Rich Color, Holographics and Glitter, Oh my!

Hi guys! Today I was perusing a local Ross store, and was lucky enough to stumble across the Color Club "Beyond the Mistletoe" collection. It's a collection of all incredible glitter polishes! So awesome! Anyway, I already had on my nails one of my sprankens. It was the deep red wine colored one... for now I am referring to it as, "Carlos Rossi Wine Jug". I really love the way it turned out! Here is two coats:

Woo hoo! I am really proud of that one! 

Here are some swatches of the "Beyond the Mistletoe" collection:

Beyond the Mistletoe, Holiday Splendor, Sugarplum Fairy, Gingerbread, Candy Cane, Jingle Jangle

I was so excited to try these so I immediately put "Candy Cane" over "Carlos Rossi Wine Jug" and I will let the result speak for itself!

It is glitter madness overload! I can't wait to try all of these!!! :)

New Spranken Collection!

Howdy-do, folks?! I know my posting has been pretty much non-existent, but I really can't stress how busy I have been. Nov - Feb is such a busy time for me at work. I just spent all of last week in Indianapolis working, and came back on Sunday night, and right back to work on Monday. (I did, however, take several polishes with me to keep a variety of colors throughout the week! The hotel maids probably were like wtf is all this polish on the desk!?) 

Annnnnyway, I have been a frankening fiend lately!! I don't know what it is about creating polishes, but I just love it!! Here is a little collection I created!

Ever wonder what an un-mixed spranken looks like?

There you have it! I am thinking about making up some more of these and selling them. They all got a pretty good response from my friends in the nail polish groups on facebook. I really enjoy making sprankens and it would be fun to share them with other nail polish lovers!!

Hope you all are having a great week!! :)

P.S. All photos were taken with my iPhone 4S... not bad I think!

Late night polish action!

What to do when it's late and you aren't tired? Make nail polish!!! :) I am calling this "Little Ditty"! You can make it too! Here is what I used:

Love & Beauty Aqua, Indigo, Midnight, and ULTA Happy Hour

Happy Creating!! :)

Another Spectra-Franken... A Spranken?

Hiiiiii everyone!!!! Oh my goodness it's been a long time. I feel like I am never home or on the computer anymore! Life in Cali is great, but I am so busy and it's like I am only home to sleep! I am going to fix that though! I feel like I've lost my blogging mojo! I just got a bunch of new polishes though, so it's back! 

I recently threw together another franken. This is a mix of Orly Velvet Rope and Sally Hansen Black Out. I added some coarse grade Spectra Flair pigment to it, and voila! I don't really name my frankens, but maybe I should start? Anyway, I really like this one, and I do like the coarse grade powder. I don't know that I notice that much of a difference from the finer grade pigment, but I can tell the particles are a little bigger. Anyway, here it is! :)

With Flash

Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

How to: Franken! (My way, anyway!)

Hi there!! I am very/super/overly excited for this post. I really like making nail polishes. Whether it's just mixing a few together, or using a pigment, or adding spectra flair, I just find it a lot of fun, and really rewarding! I wanted to share with you step by step how I go about doing this. Hopefully it will give you all some ideas or inspiration to create your own masterpiece. If you do, please be sure to share it!! I love seeing what people come up with!

Ok, so let's get on with it! This is going to be pretty long and picture heavy, so I will put a break in for those not interested in seeing my mad scientist skills skillz. First, here is a picture of my workspace:

A little crazy and messy, but hey, that's how I roll. On the left hand side I have some various pigments and polishes. I have a bag of ball bearings (fondly known as ballz), and some spectra flair powder. The ballz are used to aid the mixing process. They can fly and woosh through the polish and mix up all of the beautiful powders and lacquers. I have some blank nails on a nail wheel for testing (you can see my purple holo from a few posts back). I also have some straws and napkins and a magazine to work over so I don't get stuff all over my desk. And last, but most certainly not least, an empty bottle!

Empty bottle of Sally Hansen clear polish.

Added two ballz to my empty bottle

Now is the point you need to decide what you want to make. What color are you going for? Do you want to make a holographic polish? A glitter one? Both? I decided to try mixing an eye shadow pigment with some Glorious Top Coat. (Glorious Top Coat = Spectra Flair powder already mixed with a clear polish). Here is the pigment I chose:

Mad Scientist

Hi guys! Last night I was sitting amidst boxes, having taken a break from packing, and decided my creative juices were flowing. I had one mini empty bottle left and some spectra flair and some polishes sitting out on my coffee table so I decided to get to work. I had a mini bottle of Orly Velvet Rope staring me in the face. I have a full size of this color too, so I decided to pour about half of the mini bottle into an empty mini. I had some spectra flair mixed with a clear polish (that can be used as a top coat) and poured some of that into the mix. I then added some spectra flair powder and the color got somewhat muddy (as spectra flair tends to make polishes when added) so I then added in some OPI DS signature. I wanted it a little darker, so I added some China Glaze Black Diamond. I then topped it off with a little more Velvet Rope and this is basically what I came up with!

I like it! I just wish I had some sunlight to take pics in! That's what you get for working at night, I guess! :) Thanks for reading!!

Franken Friday

Hi everyone! Here is another one of my franken creations! It's like a smoky purple color with hologram-my goodness! Honestly, I can't remember what I used to make this... it started using some Glamor Doll Eyes pigment, and got so thick and paste-like. So I split that mixture into 3 empty bottles and started adding various polish to get it to something I actually liked!