Bold Gold

You all know I had to do some nail art over my frankens. For manicure one I went with some simple stamping. I've been seeing a lot of love for Maybelline Color Show, Bold Gold so I gave it a try and I have to say it didn't disappoint. It has really great opacity and I was able to get some of my darkest and most crisp images yet. I think at least half of my stamping frustrations have been because I stubbornly try to stamp with polishes that aren't great for stamping. I always think something is opaque enough only to have it disappear into the polish. I'm really happy to have found a polish that works well.

This stamp is Bundle Monster plate 213.

2014: A Space Odyssey

Happy New Years! I'm here today to add to the growing list of things everyone likes but I can't stand for reasons logical apparently only to me. Joining such popular items as red velvet cake, the color blue and most mainstream music I'm adding New Years resolutions to the list of things I hate. Don't get me wrong, I love goals. Those are great. I have plenty of those. I just don't like the idea of resolutions. I saw this awesome Mark Twain quote on Facebook yesterday and I couldn't agree more: "New Year's Day--Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." 

My resolutions would be crap anyway. 1. Eat more candy. 2. Play more computer games. 3. Spend less time at work. 4. Paint more nails. 5. Continue not exercising because I have more interesting things to do with my spare time. Nailed it already! I figure I'm either going to do something or not do it. No sense wasting time resolving about it now only to be excited/disappointed with myself later. Maximum efficiency! And just think of all those moments of pleasant surprise when I actually do something right later this year. 

My mostly sarcastic dislike of resolutions won't stop me from painting some out of this world New Year's nails: galaxy nails with a little 14 written in the stars.

I used my franken creation Sparkleverse as the base for this galaxy manicure. I sponged on a few other colors for the galaxy swirls then used a dotting tool and small paint brush for the stars. Colors used: LA Colors, white; Orly, Teal Unreal; Sally Hansen, Limestone; Kelly, unnamed purple foil.

Do you make resolutions? If so what's your biggest one for this year? If not I'd love to hear why.

Franken-Fest 2013: Butter London Black Knight Dupe

It's late in the day, but it's still officially 2013 here for a few more hours. You'll all be up till midnight anyway right? It may be the old age or this terrible cold I've caught talking, but I'm actually looking forward to going to bed somewhat early. Gotta start the new year out right- well rested and ready to sit around in my pajamas for one more day before starting another crazy year. But first we franken! Tonight I've got my attempt at duping the popular Butter London shade Black Knight.

Here are my ingredients:

LA Colors- black creme polish

LA Colors- Jewel Tone (purple, violet and teal glitter)

Sally Girl- Red Glitter (snowman edition)

Spoiled- Champagne Siren

I mixed roughly 1/3 black, 1/3 Jewel Tone and then the last third was the red and gold glitters.

I found Jewel Tone at my Dollar Tree and thought it looked a lot like the glitter mix in Black Knight. I'm compulsively cheap and don't think I own a single polish that cost over $8 so of course I had to try to try to dupe Butter London. That also means I don't actually own any BL so I had to do some research on the internet instead. I loved Scrangie's review and swatches of the shade. You can see her post here for comparison. Overall not a horrible dupe, the color mix is about right but mine is too light on the glitter density. I suspect this is hard to control when mixing existing glitter polishes rather than actual glitter. I'll call my version Blacker Night since that's accidentally how it turned out. Not perfect by any means, but I have a lot of fun frankening and couldn't resist trying this one out on the cheap.

Franken-Fest 2013: Welcome To My Sparkleverse

I'm back as promised with my second franken. I must have gotten lucky because I'm blown away by this polish. I've worn each of the polishes in this franken alone and in a few different combinations, but I've never been so impressed by them before.

I stumbled upon this recipe for greatness while painting glass gems for my candle holders. I put sheer toppers on several gems and went back later with darker polishes to finish them off and one combination happened to be e.l.f. and Love & Beauty. It was gorgeous and the shift was amazing. I knew I had to franken them! Both of these polishes have a slight purple shift on their own, but neither show up very well outside the bottle. I mixed in a few other things and came up with a little polish I like to call Sparkleverse. 

