Cosmic Checkers

Hello ladies! Today we have our first franken creation, and I like to call this one, Cosmic Checkers. I'm hoping my polish naming skills will get better as we keep going, but either way, I love the way this one looks. I made Cosmic Checkers in a 5mL bottle so if you are frankening for a standard size bottle which is usually 15 mL, just triple the recipe. This one was pretty simple and it consisted of TKB Luster base, 2 scoops (from the straw!) each of TKB black and white matte squares size 0.025 and one scoop of TKB Luminosity glitter. Add 2 steel mixing balls, shake shake shake, and you have this beauty of a top coat. The polish flowed nicely and was not thick at all. Wear time was pretty average. So I give you, Cosmic Checkers

Now, I am completely in love with the extra added touch of the Luminosity glitter. It adds that little touch of holo flair that keeps this black and white glitter from being too similar from every other black and white glitter top coat on the market. Plus, given the colors, it will look great over pretty much any nail polish color! Keep in mind, I made this as a top coat and therefore, I am pretty positive you cannot reach opacity with this recipe. However, if you want to try to do that, just up the concentration of the glitters. Well, that's it for the Cosmic Checkers, I look forward to coming back and showing you what else I have in my arsenal.

Until next time, remember to keep it classy and creative!

Today's polish supplies came from TKB Trading

Franken Basics Part 5: Glitters 2 and Random Junk

So today, we are getting into part 5 and the finale part in the franken basics series. Woohoo! Today we will be covering the remainder of the glitters and just some extra random need to know info. Today's glitters come from Glitter Mix Boutique. Now Glitter Mix Boutique is awesome because it gives you your choice of individual glitter colors and sizes as well as pre-made glitter mixes which make it pretty stinkin easy to franken. Now, I just ordered for the first time from the boutique and it was great! Easy navigation, tracking number provided, and fast shipping. Not to mention I bought my glitters on sale JUST to make it that much more extra awesome. Here is what I bought

Here we have the Mad for Matte mix. This is a mix of squares and hexes that are lavender, orange, red, yellow, green, black, and blue. All matte of course.

Next we have the Magic Hex mix and this is a mix of 2 sizes hexes that are iridescent and flash purple, gold, orange, blue, and green

Here we have the Psychedelic glitter mix and its a ridiculous mix of squares and hexes of different sizes. I can see flashes of holo hex, pink green, orange, and gold. There might be some white in there but it's really hard to tell with the color shift from the holo hexes.

This beauty is Raining Glitter mix and it is pretty similar to the Psychdelic Mix. First thing I notice is there seems to be more smaller sized glitter pieces and it is more pinked toned than Psychedelic. The mix seems to be almost identical with the exception of blue and silver added in.

  

Next up is the Edgy in Pastel mix which is definitely more colorful than my picture makes it look. Its dominated in fine square and hex black glitter along with a sprinkling of bubblegum pink, sky blue, and pastel green hexes. Also all matte. LOVE this one.

Last but not least is the famous Spectraflair. This is a fine grade powder and I use this to create linear holos. Now, I bought mine off of Ecrater, but the price on this has gone up significantly since I bought it. Plus it only seems one vendor carries it on the site.

So thus concludes the remainders of the glitters that I have. I have some more Sparks that are coming to me in the mail soon so I am pretty excited to give myself even more of a variety! Now the last thing I wanted to do was just get out of the way some of the other randoms involved in frankening. First thing, polish bottles. You can definitely reuse your old polish bottles, but a number of webites also market mini bottles which you put together yourself when you get them in the mail (wicked easy, promise!). Next thing are agitator beads, this is a MUST for any polish creator. They are the tiny little metal balls that you find in the bottom of your polish bottle. They make hand mixing polish SO much easier! TKB trading sells theirs for pretty ridiculously cheap. I have seen on polish supply websites that they sell products that are supposed to make it easier to pour polish ingredients, but I have no problem pouring when I am actually paying attention. Last, would be methods of measurement. Now, I kid you not when I tell you that I literally use a cut up straw to measure my pigments

Tadaaaaaa!

And this works well for me personally so this is what I will be referring to when talking about polish recipes. So, with that being said, I think we finally concluded the franken basics series! So that means we can move on to awesome polish creations! If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment and I will see what I can do.

As usual ladies, stay classy and fabulous!

Franken Basics Part 4: Glitters 1

Hope everyone has had a great holiday! Looking forward to the new year, a fresh start! But I'm not going to fool myself into trying to make a resolution other than to keep being my fabulous self. Anyways, moving on in the series we are going to start going over glitters today. I have to split this post up into two parts in order to avoid making your computer crash due to a ridiculous amount of pictures. The most important thing to remember when frankening with glitters is to make sure that you use SOLVENT RESISTANT GLITTERS. This will prevent your nail polish from eventually turning into a bleeding mess in which you will have an unintentionally colored base and colorless glitter, no bueno. Solvent resistant glitters are made for cosmetic use and are less likely to lose their color into your base later on down the road. Craft glitters that you can pick up at Walmart or Michael's are usually not made to withstand combination with a nail polish base, so keep that in mind. But, if you google solvent resistant glitters, you will come up with a TON of results so fear not! Today, I will show you my current collection of TKB (surprise surprise!) solvent resistant glitters.

