I love a certain kind of polish that's not easy to find in stores, but is available through indie polish makers. The problem is that those indie polish makers often won't ship overseas, or are so popular that they sell out in minutes after restocking their etsy stores. How's a girl to get what she wants? Easy. Make it yourself!
I'd been toying with the idea of making a franken for a while now, but I'd heard some stories of polishes exploding if you mixed different brands together. Not my idea of a good time. I also didn't know where to find glitter that wouldn't melt in polish, suspension base, etc. It all seemed out of my reach.
Then the ebay incident happened. I've been a HUGE fan of Lynnderella polishes and my dream was to own one. There are a few I like, but my ultimate goal was nosegay. It's a creamy lavender jelly with square purple glitter and smaller random purple glitter. It's gorgeous. A few bottles popped up on ebay and I went into a bidding frenzy to secure one for myself. Then the bidding went up over $50 not including shipping. Um, I want it, but I'm not paying over $60 to send one simple bottle of nail polish to myself!
I started googling other glitter jellies, hoping to find something similar. I didn't, but I found Barry M's Lavender Hexograms, which is a clear polish with square purple glitter and fine silver glitter. It gave me an idea. I also found this very cheap lavender jelly polish by Cezanne at my local drug store. It's a base coat, nail hardener and colour all in one. Score! I decided to cautiously mix some Barry M into the Cezanne and step back in case of explosion.
It didn't blow up, but I felt it was lacking something. Maybe some small blue or purple glitter? I was back out on a mission and brought home a bottle of HOMEI diamond nail polish in D-8, which has pink hex glitter and small blue glitter in a grape jelly base. It turned out just to be what I needed!
This is a swatch of the polish by itself on my nails (no base or top coat) at about 3 coats. It's a soft lavender shade with the pink hex glitter, purple square glitter and smaller silver and blue round glitter. It also has a very, very subtle fuschia shimmer, but try as I might, I couldn't get it to show up in pictures. My nail line is no longer visible at 3 coats. It's not nosegay, but it's still gorgeous! Let's say it's inspired by Nosegay rather than an attempt at a dupe.
Since I really like this polish and want to keep it a good, long while, I decided to layer it over another polish. I was going to use essie's To buy or not to buy, but since I just got a bottle of Iseult from a england and it was sitting right there, I decided to use it. Having it as my base made the following pictures look a lot more pink-toned that the polish really is. I think I'll use the essie next time. Again, click on the photos to enlarge them.
Here's a picture indoors under strong light. You can see a little bit of the silver glitter and fuschia shimmer shining.
In natural sunlight. Again, the base of Iseult is making this more pink than it actually is. I do like it this colour, too. I'm going to try layering it over a few polishes to see which one I like best.
Another shot in the sun. I just LOVE the square glitter! It's fairly unique. The pink hex glitter goes well, too. I wasn't sure I'd like it in the mix, but it works.
Another bottle shot to show off the glitter.
This polish turned out better than my expectations and application was so easy! The suspension base in Barry M is so thick that I never have to worry about all my glitter ending up in the bottom of the bottle. The bottle of HOMEI also had a thick formula and helps keep everything mixed well. I'd like to try this polish again with a different glitter than the HOMEI, to get a bit closer to Nosegay, but I'll be keeping this one around for a long time. I think I'll name it 紫陽花 (pronounced ah-gee-sigh), which is Japanese for Hydrangea. It has a lot of the same shades as my favorite rainy season flower.
Now that I've found out how easy it is to franken, the sky's the limit! I have a few more in mind and will post them here when I get around to it.
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