Pimped up frankens

I have a couple more frankens for you today.  These are two that I made up about a year ago, but I rarely wore because they were settled at the bottom of the bottle and I couldn't be stuffed shaking them like crazy to fix them up.  

But now that I got some suspension base, I poured off the clear that was settled at the top and replaced it with some suspension base.  Whoo Hoo, they look super awesome in the bottle now.

This first polish is made with TKB Copper reflecks, 1/4 a bottle of black and the remainder suspension base.

I ended up being a rich and sparkly chocolatey brown.

The TKB Reflecks are very fine but have a glass fleck appearance.

This next polish is a bit of a mash together of a few things, and because I did it a year ago I don't actually remember what went into it.  I know there is lots of green glitter, a little gold glitter and some silver holo glitter.  I originally put some green pigment in too, because the clear polish that I poured off was very green.

Because I poured out the green base, I added some new green tint, which was Ferric Ferrocyanide and Yellow 10 tint, plus filling the bottle with suspension base.

I originally called this polish "lights on the tree" because the holo sparkles looks like Christmas lights on the bright green tree.

Just in case you hadn't checked, TKB is now shipping suspension bases internationally!!  I think the price that they are shipping it for is really quite good.  I was expecting it to be a lot more expensive than that.  

Here are the basic prices for 480ml of suspension, which includes shipping:

• Canada: $39 =  $1.22 / 15ml bottle or 40 cents / 5ml bottle.
• Rest of the world: $69 (but they say ONLY IF your country allows the import of nail polish?!?! they say they will have a list of countries soon) = $2.15 / 15ml bottle or 72 cents / 5ml bottle.

Sure it's not cheap, but at least it is available.  They are also selling in other various sizes so you can mix bases and tints.  It's been a real long time waiting girls (nearly a year) but now almost everyone can get some base.

Custom polish - Cavalry Orange

I've posted about my husband playing and coaching baseball before, specifically for the Canberra Cavalry in the Australian Baseball League.  I've done Cavalry nails before, and I'll tell you now, there are going to be several more Cavalry baseball manis over the summer, because I plan to have a different orange baseball mani for every home series.

Orange is the teams colour, which in general terms is rather bright and not really a fashion colour to me.  But in terms of a team supporter colour, it's excellent.  I wore this orange mani to the games last weekend.

Last season I only had one orange polish, Ulta3 Crazy!  This year I have added to that with Picture Polish Citrus and Nics Sticks by OPI Orange you fast, but because I got my new tints I just had to make my own orange holo.

I'm afraid I have a lot of trouble capturing the holo in red and orange polishes.  My camera doesn't get it. I always think I have taken some great shots, then I upload them to my PC and discover you can hardly see the rainbow.

I made this one using Red 6,Yellow 10 and Yellow 5 lacquer tints, suspension base and spectraflair.  

To answer some questions in yesterday's comments, I got the tints from an Australian Beauty supply company who only ships domestically to Australia.  I don't feel comfortable posting their business name up or contact details here, as they are a bulk supply business that doesn't currently deal with small public orders.  However any Aussie girls can email me to find out the details.

Custom polish - Fairway green

I have another custom polish for you today.  Again I don't want to call this a franken, because it's not actually made from the parts of any other polishes, it's made from all new ingredients.  

As you can see, this is a strongly pigmented rich green holo.  I wore this for a couple of days last week and it really was rather spectacular.  Because it's not your everyday colour I got so many comments on it!  I also played a round of golf on friday at our corporate golf day and my boss even asked if I specifically put on this green polish because I was playing golf.  Because of that, I've called this one "Fairway Green"

I made this polish using the new polish tints I got with the suspension base.  It was only when I was making this polish that I actually realised how awesome these tints are.  You see I got seven tint bottles:

• Black
• White
• Red 6 (orange red)
• Red 7 (crimson red)
• Red 34 (magenta)
• Blue 1 (light green based blue)
• Ferric Ferrocyanide (dark blue)
• Yellow 10 (canary yellow)
• Yellow 5 (golden yellow)

So what's so good about them?, well you just need to take a look at the bottom of a bottle of polish. Take this bottle of China Glaze LOL for example.

The important colour information is listed at the bottom.  The color in LOL is made using a combination of Ferric Ferrocyanide and Red 34.  I just need to keep tweaking the quantities of each one until I get the polish colour to match!!

The Fairway Green polish above was made using Ferric Ferrocyanide, Yellow 10, spectraflair 1500-35 and suspension base. 

I can't express how much fun I have playing mad scientist with all this stuff.

Custom polishes for my friends wedding

Last weekend my husband and I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of a girlfriend of mine from work.  The wedding was really lovely, and the dinner afterward was just delicious.  It was at a nearby winery and renown country smokehouse called The Poacher's Pantry.  I'd heard great things about it, and it totally lived up to my expectations.

