Review – Sparkles By Julie: Water Lily

Monday! Woohoo! We made it through the weekend in one piece (hopefully). Hope everyone’s was great. Now I’m going to start this post off by apologizing. Today’s swatch is from the vault and sadly the Sparkles By Julie Polish Line is pretty much discontinued. However, if you do want a silver lining, maybe you could use this polish as inspiration for new creations?? Haha, just trying to find the bright side. Well today I am going to show you Water Lily which has multiple size hexes of gold holo, blue, and black all in a frosty shimmery white base. I am going to go ahead and warn you that these photos are from when I first started using the current light set up so pics may be a tad out of focus!

Now onto the review, I am a huge fan of the idea of this polish, really I am. Unfortunately I think that the frosty white base is a bit too opaque and it is hard to make out all the gorgeous glitter underneath. Even having said that, I still think the polish looks gorgeous as is so I really can’t complain. However, I had no issue getting any glitter out of the bottle or spreading it on the nail. Swatches show two coats plus one coat of fast dry top coat for smoothness.

Well that’s it for Water Lily. Hope everyone is ok with me featuring a discontinued polish (sorry again about that!). I will be back on Wednesday with more franken beauties so stay tuned! So until next time, remember to always keep it classy and creative!

xo 

Reptilia

Hello my beautiful polish lovers and happy Friday! In theory, I should be nearly all moved by now but really, who knows? What I do know is that moving is the worst. My silver lining is knowing we were able to get rid of a lot of junk we had lying around the old house and never used. So I guess it’s not all bad!

So for today’s polish, I started off with about half a bottle of TKB Luster Base. I then added about 2 drops of TKB Basic Blue Jellie and 3 drops of Basic Yellow Jellie (remember, these colors are super concentrated so use a light hand when mixing!) to create a dark jungle green jelly base. I then added between 4 and 6 good sized scoops of TKB’s Shanira Sun which is a glass fleck that shifts from gold to shades of green (think similar to the color shift in Chanel Peridot). What I created I called Reptilia because it reminds me of reptile scales; also, it’s the name of a pretty sweet jam from the band The Strokes. Here she is

Color shift!

More color shift! Woo!

 Now you’d be crazy if you didn’t agree that the polish is reminiscent of reptile skin! I absolutely love this gorgeous girl! Swatches show two coats (probably could have used three though) plus one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry. Formula was absolutely wonderful, creamy, not to thick, and easy to control. It really is one of the more simple polishes but with such stunning results!

Well that’s it for Reptilia! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and fingers crossed that the remainder of the move goes smoothly! And until we meet again, remember to keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today’s Supplies Are From:

* TKB Trading: Luster Base, Basic Blue Jellie, Basic Green Jellie, and Shanira Sun

Star Gazer

It’s Wednesday! That means we are halfway through the week and TECHNICALLY, I should be halfway done with my moving… yeah… knowing me…..ha! Well that’s ok, because I’m sure that it has to be more progress than where I started on Monday! How is everyone else’s week going?

Anywho, I have mixed feelings about today’s polish and I will tell you why after the swatching. I started out with about half a bottle of TKB Glamour Base and added about 2-3 drops of Color Club Status Update (a dark almost dusty gray cream). I then added 1-2 drops of Wet ’n’ Wild French White Cream. Now a warning for polish makers, be wary when using cream polishes to make jelly finishes! Given that creams are often made from opaque white bases, your jelly will go from squishy to super opaque in a matter of 1-2 drops. So when creating, swatch and test often to make sure what you are creating gives you your desired finish.  So after creating the base, I followed up with 2 liberal scoops of Glitter Unique’s Silver Holo Stars and 3 more scoops of the black stars. To top it off, I added one small scoop of TKB’s luminosity holo glitter. I think the reasoning for my polish name is best explained if I just show you so here she is!

Holo!

Caught a holo star on my nail! Squeeee!

