Dragon Eggs

These magnificent little gems have been popping up in all my nail polish groups these last few days. Dragon Eggs! I adore them! The tutorial I have been following is by Accio Lacquer.  The only real difference is she says she used about 200 thumbtacks, but my count is closer to 600, but I think that is mostly because I got a bigger egg by accident. That's right, you heard me, thumbtacks. The basic idea is you paint the heads of the thumbtacks with nail polish and push them into a Styrofoam egg. Very easy, but time consuming. And polish consuming I found out.

Materials:

• Styrofoam Egg
• Thumbtacks (The large the egg, the more tacks you will need)
• Nearly full bottles of polish and topcoat (for my example I used Sinful Colors "Enchanted" Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer" and Fresh Paint "Candy Crush")
• Cardboard, corkboard, or foamboard. Something to hold the tacks while you paint them.

No way to get around it, this is the long boring part. Push your thumbtacks into something to hold them in place. First time I did this I used a pizza box. This time I just using a couple sheets of cardboard. Don't push them all the way down or you might get em stuck to the cardboard when you paint. Try to leave some space around each one so they don't get stuck to each other either.

300 tacks....

And 600 tacks. Long and boring, but it helps so much when you paint em.

I started off with Sinful Colors "Enchanted" a deep almost eggplant purple. One coat of that followed by the slightly shimmery color Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer". By the time you finish painting the last tack, the first is dry and ready for next coat. I topped it all off with a coat of Fresh Paint "Candy Crush" and lovely flakie. You can topcoat as well, for the green egg I did, but I ran out so purple egg isn't topcoated yet. I think I'll get some spray sealant for it.  For an egg this size you will almost used a full bottle of polish each coat. Like 2/3 of a bottle. That's why I suggest you start with nearly full bottles and cheap ones. First egg I did, my green one, I had no idea just how much polish this eats and used my beloved China Glaze "Running in Circles". It's not empty yet, but it was a wrench to part with that much of it.

This part goes much faster than the stages before it. Time to stick em on the egg! Now the eggs has a narrow and a fat end. You want the fat end to start with.

In the center of the fat end push your first tack in. Doesn't have to be exact, just eye ball it.

Your gonna want to spiral out from that tack. Each tack you put in needs to overlap the last tack you put in. It also helps if it overlaps the row below it too. These aren't glued in (tho you can if you want to) and the tack you put in holds all the tacks before it in place. That sounds confusing. I made a short video of what I mean but blogger is being a pain and not loading it right. I'll keep working on that.

Just keep going spiraling outward and upward.

Get the idea?

Keep going!

And your done! My camera has a tough time with blue-leaning purples, but it is way more purple in real life. I love how the flakie adds just a subtle magic to it.

And my first egg, Sally Hansen "Emerald City and China Glaze "Running in Circles". And I used gold thumbtacks instead of the silver I used in my purple one. Now time to make some sort of padded chest to store them in. I'll be experimenting with smaller eggs later this week. I still want to make a red holographic one and a white pearly one.

Koi Fish.

I almost named this post "Jelly Fish" for no other reason than it made me giggle. After my fail of a seahorse, I still wanted to try making an image go across all my nails. Other than a little mess up on the middle finger (it's a bit twisted) I really like it! I painted my nails white (when my bottles of white get low I pour them all into one bottle, so this is a mixture of Sally Hansen "White On", Wet n Wild "French White Creme" and Milani "White On The Spot") I then stamped with Cosmetic Arts "TGIF" using Messy Mansion plate MM29. I colored in the Koi using OPI "Y'all Come Back Ya Hear?" making sure to leave uncolored white patches. Then I filled in the water with a frankened blue jelly I made. I love this so much more than my seahorse from the other day!

And here is the Koi fish for comparison in-case you're not sure what a real one looks like.

Book of Kells

Well, I wanted to do a St. Patrick's Day mani without using green, and I think this qualifies! I was falling asleep a few nights ago trying to come up with a green-less mani and had a brilliant idea. The Book Of Kells! I could mimic the calligraphy and colors used in that famous illuminated manuscript. I fell asleep that night knowing I had solved my problem. The next morning I could not remember my idea to save my life. I knew I had thought I came up with an answer, I just couldn't remember what that answer was. Frustrating. It took me a couple days, but I did eventually remember it.

A note about the base color. I've been looking for a perfect "old parchment paper" color. Not a stark white, but a slightly yellowed, maybe almost creamy brown type of color. I have not been able to find what I was looking for anywhere. So I decided to make one. I didn't take progress shots because, honestly, I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did! I took an empty bottle of top coat, poured in some Wet n Wild "French White Creme". I don't use it all that much since I discovered Cosmetic Arts "Picture Day" for stamping. I then added in a small amount of Sally Hansen "Lighting" and a couple of drops of Milani "Dark Coffee". The color was perfect! Exactly what I was looking for!