Prior to the wedding, I created two polishes specifically for my friend.  After working out the recipe in a mini bottle, I made her two full size bottles, one of each colour.  I put them into cleaned out Nfu Oh bottles (from some Nfu Oh polishes I scored for $2).

This first one is what she has named 'Fiona's Wedding'.  She wore a classic french polish on her fingers for the wedding, but I noticed that she wore this one on her toes!

In the sun it's a magical metallic holographic gold.  Below in the shade, it is a lovely neutral cool toned gold.

I'm so in love with the polish.  It's a 100% me colour too, in fact I made myself a full sized bottle of this after I made hers.  I made it using TKB forged gold pigment, TKB gold sparks, 1500-35 spectraflair and suspension base.

Next up is the second polish, which my friend named 'Fiona's Honeymoon'.  Maybe she is wearing this one right now?  I wanted to create another metallic holo, and I wanted it to be pink.  I'd remembered seeing her wear a Sally Hansen pink chrome polish once, so I thought she might like this.

Again I mixed a mini bottle first, then made up the full sized one once I had worked out the recipe.

I made this one with TKB metallic white pigment (which I never would have bought, but it came in their sample pack where they choose the colours).  I love the metallic white pigment cause it turns whatever colour polish you are making into a metallic finish, and it also tones down the colour.  So it's great if you are going for a pastel shade.  I also used some of my magenta liquid tint,1500-35 Spectaflair and suspension base.

I don't want to call these polishes Frankens, because they were not created from other polishes.  They were created from scratch with all raw materials.  I think I will just call them custom polishes when I haven't added another polish to it.

Frankenpolish Glass Fleck Duochrome Top Coat #4

Here is my last glass fleck duochrome top coat.  This one is a pretty purple, shifting to pink and gold.  Applied two coats over black.

Look at the macro.  Arhhhhhhhh *angels sing*

And of course, in the sun it's super sparkly.

Next, my standard comparison to an Orly Cosmic FX polish, this time Galaxy Girl.  The base colours don't match, but I bet if I mixed some of this pigment with a black polish, rather than layering it over black, it would look exactly like Galaxy Girl.  But I much prefer the top coat.

Psst. Check that bottle shot above, those look like the exact same flakes as on the nail.

Ok, Ok Where to get them.

honeyjr - you totally nailed it in your first comment about the blue/purple one. She said "Doesn't TKB sell some of those Sparks pigments and they also have those Travel To powders which are somewhat similar aren't they?"  

These aren't the Sparks or the Travel To powders, but these are from TKB. These are called Star Bites.

The Blue/Purple one is called Cherika Moon.

The Gold/Green one is called Shanika Sun.

This Purple/Gold one is called Miranda Star.

So next time your ordering your mini bottles, or for you US ladies, when your ordering your suspension base, grab a sample pack.  These babies are worth every cent.

Any Aussie ladies ordering the suspension base should also ask about the Rona pigments, they are the same thing and they also have them in red/copper/gold and turquoise/blue/violet (although I haven't tried those colours yet, only the Volcanic Sparks)

Frankenpolish Glass Fleck Duochrome Top Coat #3

Here is my third (out of four) glass fleck duochrome top coats that I frankened.  This one is gold shifting through to green and is two coats applied over black.

Macro shot showing the glass fleck and the green duochrome on the nail edges.

In the sun, very reflective and shiny.

Now another comparison to an Orly Cosmic FX polish, It's Not Rocket Science.  Of course the base colours are nothing alike, but the actual glass flecks in the polish are the same.  You can see the shift of the flakes in the bottle and how they match the shift in the franken.  I could totally franken a pimped out version of this polish, but the truth is, the base colour of this isn't one of my favourites, so I would much rather wear this as a top coat.

Only one more day to wait and I will tell you where you can get these three glass fleck pigments from.

Frankenpolish Glass Fleck Duochrome Top Coat #2

As promised, here is another frankenpolish glass fleck duochrome top coat. Just look at the amazing duochrome shift.  This was two coats of my franken layered over black. This was made just like the one yesterday, by mixing about 5 grains of barley size spoonfuls of pigment into my new suspension base in a mini 5 ml bottle.

Look at this macro shot, so easy to see the glass flecks and see that the polish is totally smooth.

Here it is in the sun.  Very shiny and reflective yet also quite bright purple on the edges.

Just like yesterday's franken, as soon as I applied this one it reminded me of an Orly Cosmic FX polish.  This time it was Lunar Eclipse.   The interesting thing is, if you didn't know that Lunar Eclipse was applied to the middle and pinky fingers, you could believe that the index and ring fingers were the same polish as in the bottle.  You know that whole, it doesn't look as duochromey on the nail as in the bottle business.  You can see able the same amount of purple in the bottle as on the nail in my franken.

Again I think I could make a pimped up version of Lunar Eclipse by adding some of this pigment to a royal blue tinted base.

I know your busting to know what this pigment is and where you can get it from.  I will tell you, but you have to wait two days, as there are another two colours I want to show you first.