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Monday, November 15, 2010

First Ever Franken! - Stormy Waters

If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw that yesterday I finally got my courage up and made my very first franken! I'm really excited about what I ended up making and can't wait to share it with you. I also took some pictures of the supplies I used to put it together so hopefully I can help inspire some of you to get your franken on :) This post is picture heavy, just giving you fair warning!

Okay first some pictures of the franken, which I've lovingly named "Stormy Waters" and then I'll tell you how to make it!
sunlight

shade

inside

bottle picture

The bottle shot is color accurate for the base color, it's a teal with scattered holo. I like scattered holo better than linear holo, so I like using the Milani holographic polishes for frankening purposes. I'm going to make a second bottle of this I love it so much. Stormy Waters is a sibling to China Glaze - DV8 and China Glaze - Atlantis (only holo instead of glitter, obviously) So it's similar to other polishes out there but still fairly unique. Remember the franken I showed you a few weeks ago that Alexandra made for me? This is basically a teal version of that!
Now for how I made it... It's about half a bottle of Milani - HD (silver holo), maybe a fifth of a bottle of OPI- Ski Teal We Drop (pigmented dark teal), and 5 drops of Milani - Hi-Res (purple holo). You don't really need to use Hi-Res, I just thought it gave it a bit more depth. Very easy and inexpensive to make haha, just how I like my polish. It's totally opaque in two coats and was very easy to apply!

you can see in the picture exactly how much of HD and Ski Teal We Drop I used, they were both brand new and never used bottles, I bought them just to make this franken with. Ski Teal We Drop is super pigmented so you don't need much of it.

If you want to take the foray into making your own franken, I suggest you pick up some ball bearings for mixing. I'd recommend stainless steel, anything else is going to oxidize in your franken and ruin it! Here's what I use:


And I hit up my local Dollar Tree (a dollar store) and got a few 2-packs of old style NYC bottles, because I like the shape of them and the labels peel off easily. But you can buy empty bottles online - places like ebay or polish e-tailers as well. Also you can clean out old base coat/topcoat bottles or polishes that are old and you won't use again. Here's a picture of my NYC bottles before I cleaned them out:

I like the shape of these a lot

I also used a small glass bowl and orange stick to mix to figure out an idea of the ratio before I make a whole bottle. All very easy to find things! I couldn't be happier with how Stormy Waters turned out, I'm wearing it right now and honestly can't take my eyes off my nails :) Do any of you franken or are you planning to in the future?

19 comments:

  1. Wow! Your first!!? You did AWESOME right out of the gate! And a great name to go along with it.

    I frankened years ago. Just one type though. I took a creme red and added drops of black creme to get a deep, red vampy color. It used to be you could only find that color at Halloween. Yep, that long ago. lol But I haven't tried anything since.

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  2. OMG!!!!!!!!! i love it! love love love! i think, for me, the hardest part is cleaning out the old polish? how did you do it?

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  3. Kimberly, yes my first! I got lucky haha thanks.

    Polish Pauper, thank you so much!

    jbrobeck, I dumped out the polish into an empty water bottle, then put a little pure accetone in the bottle and swished it around to get any remaining polish out and dumped that into the water bottle. Then I put the water bottle outside so it could evaporate, since accetone and polish are technically hazardous materials I think that's the easiest way to do it. And thanks!

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  4. :) I think i saw this on MUA!! I love this franken!

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  5. That's what I do too! (put the acetone outside!)

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  6. Definitely a win!! I go to the Dollar Tree often but never thought of using the NYC bottles for frankens - great idea. Now I want to run out and grab some. WTG!

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  7. OMG this is even prettier than I thought it would be! Especially for a first! Go you! haha

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  8. Love that franken.

    I have been frankening a little. I am slowly learning the process and actually have a few successes, after making some butt-ugly mistakes. :D

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  9. I'm pretttty much dying inside for this. I have both shades but I don't have backup bottles to mix this myself. This is the PERFECT nail polish IMO... dark teal with scattered holo? wow. that's like a dream come true. Most of my clothes/accessories/EVERYTHING are dark teal and if you look at my blog faq, you will clearly see that anything holo is my favorite type of polish.

    so. yeah. well done. you hit it out of the park- though I expected nothing less from you. <3

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  10. oh yeah and as a double bonus, the name is so fitting too... Stormy Waters. wtf are you reading my mind or something? Storm? My cats name because of my atmospheric science major? You freaking rule.

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  11. That is absolutely gorgeous! I mean, I go nuts for holos- so I'm biased but the color you've created is just ... sublime!
    I hope there's more frankens in your future!

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  12. Wow, this looks great! I'd buy it for sure :)

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  13. This is totally gorgeous!! I think I will try to make this at home.

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  14. ooooh I looove your franken! I never frankened before, so I don't really now the ins and outs, but why is it handy to have those steel balls if i may ask?

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  15. Thank you!! You've all been so sweet :) Maybe I should make another bottle for part of a giveaway? Seriously you all are THE BEST! <3 <3

    Lois, the balls are good for mixing your polish, you know how most nail polishes you buy come with them in it? (You can hear them if you shake it) They help mix frankens initially and all nail polish, franken or not, throughout time. Does that help? You can email me too if you have more questions :)

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  16. That's an awesome franken! It's really beautiful. Ski Teal We Drop is one of my faves, but you've found a way to improve it!

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