K-Mart 99 cent wonder.  It’s a basic tomato red creme with a jelly’s squishiness and major shine – how do they do that?  Although I don’t buy much red polish this color was fun to wear.  A great choice to coordinate with your 50’s pinup looks.

 

Rimmel Lava Red

I am a sucker for these “blackened” colors.  Although this metallic red pearl looks almost burgundy in low light, in the sun it appears lit from within!  And look how glossy.  This one is sure to make you feel vampy and seductive.

 

Rimmel Hard Metal

Dark pewter metallic frost.  The formula was creamy – a pleasure to apply.  This is 2 coats.  I appreciated the fact that even though this is a frost-leaning finish my brushmarks didn’t dry streaky and visible.  Again, pretty shiny on its own.

 

Pure Ice Spitfire

This is a mauve-pink holographic glitter in a clear base.  Naively I hoped this could be worn on its own for discoball impersonation nails, but that wasn’t happening.  Next time I will layer it over a base color, for sure.  Anyway, this baby was very holographic and reflective in the sun.  Let’s do more glitter, shall we?  We shall!

 

OPI Uh Oh Roll Down the Window + Milani Gold Jewel FX

UORDTW is from OPI’s latest collection, Touring America.  It’s a dark olive green creme that reminds me of camo.  I like the fact that OPI included some off-the-beaten-path green/beige/brown shades along with their pinks and peaches.    My bottle is so strange – it looks like the pigments got separated, but no amount of shaking will mix them up again.  I don’t think that affected the application, though.  The color looks darker in the nail than in the bottle.  Then I decided to glam up this puke green with glitter!

This is Gold from Milani’s Jewel FX collection.  Sure enough, it’s big gold hex glitter that’s pow, in your face.  Very easy nail art.

 

No more for tonight; I must eat dinner.  Thanks for viewing/reading and I’ll catch up with you soon!

 

~ Allison ~

 

 

 

Sally Hansen Plum’s the Word + Pure Ice Busted

This manicure started off as messing around and ended up mesmerizing!  I’m sure people were wondering what the heck was wrong with me when I kept tilting my hands at different angles and admiring my nails.  Duochrome will do that to ya.  I started out with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Plum’s the Word.  It’s a creme muted plum that leans more towards brown than purple.  Application was no problem, and I love this formula’s thick brush!  I can pretty much do each nail in two swipes (one for the pinky).  The rounded tip also helps me get closer to somewhat approximating a clean gap – something that I still need a lot more practice with!  Two coats provided a good opaque base color, I felt like it needed a bit more razzle dazzle.  So I layered it with two coats of Pure Ice Busted.  In the bottle this polish looks like a sheer, watery lilac with pink and gold shimmer.  On top of the Plum’s the Word it looked even more stunning.

These pix were taken after 2 days so you can see a bit of normal tip wear.

Heeey, nice duochrome.

This one really shows the gold and pink shift over the plum base.

Artificial light

Busted is one of those polishes that’s pretty on its own but really comes to life when layered.  I can’t wait to try it with some different base colors!

 

~ Allison ~