 Now, onto my reservations about this polish. First, I think I was one of those unfortunate fools who did the accidental tumble into using a bit too much of a cream based polish. I think the base is a tad bit more opaque than what I was hoping for. But even that isn’t too terrible. Do you know what DOES really stink though? If you go back and look at the swatches you will see that the finish is starting to rub off of the black stars! I only made this polish about 24 hours before I swatched it so I really think there is no excuse for that. It made me a little sad because I think otherwise, this polish has a lot of promise. Swatches show 2 thick coats with a bit of placing required for the stars (for some reason the black ones were harder to reach?) and one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry. Formula was difficult to control unless I got lazy and let it pool around the edges of my nails.

Well that’s it for today’s polish; let’s hope if I decide to continue to delve into shapes, they quality will be better than those black stars. I hope everyone has a great rest of their day and remember to always keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today’s Supplies Are From:

* Birchbox: Color Club Status Update (but I’m sure it can be found at numerous other Color Club retailers)

* Walmart: Wet ‘n’ Wild French Cream

* TKB Trading: Luminosity Glitter

* Glitter Unique: Silver Holo Stars and Black Stars

Purple Haze

Hello my lovelies! Hope you are having a wonderful beginning to your week! I just wanted to shoot you a heads up to let you know that over the next week and into the coming weekend, I will be in the process of moving and will therefore ATTEMPTING to schedule my posts ahead of time. I still want to make sure I post because consistency is important to me, but so is planning ahead, lol.

So without further ado, let’s move onto the polish! I’m sure most of you are familiar with the title and those of you who aren’t, Purple Haze is the name of a classic and friggen awesome classic rock song by Jimi Hendrix. If you haven’t heard it, go check it out or run the risk of being shunned :) The franken for today is a glitter topper that was actually made in a different color palette for a friend. I liked it so much that I created it for myself! I started with about 2/3 of  a bottle of TKB’s Luster Base. I then followed it up with 2 scoops each of TKB’s white square .025” and black square .025”. After that I added another 2 scoops each of Glitter Unique’s  Fuchsia .040 and Light Pink .040 Dots. I finished the creation off with one scoop of TKB Adam & Eve Glitter (which is a smaller particle holo fuchsia glitter) and one small scoop of TKB Purple Sparks. Finally, I topped the remainder off with suspension base and voila!

 The formula was great on this. It self leveled like a boss and was relatively smooth given the hodge podge that was being thrown in there. Swatches show one thickish coat that required minimal glitter placing and one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry. I absolutely love how the small particle size of the Sparks helps to add a glowy aspect to this polish. Plus, it looks great over both dark and lighter colors!

Well that’s it for Purple Haze! Remember, even though I am moving, I will still be able to answer any and all questions or comments that you may have and I look forward to hearing them! So until next time, remember to keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today’s Supplies Are From:

* TKB Trading: Adam & Eve Gliter, Black Square .025”, White Square .025”, and Purple Sparks!

* Glitter Unique: Fuschia Dots .040 and Light Pink Dots .040

I'm a Banana!

Hi ladies and happy Friday! Let's just move straight into today's franken shall we? I wanted to make sure I didn't move back into my comfort zone so I opted to create another yellow polish, this time a cream/shimmer because I know how tricky yellows can often be. This polish started out with 1/3 of a bottle of TKB Glamour Base, followed by 1/3 TKB Basic Yellow Jellie, and then a little under 1/3 of Wonder beauty products Primary Yellow Color Base. I attempted (probably a little too late) to try and lighten up the base a little bit by adding a few drops of Wet 'n' Wild French White cream. I finished the polish up with a few good sized scoops of TKB's gold Sparks! And that's it! What I created I called I'm a banana! and I will explain the name after the photos

Macro shows a good swatch of the shimmer

I love how creamy and bright this yellow is! However, swatching went as follows: One coat, "Holy cow this is thick!"(adds thinner), two coats "good grief it's like trying to paint on silly putty" (adds more thinner), three coats "finally!" So long story short the formula was THICK and still somewhat streaky. However, thinner fixed these problems immensely! Self leveling was not an issue and all swatches are shown with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry

Now onto the name. First thing I thought of was this ridiculousness:

Don't tell me you didn't lose brain cells with that. You're welcome!