The ingredients:

e.l.f.: Unnamed polish. It just says 20147 on the label. I got it from Target at Christmas last year.

Love & Beauty: blue/green

Spoiled- Violet Femmes

Color Club- Snow-Flakes

Fantasy Makers Confetti- Glitz (loose holo glitter)

The shift is still a bit hard to capture, but I think I got it there on the pinkie. The best part is the wear time on this polish. I was really disappointed in the e.l.f. polish by itself. The last time I wore it there were chips within the first day. I've had this franken on for four days now and there isn't even noticeable tip wear. If you've got any e.l.f. polishes lying around that you haven't been using because of chipping (or smell) issues making a franken may be the perfect solution!

 Tomorrow's franken is a dupe of a popular Butter London polish. Can you guess which one?

Franken-Fest 2013: Happy Blue Year

There are just a few days left until the new year and I wanted to show off some "new" polishes that I made recently. I've got two so far. Let's see if I can find some creativity to come up with a third so I can post one for each day until New Years.

My first franken is a case of it didn't come out how I pictured, but who cares this thing is gorgeous!

 This franken idea came out of my hatred of pale/baby blue, and strangely inexplicable love of all shades of teal. I started out with the Milani 3D Holographic on the left. It's pretty, but just the wrong shade of blue for me. I wanted to see if I could darken up a holo without losing the effect. The answer turned out to be not really (at least not with the supplies I have available). I think the main problem is that the Milanis are scattered holos rather than linear so the effect wasn't as striking to begin with. I mixed in fairly equal parts of everything shown below and came up with this super shiny teal with subtle holo shimmer. 

Left to right- Milani 3D Holographic, Cyberspace; Color Club, Sky High; Sinful Colors, Endless Blue; Color Club, Harp On It; Island Girl, Aloha Paradise; Spoiled, Distant Memory; Milani 3D Holographic, HD.

This was two coats. It applied easily and had great wear time too. The bold color really popped and it was so much fun to wear. I'm having a hard time coming up with a name for it though. If you have any ideas let me know in the comments. Edit: I decided to give a small prize to the person whose name I choose so don't hold back ;)

Check back tomorrow for another franken creation.

One Year Blogiversary (Already??): Highlights From My First Year

I can't believe this! I knew it was coming up soon, but didn't realize that today was the day until I looked back at my first post. Lucky catch huh? I'd feel terrible if I forgot my blog's birthday. I'm going to celebrate by taking a look back at my 10 favorite manicures/posts of... all time. I also want to say thank you to everyone who's read/commented/chatted with me this first year. It really means a lot to me! Blogging can be tough sometimes but the love of polish and support from all you wonderful ladies keeps it fun.

*Disclaimer- this is much harder than it sounds. I ended up picking 25 posts that I had to narrow it down from. There are so many that I loved, but I ended up choosing posts from milestones in my year that were important to me. I hope you enjoy! If you have a favorite I didn't mention let me know.

10. Purple & Stripes, Jan 29

I had just started using my light box and I was super proud that these turned out almost as good as The Nailasaurus who is a blogging and striping tape goddess. I don't love some of my earlier work, but I still think these look great from only a month into my blogging career.

9. Vintage Rose Skittles, July 18

I call these my Pinterest nails. They just look like the kind of nails I see pinned to so many boards. I love the colors and patterns together which doesn't always happen when I do skittles.


Read on to see my picks for top 8:

Nail Polish Candle Holder

With Christmas right around the corner I've been looking for some easy handmade gift ideas. I had picked up a bag of glass gems from my local Dollar Tree a few weeks ago and I thought they'd be perfect for decorating votive holders. My Dollar Tree has a pretty good selection of candles and votive holders this time of year so I was able to get those for a dollar each too. I ended up using almost two bags of the glass gems for three candle holders so this whole project only cost $8. I had a lot of fun making these and hope the recipients love them too.

 All the different combinations were so fun to discover as I flipped over the finished gems. I used a clear glue meant for gluing glass to attach the gems after they had dried. What other nail polish crafts have you guys tried? I'd love to see links in the comments if you have something cool to share.