I know, I know... naming a berry-colored frankened polish
FrankenBerry is just begging people to groan. It's so horrible, and I know better. But I was sitting and thinking, and as soon as it hit me I began to giggle, and I just couldn't stop. So now you get to see a frankened polish with the worst name in polish history. Or maybe for this week, I'm not sure.
Anyway, I broke this one down into steps. I was going for a Lippmann-esque glitter in a jelly base. I started out with some polishes I love. I used several clear, inexpensive glitter polishes from Love My Nails along with Sinful Colors Dream On, a vibrant, almost neon purple. I also used a little plastic cup to mix in, as well as a bamboo skewer for mixing. I like those better than toothpicks because I can get a better grip on them.
The thing to remember is start small- you can always add more polish, but removing polish from the mix is impossible. I started out with a small blob of Love My Nails Dazzling. I used this because it's got an absolutely beautiful shimmer to it, almost as if it were filled with diamond dust. I wanted my Franken to have shimmer galore, so this was a perfect start to it!
Then I went for the glitter- a mix of sizes of iridescent glitters in a clear base, Love My Nails Angel Baby. This one would give that mix of glitter sizes I was hoping to have. It also gave the rainbow touch that I seem so fascinated with these days.
Angel Baby has a variety of round glitter in various sizes. It's a great topcoat for layering, but it also works really well for frankening. I really like the way it plays with other colors.
Next I added in the Sinful Colors Dream On. I could have used any color, but I wanted a bright berry-type color. Dream On is a very densely-saturated purple that gives almost complete coverage in one stroke. It also tends to dry to an almost-matte finish, which does play a role in how this looks later. It's an interesting thing to keep in mind.
If I were to make this mix again, I might use a different purple, just to see if it would play better with the mix.
Now I grabbed my bamboo skewer and mixed this thoroughly. It doesn't take long, and soon enough I had a lovely, bright, sheer pinky-purple mix with tons of glitter. I really liked how this looked in the cup. The glitter showed through the polish nicely and the color was still vibrant, but incredibly sheer.
I wonder what it would have come out with had I kept the mix like this...
Time to test! I applied one coat of the mix to my thumb only to find that it was incredibly sheer- much more sheer than I'd intended. However, looking back I wish I'd tried more than one coat of the polish, just to see how well it would build.
Ah well, it's a learning experiment, and I certainly learned a lot while making it! Glitter is good, neons dry funny, and never be afraid to experiment!
I went back for more polish and added a bit more of the purple and mixed well again. This looked much better to me. While I wanted sheer color, I wanted it to be opaque enough to hide the nail line. I wanted it sheer enough to see various glitters peeking through the layers of polish. This looked like it just might do what I wanted...
Also, I really love the size of this plastic cup. It's perfect for mixing a small batch of polish and bit enough to get your brush into. It's also easy to clean, as I'll show soon enough.
One more test and I was satisfied with the color. I went ahead and painted all my nails with the mix. You can see it's still sheer, but deep enough to build to opacity. One coat was much too sheer, but 2 coats built to a lovely, almost-opaque color. I eventually put on 3 coat of polish, and really enjoyed the process. Next up- more colors like this!
Finally I had a lovely finished manicure (except for cleaning up, which I totally forgot to do for these photos). I love the color, and it applied nicely. I was surprised at how matte the polish dried, although it's not a bad thing. I think it dried matte because of the Dream On. It was easy enough to fix by adding a coat of topcoat, and it would have been just fine as a satin as well.
I used a brush from a clear strengthener to apply the polish, then cleaned it on my polish pad before I put it back into the bottle. It worked really well!
Finally, I've got a picture of the bottom of the polish cup, just to show the types of glitter involved in this polish. Isn't it yummy?
I love the combination of colors, and the blue glitter that shows up really is blueish.
I don't know why it took me so long to start mixing colors, but I'll definitely be doing more of it! This was FUN! I'm already looking at polish box, thinking about what colors I could combine for what effects!
So tell me, do you think you'll be likely to experiment with frankening? Are you brave enough to play, or do you prefer to watch other people mix up new colors? If you do mix up a new color, show me, I'd love to see!