So that's all for today's fruit flavored franken adeventures. See you back Monday, have a great weekend, and remember to always keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today's Supplies Are From:

* TKB Glamour Base, Basic Yellow Jellie, and Gold Sparks!: TKB Trading
* Primary Yellow Color Base: Wonder Beauty Products

Pop Culture and a small announcement

Happy hump day my lovely ladies! I dunno about everyone else, but my week has pretty much been all over the place (which of course makes ME feel crazy)

So I'm going to start off with the polish and then leave you guys with a small announcement THAT REQUIRES YOUR INPUT (pretty please!) Anywho, I started out with about half a bottle of TKB Glamour base. I then added a few drops of basic white cream polish (in my case Wet 'n' Wild French White Creme). I then added 2 scoops of Glitter Unique's matte neon glitter mix (I just ordered this mix about 2 weeks ago but can't find it on the website :( It is small and large hexes in yellow, pink, and blue). After that I followed it up with Glitter Unique's matte neon purple .062 hex glitter. I finished up the polish with 2 scoops each of Glitter Unique's .040 Fuschia dots and .118 Ocean Blue Holo dots. I filled the remainder of the polish of with suspension base then added literally 1 drop of a no name bright pink polish to take away some of the starkness of the white. What I created,  I called Pop Culture, because that's totally what it reminds me of!

Check out all that glittaaaaaa

Disregarding that massive dent, here is a macro of the big blue dots!

Swatches show 2 coats with a bit of dabbling, but nothing as bad as Shipwrecked. Mani was sealed with 2 coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry which seems to me maple syruping it up, hence some of the bubbles in the photographs. I love this polish! It's almost a cousin to Shipwrecked. Kinda, sorta, not really... but I still love it :) It reminds me of everything we look forward to with warm weather. Well, it reminds me of that and these throwback 80's/early 90's sunglasses

photo found here

 and to me, that just screams fun. Well that's it for pop culture! Those of you who are still with me, thank you! I've been tossing around the idea of doing small scale sales of my nail polish, a trial run if you will. If I do decide to do this (and my decision will be based solely on feedback), the polishes up for sale will include the following:

* Shipwrecked
* Shattered Glass
* Flutterby
* Killer Clown
and
* Poseidon

Now keep in mind, if I decide to do this, it will be on a very small scale. I will more than likely be open for orders for about a one week period and ask that I be e-mailed @ frankenfemme@gmail.com with your order and shipping address. At the end of this one week period is when polishes will be made and mailed. Polishes will be $9 for full size bottles and $5 for minis. Shipping is $2.50 with each additional item being $.50. Payment will be done via paypal ONLY and will be sent as a gift to myself. I will hammer out those details over e-mail with the buyer directly. Shipping will only be sent in the US at this time. If you do not feel comfortable sending a gift via Paypal, I'm sorry but given the small nature of this project, that is the only thing I am willing to do at this point. Again, I am deciding whether or not to do this depending on your input only so please let me know by commenting on this post and I will go from there!

Well that's all for now. I'm sure you already are but just in case, remember to keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today's Supplies Are From:

* All glitters are from: Glitter Unique
* TKB Glamour Base: TKB Trading
* Random Pink Polish: Ross
* Wet 'n' Wild French White Creme: Walmart

Shipwrecked

Hello ladies, hope you are having a great start to your week! The highlight of my weekend, unfortunately seems to be the destruction of my Mac but thank goodness, I am able to work from my boyfriend's computer until I figure things out AND I have pictures edited for the next two weeks. WOO! I win... sort of. Hopefully everyone had a wonderful weekend with no destruction of property involved?

So I am excited to show you today's franken because it showcases one of the polishes I made using my brand new dot glitters from Glitter Unique! I check the website frequently as it specializes in solvent resistant glitter and the last time I checked, I found oodles of dots and lots of awesome glitters! Shipping was also surprisingly fast. Anyways, I started with about 1/3 of a bottle of TKB Luster Base and followed it up with about 3 drops of TKB Basic Blue Jellie and about 4 drops of TKB Basic Yellow Jellie. I then added 2 liberal scoops of Glitter Unique Ocean Mix Glitter ( which has various sizes of hexes and squares in matte mint green and lime green and teal hexes). I then followed it up with 2 scoops of Glitter Uniqie .040 Melon Green Dots and 2 medium sized scoops of Glitter Unique Ocean Blue Holo Dots .118. I mixed it up and was a created was utterly... aquatic. I named it shipwreck!

