First, I wanted to make it clear that my nail polish are NOT frankens lol! I have been calling them frankens by mistake. A franken is a nail polish with several pre made nail polish colors combined together (like the monster Frankenstein, duh). Technically, the only polish I have ever posted about that even comes close to being a franken is my Rose Among Thorns and that one really isn't even a franken either. It has a little bit of white pre made nail polish in it for color and that's it. All the rest of it is suspension base and glitter. I made a huge mistake by calling my hard work frankens :(. Every single bottle I've made, other than Rose Among Thorns, has been solely my artistic ideas coming together in a polish. I have seen some really amazing frakens though. Amy from I'm Feeling Nail Venturous made a sick franken the other day. Check it out
here. She even shows with pictures which polish colors she used to get her end result. I may do that too so everyone at home can join the fun even if you don't have the polish base and glitter etc. I'm gonna work on something today just for fun and post about it since I have super short nubs and can't swatch right now!
I'll be back to doing swatches as soon as I have time to give myself a gel mani!
First I have my Essie purchases from last month, minus Lilacism cuz I hate the formula! Van D' Go, Bikini So Teeny, Camera and Tart Deco. Love all of these. Camera was one I saw a swatch of by The Polishaholic
here. In her amazing pics, the polish looked to be a sort of hot coral color. When I got it, it's like a hot pink. I love it either way. I never would have purchased it if I had seen it on a shelf somewhere but I'm so glad I did. The Bikini So Teeny is so amazing. It is like a periwinkle purple blue with that subtle silver shimmer. In most of the swatches online of Bikini So Teeny, the color appears to be a light blue. It leans waay toward purple IMO. You can see a good swatch by A Polish Addict of that one
here. In her swatch she says she hated the formula. I thought it was a good formula.
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| Essie-Van D'Go, Bikini So Teeny, Camera, Tart Deco |
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| Essie-Merino Cool, School of Hard Rocks, Mojito Madness |
Next up is my Sinful purchases last month. Not too happy with Sinful Colors right now! I got these at the end of June out of town in Mississippi. Read this blog post here if you haven't already heard what they did to a fellow blogger over at Swatch and Learn. They basically stole her pics then lied about the technique used! Lame.
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| Sinful Colors-Purple Diamond, Hottie, Nail Junkie |
Third is my OPI purchases from last month/this month. Got two of these at Target (Pros and Bronze, Pirouette my Whistle) and the other three on sale at the mall at a salon, buy two get one free!
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| OPI-Pirouette My Whistle, I Don't Give a Rotterdam, A Roll in the Hague, Did it On 'Em, Pros and Bronze |
These next Revlon polishes are really nice! The scented pale purple one really smells strongly like gum drops when it dries. I was thinking of being funny and calling one of my nail polish creations "scented", smells like nail polish :)! Revlon Whimsical is an exact dupe of Deborah Lippmann's Glitter in the Air. Save yourself $18 and buy the Whimsical! I have both lol!
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| Revlon-Whimsical, Popular, Sunshine Sparkle, Royal (bad ass), Gum Drop |
Next I have Wet n Wild Fastdry. They don't really dry all that fast...
Found these steals at the Dollar General for like a dollar or something like that. Funny thing is, the red one is a freaking PERFECT red orange! I love the red orange. The pink based reds do not look good on me.
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| Wet n Wild Fastdry-Everybody Loves Redmond (get it, it's amazing!), The Wonder Yellows, 9.0.2.1. Orange, Gray's Anatomy |
Now for the two stars of the bunch. I found these a couple of days ago at Sally's in a reject spot like someone picked them up and changed their mind and just put them back anywhere. These were the last two in these colors. I scooped them up b/c I had been wanting Flying Dragon after seeing a blog post about it but never had seen the scattered holo delight I'm not Lion from the "On Safari" collection for fall 2012! Man, this one's amazing! This looks almost just like the one from their holiday Ulta Exclusive line back in 2011 (Ultamate Holiday). I wasn't a blogger back then but the best swatch from that line that I've ever seen is The Polishaholic's swatch
here. She actually agrees that these look like the old holiday line too. I had the discontinued holo polish Ultamate Holiday in my eBay cart and all but BEGGED the seller to come down off their ridiculous $25 price tag so I could have the bottle. The seller came down to $20, wow, gee thanks lady...I'm soooo glad I didn't act on my impulse and buy it! I really almost did and would have if I hadn't forgotten about it lol! Do check that post by The Polishaholic and tell me if you agree if they look similar. I'm actually wearing it (I'm not Lion) on my nubs right now. I will post some pics of this at the bottom...my nails look horrible. I haven't had time to do my nails this week b/c I've been so busy with my nail polish and Etsy store. I need to make time to do a fresh gel set asap! I miss it!!!
