First Ever Franken! - Stormy Waters

If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw that yesterday I finally got my courage up and made my very first franken! I'm really excited about what I ended up making and can't wait to share it with you. I also took some pictures of the supplies I used to put it together so hopefully I can help inspire some of you to get your franken on :) This post is picture heavy, just giving you fair warning!

Okay first some pictures of the franken, which I've lovingly named "Stormy Waters" and then I'll tell you how to make it!

sunlight

shade

inside

bottle picture

The bottle shot is color accurate for the base color, it's a teal with scattered holo. I like scattered holo better than linear holo, so I like using the Milani holographic polishes for frankening purposes. I'm going to make a second bottle of this I love it so much. Stormy Waters is a sibling to China Glaze - DV8 and China Glaze - Atlantis (only holo instead of glitter, obviously) So it's similar to other polishes out there but still fairly unique. Remember the franken I showed you a few weeks ago that Alexandra made for me? This is basically a teal version of that!

Now for how I made it... It's about half a bottle of Milani - HD (silver holo), maybe a fifth of a bottle of OPI- Ski Teal We Drop (pigmented dark teal), and 5 drops of Milani - Hi-Res (purple holo). You don't really need to use Hi-Res, I just thought it gave it a bit more depth. Very easy and inexpensive to make haha, just how I like my polish. It's totally opaque in two coats and was very easy to apply!

you can see in the picture exactly how much of HD and Ski Teal We Drop I used, they were both brand new and never used bottles, I bought them just to make this franken with. Ski Teal We Drop is super pigmented so you don't need much of it.

If you want to take the foray into making your own franken, I suggest you pick up some ball bearings for mixing. I'd recommend stainless steel, anything else is going to oxidize in your franken and ruin it! Here's what I use:

And I hit up my local Dollar Tree (a dollar store) and got a few 2-packs of old style NYC bottles, because I like the shape of them and the labels peel off easily. But you can buy empty bottles online - places like ebay or polish e-tailers as well. Also you can clean out old base coat/topcoat bottles or polishes that are old and you won't use again. Here's a picture of my NYC bottles before I cleaned them out:

I like the shape of these a lot

I also used a small glass bowl and orange stick to mix to figure out an idea of the ratio before I make a whole bottle. All very easy to find things! I couldn't be happier with how Stormy Waters turned out, I'm wearing it right now and honestly can't take my eyes off my nails :) Do any of you franken or are you planning to in the future?

A Hidden Treasure of Diamond Cosmetics

I've had such a gnarly 2 days. My next door neighbors were having people digging in their front yard looking for the water on/off thingy. Very technical soundng right? Haha I'm not totally clear on what they were attempting to do, just on how it affected my life. Long story short, the workers cut the cord that controls my internet, tv, AND phone (silly me for bundling my services with one company!) at 11 am yesterday. After several phone calls someone came to fix it this morning around 10 (originally they said they wouldn't come til SATURDAY..because I don't need a phone or anything). By noon today, the same worker crew had cut the cord AGAIN. I couldn't make this stuff up, my goodness. So finally around 4 I had services again and the workers were gone and I could breathe a sigh of relief. But I had no way to post yesterday, so today I'm giving you twice as much!

I'm done venting now :) Let's move on to pretty picture shall we? I've got another Diamond Cosmetics nail polish to show you, Don't Teal My Heart Away; which I looooooove. But for some reason, it made my camera insane... so these pictures are way way greener than it is in real life. This is a true teal in person, much bluer than these pictures reflect. So make a little mental adjustment, kay? Great!

sunlight

shade

inside and closer to the actual color

Now how about some Hidden Treasure on top? Yes please!

wheeeee, flakies in the sun!

shade - look at the colors!

inside!

I also showed you Don't Teal My Heart Away in the very first Fun With Layering Wednesday, with Sinful- Nail Junkie on top (another magical layering combo). I really like working with this color because it's so opaque in just 1-2 coats so it's easy to use and it's gorgeous! Once I got my hands on this I stopped buying teals like crazy...I used to buy pretty much everyone that came my way but now I think long and hard about it. Mainly because this is my perfect teal creme, so reach for it the most, so why mess with that? :)

Do you have any go-to colors for layering for a favorite polish for one kind type of color, like me and teal? Let me know in your comment!

Fun With Layering Wednesday!

Hey there :)

First of all - THANK YOU to you sweet ladies who commented and started following my blog; I can't tell you how much that means to me! You rule!

Now, onto today's post... I figure that for most people Wednesday is generally a not so fun day at work because Friday seems so far off. So I thought having some different layered polish combinations would give you something fun to try come Friday, or you know, today if you don't have a strict dress code haha. I work from home so I'm lucky in that respect.

The idea of layering wasn't something I was ever into until recently. I'm not very good at imagining how colors would work together. But the wonderful ladies of tPF and MUA post all these great pictures of combinations that have helped inspire me to get creative and try some out! And I would LOVE to hear any suggestions you have for layering ideas. Onto the pictures? Yes, please!





This is 1 coat of Diamond Cosmetics - Don't Teal My Heart Away with 2 coats of Sinful Colors - Nail Junkie on top. Don't Teal My Heart Away is exactly what it sounds like, a teal creme. It's very opaque so you can get away with one coat. Nail Junkie has a sheer green base color with green, gold, and silver glitter densely packed in it. Very pretty but for me I'll probably only ever use it as a layering tool, less glitter to remove that way haha. I'm excited to try this over some other colors too, although I don't know if it will ever look as good as this did!

Oh how I loved this manicure. So very very much. It lasted a week without chipping and wasn't gritty feeling at all after using my Sally Hansen Insta-Dri top coat. And at the end of the week I didn't want to take it off at all haha. My nails were so sparkly and fun looking! This is a manicure I will be wearing again soon for sure! One of the best parts about this manicure? The two colors cost $4.24 total. Pretty good deal right? Diamond Cosmetics are $2.25 and Sinful Colors are $1.99. Both are inexpensive and were great quality; you can't go wrong with that.

Do you have any go-to layering combos? Share them with me in your comments - I'm on the lookout for new ones!