Sweet sweet dots! Come to mama!

Swatches show two thick dabbled coats plus one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry. I love the squishy lovely jelly-ness and the way it mixes with the green and blue holo glitter. But let. me. tell. you. Those blue dots are difficult to fish out due to their larger size. Maybe its partially due to the smaller neck on the smaller bottle? All I know is it was easier for me to tip the bottle upside down, grab the blue holo dots, place them on the nail, and then fill in the spots around the nail to even it out. Alot of work, but still worth it. Even with the two thick coats, there is still visible nail line, so if this bothers you, a base color should do the trick!

Well that's all for Shipwrecked, I have some more dot glitter frankens coming up in the future so get excited! 

I look forward to seeing you back next time but until then, remember to keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today's Supplies Were From:

* Blue Holo Dots, Green Melon Dots, and Ocean Mix Glitters: Glitter Unique

* TKB Luster Base and Basic Blue/Yellow Jellie: TKB Trading 

C'est La Vie MacBook

This mani shall be known as the MacBook killer :(. Was working hard on doing my first fishtail when my dog knocked a bottle of open acetone on my Mac. So long MacBook, you will be missed!

Flutterby

Happy Friday everyone! I'm super excited to have some time off but I'm lame and will spend that time packing. I did however, get some new glitters in over this past week and I am super excited to see what I can create with those(spoiler: I may or may not have found ANOTHER dot supplier!)

So anyways, todays franken is a very simple franken. This polish consists of about one and a half scoops each of Glitter Mix Boutique's Magic Hex Mix ( which is a mix of iridescent micro and small sized hexes that flash gold, green blue, and purple) and Pretty in Pastel Mix (which is a mix of square and hex satin matte glitters in pastel pink, blue, and green). The remainder was filled with TKB's clear Glamour Suspension base. I mixed it up and created this little lady, which I named: Flutterby

Here is the macro shot from two different angles so you can see the iridescent shift

Swatches show one semi-thickish coat over Essie Smokin' Hot and one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry top coat. The glitter was great, not too dense, not too sparse, and it spread relatively easy on the nail. Now I do like this polish, really I do. But it seems so lovely in the bottle and I feel like that doesn't translate entirely onto the nail. Maybe it would help trying it over a lighter base? That would make the mani super springy? Who knows, I'm torn. But I think I would still wear it again.  What do you guys think?

Well that's all for Flutterby, super simple. Like I said I, I will have some upcoming creations using my new glitters so I am pretty excited about that! So until next time, remember to keep it classy and creative. Have a great weekend!

xo

Today's Supplies Are From:

* TKB Glamour Suspension Base: TKB Trading
* Pretty in Pastel and Magic Hex glitter Mixes: Glitter Mix Boutique

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

Hello ladies and happy hump day! In true meme fashion I bring you:

Photo found here

Have you guys ever had that "sweet its Friday!" mentality and then have it come crashing down when you realize it's really just Wednesday?? Meh is what I say to that!

So today I have created another holo because let's face it, you can't go wrong with holos. If you remember my last post, I mentioned wanting to try and deviate from my usual suspects in frankens so in doing that, I made an orange holo! I started off with half a bottle of TKB's Luster base. I then added 2 drops of TKB's basic red jellie and about 5 drops of TKB's basic yellow jellie. I then added one small scoop of Wonder Beauty Products Prismatic Platinum Illusion Powder (which if you remember is a 35 micron size Spectraflair dupe which provides linear holo finish in a polish). I finished this polish off with one small scoop of TKB's Gold Sparks! to keep the polish interesting even in somewhat low lighting (which is where traditional holos fall flat). In making this polish, I tried to make it a little bit lighter than what I wanted in real life as adding the Prismatic Powder sometimes makes the polish a few shades darker, which is what it did for this polish. I ended up naming it "Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana" partially maybe because I used to be a preschool teacher, but mostly because I am just a dork...

Had to get a couple shots to show the holo!