Fyling Dragon is a matte neon purple with tiny blue and pink sparkles in it. Amazing. I love China Glaze. It's one of my top three nail polish (main stream) brands out there.
You can see a EXCELLENT full swatch of the entire collection of China Glaze- On Safari by The Polishaholic here. Also if you want to see a full swatch of China Glaze-Flying Dragon by the lovely author of Nightly Nails, you can do so here. Nightly Nails had the best swatch of Flying Dragon IMO.
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| China Glaze-Flying Dragon, I'm not Lion |
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| Blurry pic shows the holo effect so well |
Here are the photos of China Glaze-I'm Not Lion on my short nubby nubs :)! I know my nails look horrible but the color is so great that it really doesn't matter!
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| China Glaze-I'm not Lion. Indoors with flash |
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| Outside in shade, no flash |
These next three Essie polishes I got last month as well. Two of them I found at Walmart and the other I found at Target. I love the Shine of the Times so much. It's the flakie one on the far end. It looks amazing over black or dark any color. Haven't tried As Gold as it Gets yet. Set in Stones, the silver glitter one, is really good over any color.
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| Essie-As Gold as it Gets, Set in Stones, Shine of the Times |
This is a random box of my indie brand polishes. I will do a separate post on those. They deserve their own post :)!
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| Box of indies ♥ |
Besides the indies, of course, Kleancolor makes some of my favorite chunky glitter polishes. I found these on eBay for super cheap all from one seller. If you want the link, email me and I'll send it to you. I love all of them!
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| Kleancolor-Tiara Gold, Moondance, Grand Finale, Afternoon Picnic, Chunky Holo Bluebell, Chunky Holo Black |
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| Moondance, Tiara Gold, Grand Finale |
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| Chunky Holo Black, Chunky Holo Bluebell, Afternoon Picnic |
Up next is my 3 Maybelline Color Show blues I got this and last month. I love these little babies! They are super cute! They all dry matte except for Sapphire Siren. Styled Out & Denim Dash are part of the "Denim" collection in this line. These polish were purchased at Walmart for under $3. They are not full sized though, only .23 oz. Still a good deal though IMO.
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| Maybelline Color Show-Denim Dash, Sapphire Siren, Styled Out |
I want to thank the lovely author of the blog "Things I Love at the Moment" for giving me inspiration to do a post like this. I hadn't thought of doing anything like this until I read her blog post the other day here. I was thinking since my nails were so short, I'd have to wait until I did a mani to do any new posts. I really enjoyed reading and looking at all the pics in that post! I hope you guys like this too. It's a little different and I know my main focus is indie brands but I wanted to post something a little different than my usual. I will be back to posting swatches of my nail polish creations and indie brands as soon as I get myself a new mani! I will be posting bottle shots and nail wheel pics of some new polish I made this week. I have new one called Shop Teal U Drop, a new BeTrixed with smaller yellow neon glitter and a soft black/dark gray linear holographic polish. For now, the new BeTrixed looks almost identical to Floam and I will be adding the pink and black to it. I don't want to ever be a copy cat. Yesterday, I had a picture of the polish I made with the new neon yellow & neon blue on my Instagram but I deleted it b/c it looked too much like Floam. I didn't want people to start asking for it. That's just not right to copy anybodies polish exactly the same. I believe a little integrity goes a long way these days!
My little boy went to work with his dad today, so I'm just trying to catch up. I still need to list my new polishes on my Esty store site and mix up the new BeTrixed. I wanted to do a blog post first :)! Hope you guys have a happy hump day :)!
XOXO, Jen
