Valentine's Day Manicure

I decided to go with a foil look in various shades of red and pink foil and nail polish.  This is over an unknown Color Club:

One thing I have to say is that foil wears away very easily.  While it's a cinch to remove with regular nail polish remover, if you do a lot with your hands, you'll find you won't need nail polish for it to come off.  I'm always typing, or washing dishes, or washing my hands, so a lot of times manicures are very short-lived on me, but I don't mind.  With all the nail stuff I have in my stash, I NEED an excuse to change my manicure every single day!

Nail Polish: Why Make Your Own?

With all the hundreds (if not thousands) of big-name store brand and indie polish makers out there, why in the world would you spend time (and money--supplies do add up) to make your own?

Well, there are pros and cons alike:

• You can make something that nobody else has, and it will be a true original unworn by anyone else (unless you publish the recipe).  There's nothing like someone telling me, "I love your polish," and me replying, "Oh, thanks!  I made it myself!"
• There are several wildly popular indie polish designers whose creations are either very hard to get or incredibly expensive.  If you, like me, only make polish for your own personal use (and the occasional gift), there is absolutely nothing unethical about duping them (or making near-dupes) on your own, as long as you don't try to pass them off as the polishes that inspired you. 
• If you're a crafter at heart like I am, you just like to make stuff!  I love nail polish, and I love being creative, so this is right up my alley and my favorite new-found hobby.  Not only am I doing something that I consider fun and interesting, it's also very useful, as I can wear what I make once I've made it.
• In the end, it's cheaper to make your own polish.  With indie polish going for anywhere from $8.00 to over $20 per half-ounce bottle (and this isn't counting the bottles that get bid up into the hundreds on eBay), it's a lot more wallet friendly if you DIY.  The only thing about making your own polish is that a small amount of glitter goes a LONG way, and if you're only making for personal use and not to sell, you will find that you'll have a LOT of glitter leftover.  You may spend anywhere from $3 to $6 for an ounce of glitter--and realize that depending on a particular recipe, you can make several DOZENS of bottles of glitter with an ounce.  You may find that you have glitter just sitting there until you can think of another way to use it.  And if you're making only a few bottles at a time, you may never use it all, which could translate as wasted money.   But assuming you only buy the amounts of glitter you need and use it all up, it's WAY cheaper than buying someone else's polish.  Say you buy $48 worth of glitter--let's just roughly estimate that this will get you 12 half-ounce varieties of glitter--which you will be able to mix and match to your heart's delight.  Say you spend less than $20 for roughly 16 ounces of base (which will give you a whopping 32 half-ounce bottles of nail polish).  And let's say you pay fifty cents each and purchase 32 bottles.  You've spent less than twenty dollars on bottles and polish.  Altogether you've spent less than $100 for supplies, but you can make at least thirty-two bottles of polish. 
  
  At less than $3 per finished bottle of YOUR OWN polish, this is roughly 1/3 the price of the average bottle of indie polish!

• While the individual elements of polish design are inexpensive (bottles are cheap, glitter is cheap, base is cheap, etc.), the cost of supplies can and will add up.  Chances are, if you start off like I did with only a dozen types of glitter, you'll eventually want to buy new glitters--it can be addicting, and I've had to put myself on a "glitter ban" several times because I was buying too much and not using it fast enough.  Likewise, once you have tried one type of bottle, you might see and want to try a different type or size.

Those of you who have found that you enjoy doing this: what pros or cons have you identified?

Another Foil Look

Another foil manicure with a matte topcoat.

I have quite a few different matte topcoats.  I don't know why I use them more.  They look great over glittery polish as well.

Embracing the Foil Nail Trend

A company called Ciaté came out with a foil manicure kit.  I saw it and had to have it.  And once I got it and tried it, I realized I liked it--a lot.  Browsing various blogs, I realized that many women have been doing foil manicures for ages.  So I decided to go to a third party vendor and order additional foil and glue.  I don't readily endorse many other companies on here, but I was pleased with the company I ordered the supplies from.  And the third party foil and glue is a lot cheaper than the Ciaté kits!

This is one of my foil manicures.  I'm pretty sure I used third-party foil for this:

I've probably foiled my nails five or six times by now with either the standalone foil or Ciaté foil, and suffice it to say, if I'm not wearing glitter on my nails these days, I'm wearing foil!