I apologize for that weird ridge on my pointer. My PVC basecoat effed up.

I love this shot, I think its great at showing the gold glow

This was taken with my Iphone next to a window, but I finally got the holo!

Swatches show two coats with no top coat. Dry time was a little longer than average but it self leveled well. The polish itself is gorgeous in my opinion but I'm still not too sure about oranges just yet.

Well that's it for Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana? Hope to see you back on Friday for a brand new franken! 

Until next time remember to always keep it classy and creative

xo

Today's Supplies Came From:

* TKB Luster base, basic red jellie, basic yellow jellie, and gold sparks!: TKB trading

* Platinum Prismatic Illusion Powder: Wonder Beauty Products (Oddly enough, this was not on Etsy when I just checked it but was listed last week. Hopefully it will be restocked soon!)

Killer Clown and Giveaway Winner!

Welcome back to a new week! Hope everyone's weekend went well and you are ready to get up and at em! The weather has been beautiful here so we were able to check out the Spring Parade and craft show they had over the weekend. We also started to bust out our warm weather clothes and come to find out, I'm missing about half of it. Please tell me I am not the only person that loses their clothing in mass quantities? I don't even know how its possible to lose that much clothing. Hmm...

Well anyways, you didn't come to hear me complain so onto the polish! Thanks to a few lovely ladies in my FB Polish Group, I have started to branch out of my comfort zone as far as polish colors are concerned. In going through my stash, I realized I was desperately lacking in the yellows and oranges category (I have since picked up Zoya Piaf and Hard Candy Pinch of Spice). However, in looking at my frankens thus far, naturally I have not created many of these either! So for this franken, I decided to change that! I started with about 1/3 of a bottle of TKB's Glamour base. I then decided to add 2 good sized scoops of the Rainbow Matte .035 square mix, 1 scoop of Lime Holo .015 hex, and 2 small scoops of turquoise holo .032 hex (All from Glitter Mix Boutique!). At this point I mixed the polish to check opacity. Once I had an idea of how the glitters looked suspended, I added about 3 drops of TKB's Basic Yellow Jellie. While I wanted a jelly polish, I did NOT want one that would never reach opacity so I also incorporated in about 1/4 of a bottle's worth of Wonder Beauty Products Primary Yellow Color Base. This base is great at both coloring your polishes and helping achieve opacity as it is a white based yellow cream. I topped the remainder of the bottle off with more Glamour Base, mixed it, and came up with this bad boy:

Hey, check me out, I'm a yellow nail polish!

So even with the addition of the Primary Yellow base, the polish is still an awesome crelly/jelly. Swatches show 3 coats and one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry. I did not need to fish for the glitter at all and leveling and dry time were average. I kind of surprised myself with how much I liked it since it is so.... yellow. But I'd totally rock this. I was trying to figure out a name for this one since it wasn't an inspired polish, more of a "let's throw this in the bottle and hope for the best" kind of polish. Unfortunately, the only thing this made me think of was clowns and I. HATE. CLOWNS. I made the mistake of watching Stephen King's IT as a child and since then, yeah, not a huge clown fan. So rather than name the polish something kitschy and cute, I just called it Killer Clown, plain and simple.

Now for those of you not familiar with Stephen King's IT, I tried to find the least offensive/scary picture I could, which actually ended up being pretty hilarious. But it STILL gave me the heebie jeebies.

Photo courtesy of this Stephen King Fan page

Finally, I wanted to say a big congtratulations to Erin Benson! The winner of my 50 follower giveaway! Check your e-mail Erin, you should see something from me :) As for everyone else, no worries, I will be having another giveaway before you know it!

Well that's all for Killer Clown, hopefully I haven't scared you off with this polish, lol. If not, I will see you guys next time for a new (and less terrifying) franken adventure!

So until next time, remember to keep it classy and creative!

xo

Today's Supplies Came From:

* TKB Glamour Base and Basic Yellow Jellie: TKB Trading

* Primary Yellow Color Base: Wonder Beauty Products (FYI, they also have their own line of Indie polish!)

* Rainbow Matte Squares, Lime Holo Hexes, and Turquiose Holo Hexes: Glitter Mix Boutique