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!

Very Pink-ish

I don't have a name for this one, but it's made of several types of glitter.

Swatched with Revlon Sugar Glaze:

I like!

Polish Designing Tips and Tricks

Here are a few tips and tricks I've learned from trial and error that have made polish design and creation a LOT easier:

• Lint rollers are your friend.  I buy the big rolls on handles that have the peel-away sheets.  They're good for getting stray bits of glitter off your hands and clothes, and they're great for getting spills and large amounts of glitter from your work surface, if you don't...
• Prep your work area with newspaper.  This makes for very easy cleanup, and it prevents nail polish spills from ruining your desk or table.
• Keep a window open!  I learned this the hard way.  There were months that went by when I didn't blend a single bottle of polish because doing so would give me horrible headaches.  Then it dawned on me (much later than it should have): I didn't have proper ventilation.  If you don't have plenty of fresh air circulating as you work with the polish base, the fumes will kill you.
• Really fine glitter can get in the air and you can inhale it, which you can imagine would irritate the hell out of your nose, throat, and lungs.  Little paper masks that go over your mouth and nose are essential when using micro-sized flakes of glitter.
• Blend the glitter BEFORE adding it to the bottle.  I use small zip-seal bags (snack sized) to mix glitter.
• Assemble the bottle and add the polish base FIRST.  
• Funnels are essential, but purchased plastic funnels are unnecessary.  While I have used them, I have also used paper funnels.  If you have extra paper lying around, simply cut a rectangle of it, form it into a cone, tape it together, and cut a hole small enough to fit in the neck of the bottle, but large enough to allow plenty of glitter to fall into the bottle.  This is a good way to recycle old paper you're just going to throw out, anyway.
• Little plastic scoops are available for adding glitter to base.  Some frankeners have used straws that have the little scoops on the end, but I prefer the plastic ones that look like tiny kitchen measuring spoons.
• Add a few scoops of glitter to the bottle at a time, then stir before adding more, until you reach your desired amount of inclusions.  You can use a toothpick to mix the glitter (being careful not to break it off inside the bottle), but I like using a cleaned, straightened bobby pin.  They're so inexpensive that you can use one per bottle of polish (or, if you're doing more than one bottle using the same recipe, one per recipe) and then throw it out.
• After mixing the polish and putting on the cap, you can swatch it immediately!  I use a nail wheel so that I won't have to keep applying polish to my own nails.
• Watch your polish carefully over the next few weeks to see how each type of glitter reacts in the bottle. If you...
• Make a note of all the glitters you used and the amounts, it will be easy to tell which ones you shouldn't use again if you notice any bad reactions.  
• Early on, I made the mistake of ordering some types of glitter more than once.  At a point I had fewer than thirty types of glitter, and I wasn't keeping track of everything, so it was easy to accidentally purchase more of a glitter I didn't need.  I decided to log everything in a spreadsheet, and I keep track of color, finish, size, price, amount purchased, purchase price, and I have a column for "notes" for each type of glitter.  This way, before I buy a new glitter, I check and make sure I don't have it already, or something very similar.  Now that I have seventy or eighty unique types of glitter, the spreadsheet is indespensible!

I hope these tips have both helped and inspired you.

Happy glittering!

Zoya Gold Glitter

A lot of manufacturers are coming out with gold glitter topcoats.  Unlike typical gold glitter topcoats, the better ones these days contain actual gold.  When I saw these, I knew I wanted to own a few.

Pictured below is just a snap of my fingers wearing the Zoya gold topcoat.  I can't remember what color is under it, but the combination of bright gold flakes over the rich pink polish looks fantastic.

The polish, non-surprisingly, is quite thick, and the glitter is more sparse than it appears to be.  I used three layers of it to build it up to this density!

But I like the polish a lot.

Having gold-trimmed fingers isn't super inexpensive, though.  It costs around $35 per bottle.

Glitter Mail!

Just a quick post to show the glitter I received today.  It's a small order, but the glitter is so pretty that I just had to share, imagining the cute "glitterbombs" that I'm going to be able to make with these!

Bottles and Brushes and Caps--Oh, My!

So far I've invested in glitter, suspension bases, and bottles--pretty much everything I need to create a bottled glitter topcoat practically from scratch.

I've gotten three types of small bottles (5 ml) from a very reliable supplier--which is the same place I buy my base.  I've discovered that for my particular hobby, their glamour base works better than their luster base.  I think the glamour base suspends glitter better and more evenly.  I also give a big thumbs up to their empty nail polish bottles.  They come unassembled, in three parts: bottle, cap, and brush, but it's easy peasy to assemble and fill them.  An example of one of the bottles can be seen in my post "Mini White Experiment" from June.

I get larger (.5 oz) bottles from a different supplier.  They ship unassembled as well, and are as sturdy and easy to put together as the ones from the other company, the first one I used.

I haven't tried bottles from any other supplier, but I'm always on the lookout for new ones, for variety's sake.  I'm quite pleased with the ones I'm using now, though!

Another Multi-Colored Glitter

Just another franken with a bunch of glitters thrown into yet another bottle of Wet n Wild glitter polish. I have no idea what I used, as I've never really kept track of amounts or written anything down. From here on out, though, I'm going to make a record of it, at least for my own personal benefit.

This is over an unknown Color Club. I tend to go to Ross and buy sets of Color Club polishes, and not end up knowing which color is which, either because they're incorrectly packaged and mislabled, or because I don't commit the names of the colors to memory. It's a magenta that's more red than it appears here. I take all my photos with my iPhone, and I don't get the best color representation, but at least I'm getting a little better with editing in post-production to make the colors a bit more realistic. When I can remember to, that is. I just can remember to watermark everything!

Mini White Experiement

I rather like this one!

Haven't been posting much lately.  Work has me bored, exhausted, and not feeling like much else when I'm not there.  But I'll improve.  LOL.

Glitter Galore

Okay, so at this point I have quite a bit of glitter! Nice.

This what I've purchased after four months:
 
 Right now I just keep it all in a big clear container--you know, the ones with the opaque lids.  But if I order any more, I'm going to have to come up with a better way to store it!

The Battle of the Black and Whites

I mentioned before that I've supported indie polish developers. I have bought a few black and white topcoats, and I've also tried to make my own with black and white glitter that I've purchase online. I cheated with my own: I added black and white glitter to a bottle of Wet n Wild #469, and it looks and applies quite nicely. Here it is compared to other brands I've bought:

Mine is on the far right. But also pictured are: Lac Attack Ocelotta Spots, Cover Band Sticks and Stones, and my favorite of the three, one called Black Tie Affair. Two were purchased from Etsy; Sticks and Stones was bought from someone on eBay.

You can never have too much black and white polish!