Image from Wikipedia.

I then sponged on just a little bit of Sinful Colors "Nirvana" in random areas to look like older, browning areas of the paper. Then came freehand time. Using a small detail paint brush I painted large decoative letters on the thumb (Essie "Fifth Avenue" ), index ("Lightning" again), and ring (Wet n Wild "Saved by the Blue"). Outlined the letter in Wet n Wild "Black Creme" and dotted around the edges. Middle and pinkie got random letters that I hope look like the calligraphy in the Book of Kells. I wish I had some Celtic knots to add around the edges, but over all I'm pleased. Turned out much better than I thought it would.

How To Make Stamper Decals

Yesterday I mentioned Stamper Decals. Decals are images printed on some other substance that are then applied to the nails. There are all kinds of images you can buy online and in the stores, but here is a way to make some at home using your stamping plates. Using this technique you can color in the stamped images before applying them to your nails.

 Check out how after the jump.

Love Letters

And a second take on my purple milky glitter franken. I'm really working on my layered stamping, but just don't quite have the hang of it yet. I stamped BundleMonster BM311 in Sally Hansen "Grape Race". On the accented ring finger I stamped again in BundleMonster BM323 (isolating one of the roses) in Milani "White On The Spot". I like it, but its still missing something. Maybe if I stamped in a super pale purple instead of white....I dunno. Still working on it.

Lace Ribbons

Here is the milky glitter I made yesterday. Of all my frankens, this is my fav so far. I really need to make more milky glitters! Stamped with BundleMonster BM321 in Milani "White on the Spot". Very easy, light and girly. Sorry for the short post, I'm having some real internet problems and I'm trying to get a few posts done fast before I lose net again.

Nail Polish Lexicon ~ Franken Polish

A Franken Polish, like Frankenstein's Monster, is a polish made up from other polishes. A drop of this and a drop of that to make a whole new creation. I have just started making up my own starting with a hideous topcoat that has been sitting around in my stash for years. It became thick and yellow and I was NEVER gonna use it. I probably should have thrown it away, but now I'm glad I didn't. A couple drops of thinner, some color from other polishes, and a pinch of glitter and I have my first Franken.

Here I really wanted a St. Patrick's polish, a nice Emerald or Kelly green with gold hex glitter floating in it like gold coins. While I'm proud of it it does have a major issue that I still need to research. The glitter falls to the bottom fast and needs to be shaken constantly to get it on the brush. I've heard that to add glitter to polish you need a suspension liquid to add to the polish so the glitter stays spread out, but I don't have any and don't know what could work in its place. Here is a close up of the jelly like green.

And of course I can't stop at one Franken Polish!

Now, how exactly do we make a Franken? Find out more after the jump!

My First Franken

Guess who just took her first steps into the world of Frankening! I'm gonna make a Lexicon post on Frankens later but I'm just so excited I had to share this first. Basically I took a clear polish and added drops of other polishes to make a new color. I'm still learning how to make the colors opaque, but I'm excited about these first few bottles I made. Both the yellow and coral have a hint of shimmer to them but it's not coming through in the pictures well.

So much fun! I'm off to buy some more clear polish. And maybe some empty bottles...

Blue Pearl

Outside in the sun.

There is an additive you can put into car paint to make it holographic called SpectraFlair. Some, ok nearly all, the homemade holo polish you see out there has SpectraFlair in it. I've been wanting to get my hands on some for quite a while now and when I was picking the brain of a friend who loves cars about where I could get it, he mentioned that SpectraFlair isn't the only thing that can be added to paint to give an effect. He was in fact using something called Blue Pearl to give his black car a blue iridescence  He threw some into a clear coat and sent it to me to play with. 

Ok, first the official stuffs. This is an automotive additive and not a cosmetic grade glitter. I have no idea if there are legal ramifications in making and selling this in polish form, but I'm just putting this out there now. It's not cosmetic grade and hasn't been approved by whoever approves this kind of thing.

Indoors in the shade.

With the legal stuffs out of the way I'll say this is a pretty cool, but a limited use polish. I've only gotten good results over black polish, but over black polish this stuff is AMAZING! Even in shade and indoors it is a stunner. Outside in the sun and its a knockout. Here I have 2 coats of my blackest black polish, Orly "Liquid Vinyl" and 3 or 4 coats of the Blue Pearl topcoat. One or two would have been enough, but I got carried away :)

A well shaken bottle. He added the Blue Pearl powder to a Sally Hansen
clear topcoat.

One drawback is that it settles in the bottle quickly and needs to be shaken up constantly. Even between one coat and the next it started to settle fast, and that much shaking means air bubbles. I've tried the polish over other colors with various results, but black is the only clear cut beauty so far. With the other colors, the blue just doesn't come thru clearly or sometimes at all.