Here we have TKB Black Square 0.025". O.025" being the size. Glitter is matte.

TKB White Square 0.025". Also matte.

TKB Adam & Eve Glitter. Glitter is finer than the white and black squares. It is also more of a fuschia than this picture let's on. This glitter gives off a scattered holo effect!

 TKB Blue Focus Glitter

TKB Pink Points Glitter. This is more of a light rose color. Not holo.

TKB Luminosity Glitter. Will give you a scattered holo effect!

TKB Headtrip Glitter. Sky blue AND holo.

TKB Blue Sparks. Now, sparks are really neat. As you see, the texture is much finer, almost powder-like. And the effect is definitely more shimmer than glitter. It looks white while in the bag but the blue shines when swatched. TKB states " Sparks are very transparent and reflective, similar to glitter. However, glitter is typically made from glitter or plastic. Our Sparks! are made from a thin, smooth, uniform mineral platelet Calcium-Aluminum-Borosilicate. This means they are: a) mineral based, and b) softer to the touch." Now I don't really know what that means, but I do know they are AWESOME.

TKB Red Flakies. Yup, this right here is what flakies look like when they are not mixed in a polish. Now I know they don't look like much, but that's partly because I have been stuck temporarily using my Iphone for pictures and partly because they really just look that boring in the bag. These come in all sorts of colors and I have a few, but I didn't really feel like posting all of them since they more or less look exactly the same in the bag.

So that is the extent of the TKB solvent resistant glitter but I will be back in no time to show you a few more beauties in my arsenal. Hope you're as excited as I am!

Remember to always keep it classy and creative!

Review- Girly Bits Street Magic and Shift Happens

Now, if you haven't heard of Girly Bits you have been missing out! Girly Bits was created by Pam who started a blog and eventually ended up creating gorgeous polishes. Pam's business has pretty much blown up in popularity over the past few months or so. Today I am going to be reviewing both Girly Bits Street Magic and Shift Happens.

First up is Street Magic which Pam describes as a gorgeous color shifting polish that changes from gold to bronze to a beautiful emerald green, right before your eyes. That description is pretty spot on. The polish is smooth in application and not too thick and not too thin. This is a layering polish so I'm pretty sure that you cannot achieve full opacity without it looking like this

Photo courtesy of Varnished Valkyrie

Cute! Lol. So long story short, don't try this at home kids.

Next is Girly bits Shift Happens which is described as a multichromatic shimmer that flashes green, yellow, red and orange in a sheer red base. Now this bad boy has been receiving some pretty big props from bloggers all over as a close stand in for either Clarins 230 or Max Factor Fantasy Fire, both of which are pretty nonexistent or ridiculously expensive around these parts. The only difference is that Max Factor has a very blue toned bright purple base and Clarins 230 has a very red toned purple base where as Shift Happens, has the very sheer red base. I am ok with this because in my opinion, Shift Happens seems to be a little bit more versatile than either Fantasy Fire or 230. Again this polish was smooth, spread evenly, and self leveled wonderfully. 

Now onto the awesomeness

So here are the bottle shots. Let's just got ahead and collectively sigh at the duochrome goodness in the picture without the flash

Here are the polishes with Street Magic swatched over China Glaze For Audrey and Shift Happens layered over China Glaze VII. You can definitely see the color shift in Shift Happens but I'm kinda bummed that you can't really tell with Street Magic. I'm pretty sure that was my fault for layering it over a light color. Either way it was shimmery and fabulous.

So, if you are interested in purchasing any of Pam's polishes, they can be purchased through Llarowe, Harlow & Co., Overall Beauty, or Mei Mei's Signatures.  By the way, Happy Holidays! I hope it is one that is safe and full of joy! Anyways, looking forward to seeing you ladies next time when we move onto glitters!

Franken Basics Part 3: Makeup Pigments

So today we are going to be covering yet another part of the franken basics series and that is makeup pigments. These types of pigments seem to be pretty popular since Pinterest has had a ridiculous amount of pins going around saying that you can crush up your old eyeshadows and mix it with clear polish. While this does work more or less, I've run into some trouble being able to crush the pressed eyeshadow into a fine enough powder to mix readily enough with a clear polish. What I have found that works pretty well would be loose pigments or mineral eyeshadows. So without further ado, I give you my make up pigments!

These are my MAC pigments. From left to right we have Blue Brown, Vanilla, Melon, Old Gold,  and Rose.

Here we have the pigments with flash...further reminding me that I need a tan.

And here are the close ups. Swoon, I love the shimmer! Rose seemed to be a little chunkier than the other pigments so I'm thinking it probably won't mix as easily.

Here we have some random pigments Bare Minerals Bare Skin, Bare Minerals Sex Kitten, Bare Minerals Drama, L.A. Splash Black Sea (which I got from Kmart when they were going out of business here in Tallahassee), and Lancôme Copper Lights (which I'm pretty sure I accidentally stole form my roommate before I moved out)

Here we are with flash. They seem pretty similar but I promise they weren't in person!

