A vegan nail polish blog. A celebration of colour and light, as well as of justice for nonhuman animals.

Archive for the ‘Frankenpolish’ Category

Roughles Frankendupe Attempt

I’ve been tempted by these Nicole by OPI “Roughles” textured polishes that came out this spring, but didn’t want to spend full price on them (10.99 each here in Canada!). Since they seem to be starting to disappear from some of the drugstores without being put on clearance I decided to try my hand at frankening something similar.

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Here are the ingredients I used to try to dupe the yellow one, Sand in My Shoe: mostly Color Club Coastline (white texture) with Jordana Yellow Madness (yellow texture) added, along with one drop of the green China Glaze In The Rough and three drops of the orange Toe-tally Textured, and one small scoop of tiny coral-pink matte glitter.

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I think maybe it could use a touch more of the matte coral-pink glitter, but overall I’m pretty happy with it! πŸ˜€

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Halloween Nails, Part 2

My Halloween mani from yesterday had gotten a few chips by the end of the day, so I decided to redo those nails while leaving the others as they were.

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I used Zoya Beatrix, Zoya’s lighter orange texture shade (two coats for this one, as opposed to the one coat for Dhara), and then a layer of the black and white glitter franken that I already had over Zoya Dhara. Followed by topcoat of course, to smooth out all that texture and glitter.

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Love these two orange Zoyas together!

Happy Halloween! with Zoya Dhara

Happy Halloween! πŸ˜€

Zoya Dhara with topcoat under Ott Lite

Here’s my Halloween mani, featuring Zoya Dhara, my black and white glitter franken, and black cats! (In that first picture the bottle I’m holding is Beatrix, not Dhara, because I grabbed the wrong one!)

Zoya Dhara with topcoat and flash

Here are some photos of Dhara before the additions. Zoya Dhara is a deep orange texture polish with gold glitter, from the fall 2013 Pixie Dust collection.

Zoya Dhara in overcast light

This is just one coat! I’m really glad I got this polish, it’s awesome!

Zoya Dhara in overcast light

Zoya Dhara in overcast light

I had some sun during the late afternoon so I went outside to get sun photos with my phone camera:

Zoya Dhara in sun

Zoya Dhara in sun

As mentioned, the black and white glitter I added to most of the nails is my own frankenpolish. On the ring finger, I first used a layer of topcoat to smooth out the texture, and then stamped a black cat using Kleancolor Black and stamping plate HB49, which is made by HB Nails and has a bunch of cat designs. I ordered the plate from Amazon UK, not sure if it’s still available there.

Zoya Dhara with topcoat and flash

Finally, a blurry shot to show all the sparkle that topcoat brings out in Dhara!

Zoya Dhara with topcoat and flash

More From the Vault

My apologies for the lack of posts! Things have just been super busy lately! So I thought I’d post another group of photos from several years ago that I just never got around to posting and don’t necessarily have the info on number of coats, formula etc. anymore.

OPI Fiercely Fiona with Nicole by OPI Brilliant Idea on the accent finger.

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A frankenpolish that I call Firecracker. The ingredients for this are Martha Stewart glitter in fire opal (which does bleed colour into the base, but not too much) and some of the LA Girl Glitter Addict polishes in orange, fuchsia, and red.

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OPI Absolutely Alice with half moons in Nubar Night Sparkle.

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OPI and Apple Pie, a classic “ugly” shade, under the Ott Lite.

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From the Vault

I still have some really old photos from when I started blogging, so I thought I would post them in a few installments!

This first one is a fall mani that I really loved! Thumb to pinkie: Finger Paints Sketchy Character, a mustard yellow frankenpolish, Kleancolor Fashionista, China Glaze Brownstone, Joe Fresh Pumpkin. The glitter gradient over everything was done with Nubar Lime Green Glitter and Orange Glitter.

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Next, Orly Wild Wisteria with China Glaze Brownstone accent:

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I’ll finish up this first vault post with swatches of the creme half of the Color Club Back to Boho collection, along with a couple of layering combos using them.

Shabby Drab:

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With Color Club Jingle Jangle overtop:

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Color Club Earthy Angel:

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Color Club New Bohemian:

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Color Club Nomadic in Nude:

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Color Club Rad Nomad:

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Color Club Red-ical Gypsy – gotta say, the stereotypical gypsy-themed polish names just make me think of cultural appropriation… This is a nice red though, and look! An appearance from my little Thor!

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With an accent of Cult Nails Hypnotize Me and Nubar V matte top coat:

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OPI Don’t Talk Bach to Me and Glow Up Already, and a franken

I’m trying something new today! I downloaded an app to add watermarks to photos on my phone, so that I can actually post pictures I’ve taken with my phone straight from my phone without having to forego the watermark (stupid WordPress app doesn’t allow access to the blog’s media library, which is another related problem). It’s kind of neat because with this app the size, orientation and placement of the watermark can also be changed unlike the software I normally use on my laptop. Only thing I don’t like is that there’s no option that I can see to change the name of the image file, so the photos just have numbers for names and that can only be changed using the full WordPress site…

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Anyway, here’s a mani! πŸ™‚ This is OPI Don’t Talk Bach to Me from the Germany collection, with a glitter gradient of OPI Glow Up Already from the Burlesque collection, and Poshe topcoat over everything. Photos in natural overcast light.

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I used two coats of Don’t Talk Bach to Me, a light yellow-green with a creme base and some slight shimmer, and I found the formula kind of thick. I’ll probably add some thinner before using it again.

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Glow Up Already is a dense fine glitter in a lot of colours, especially gold, green, and orange, with an overall look of golden lime green.

The next day, I added two coats of a frankenpolish that I made which contains teal square glitter, yellow, copper and champagne gold hex glitter, and gold glass flecks. Under my Ott light:

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The main polishes I used were Kleancolor Tiara Gold, LA Girl Glitter Addict in Flashy, NYX salon formula 24K Glitter, and Wet n Wild The Gold and the Beautiful. Overcast natural light:

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The teal square glitter was from Glitter Unique, if I recall correctly. This last photo is in partially sunny natural light:

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I’m really happy with how this franken turned out! πŸ™‚

Zoya Perrie with black and white glitter

I recently made this frankenpolish (nail polish that you mix together yourself!) top coat of black and white hex glitter. As far as frankens go, this one isn’t particularly original or complicated; it’s basically just LA Girls Glitter Addict in Uninhibited, thinned out with some clear polish and with some loose white hex glitter added. I still haven’t decided on a name for this creation… I love making frankens; it’s so much fun!

The base shown here is Zoya Perrie, a warm toned, light yet bright purple. This polish is a one-coater with a great formula! The sun was setting when I took these photos, so apologies that the colour is a bit off – Perrie looks redder than she should. If you click on the large versions of the photos you can see where the glitter sort of sinks into the polish a bit leaving slight pock-marks… I’m not sure if this is just from not letting the base colour dry enough before adding the glitter coat, but a second layer of top coat would take care of it!

Zoya Perrie with black & white glitter

Zoya Perrie with black & white glitter