And of course the close up. Can't wait to start mixing these babies with some bases and see what we come up with! Next post we will be taking a quick break to check out some Indie polish before moving onto glitters. So stoked!

Franken Basics Part 2: Cosmetic Pigments

Hello ladies! Hopefully you're having a wonderful day! Today, we are moving on with our Franken Basics series and today we are covering cosmetics pigments. Now when I say that, I refer to pigments such as micas, oxides, etc. Again, I usually get my pigments from TKB Trading but I know for a fact that there are quite a few websites that sell the same kind of products. What I love about TKB is they offer sample sizes which are fairly cheap so if you are frankening on a small scale, the sample sizes are more than enough. So today I decided to show you some of the pigments in my stash so far!

Here we have the TKB Planetary Collection pigments. These things are super cool because I know you can't tell now, but you mix these babies into a dark base and they turn into some sweet duochromes! From left to right we have Travel to Neptune, Travel to Venus, Travel to Mars, Travel to Earth, Travel to Jupiter, and Travel to Pluto

Here are the same swatches with flash, kinda lame if you ask me

And here we have the Planetary pigments close up, now we're getting somewhere!

Here we have 3 more TKB pigments but these few are matte (they will NOT turn a polish into a matte polish without a matte base!) and a random pigment that I picked up from believe it or not, an online shop that sells pigments for car paint. I will link it after I test it out a bit more. Sooooo, from left to right we have Red #6 Lake, Blue #1 Lake, Yellow Oxide, and Paint w/ Pearl Green to Purple Color Shift Pigment.

Here we are with a flash, that red is pretty ridiculous.

And finally we have the swatch close up. Please note that there is no real glitter in the blue but I think that might have been left over shimmer from past swatches. Now I LOVE the look of the matte pigments swatched on skin but they stained like a beast

Kinda cool though no? So, keep in mind that this MAY transfer to nail staining when frankening a polish. Alright kids, well I'm sure you are probably swatched out for now, but don't worry, I fully intend to keep the good times rolling with the next post's pigment swatching! Woohoo!

Franken Basics Part 1: Bases

It's pretty obvious that Indie brands have completely blown up over the past year or so in popularity. It even seems that mainstream brands are starting to copy trends that were first started by Indie polish makers (here's lookin' at you ChG Whirled Away, Get Carried Away, and It's a Trap-eze!). So it's no wonder that people are more interested than ever in trying to create their own masterpieces.

That being said, contrary to Pinterest, while it can be as easy as just dumping old pressed eye shadow into clear nail polish, not surprisingly enough, it can get WAY more complicated than that. So I've decided to compile a list of basic know how's and facts that is important for every polish maker.

First up, we have bases. Bases are exactly as they sound, the base formula for a nail polish in which things will be added to make the final product. Personally, I get my base from TKB Trading and they are fantastic in explaining which base is used for what. However, I have also seen them sold at NAILITE, Brambleberry, and even on Etsy (please note that I have not ordered from any vendor other than TKB Trading and cannot comment or vouch on their quality or customer service). I have also bought pre-mixed jelly and matte bases. What alot of  people don't realize is, not every base is suitable for every kind of nail polish. There are certain bases that are more appropriate for glitters, some that are more appropriate for pigments, etc.

So without further ado, I bring you franken base comparisons:

Ok dear friends, for reference purposes, from left to right I am comparing Sally Hansen Powerful Acrylic Gel, TKB Glamour Base (which per TKB, is best for glitters), and TKB Luster Base (per TKB best for pigments but can be used in a pinch for glitters). Note that the Sally Hansen is crystal clear, the Glamour Base is clear but a little cloudier than the Sally Hansen, and the Luster Base is a milkier almost yellow color

Here are the bases on the nail, Pointer to Ring finger, Sally Hansen Powerful Acrylic Nail Gel, Glamour Base, and Luster Base. Even though the colors are different, they aren't noticeable on the nail (check out the sweet towel background! Ha!).

Here we have comparison of glitter with L to R, Sally Hansen, Glamour Base, and Luster Base. The top picture is immediately after shaking, 1 hour after shaking, and 4 hours after shaking. You can see that the Sally Hansen pretty much failed for suspension purposes (which is fine since they make no promises about suspension use)  but the Glamour and Luster bases held up pretty well. 

Next up we have comparison of the 3 bases with TKB pigment added again immediately after shaking, 1 hour later, and 4 hours later. Sally Hansen is on the L and while it does look a tad different, still totally useable. Glamour and Luster look pretty much identical. EDIT: after a few days, the pigment has definitely separated from the Sally Hansen clear polish.

And finally, here is my base warning! Avoid turning a fabulous franken

Into a franken fail

by choosing the right base! That thing was effing terrible after awhile.

Until next time ladies, stay classy and creative!

Introductions!!

Hello hello,  and welcome to Franken Femme! My name is Becca and I am SUPER excited to finally be starting my own blog. I was a huge follower of Dr. Frankenpolish and haven't been able to to find anything like her blog. Long story short, Franken Femme was born. I'm hoping to be able to provide a good resource into the polish frankening world as well as throw in occasional product reviews and nail of the days. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you!