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!

Stamping Plate Binder

I love stamping. It may not be what got me into nail art, but it turned a mild hobby into a full blown obsession! For a while I just had my stamping plates in a tin box, but if you've followed this blog for a bit, you'll know I like to SEE my equipment. I didn't have many plates at the time, but I knew I wanted a better way to store them. Then one day I saw a video by PlasmaSpeedo on YouTube. She was showing how she made a binder to store her plates. She got the idea from another blogger, who probably got it from someone else, and so on. I'm not sure who came up with the idea first, but it was brilliant.

Make your own after the jump!

Workspace

The blue Caboodle's case on top is what used to hold my collection.

Well, if I'm gonna be completely honest, organization has never been my strong suit. For the longest time I stored all my polishes in a Caboodle's case. When I out grew that, they went into a plastic sliding drawer thing. No real rhyme or reason, just colors I used a lot toward the front and older, more unused ones got pushed to the back. Not bad, but you couldn't see the colors. You just had to know what was in there and what the cap looked like. I want to SEE the bottles. It helps so much when designing nail art.

After the jump check out my set up now.

Nail Polish Journal

Nail Polish Notebook.

Nail polish is easy to collect. Maybe a bit TOO easy. A bottle or two here and there. Once you start keeping an eye out for it you'll find bottles popping up everywhere. Drug stores, grocery stores, beauty supply stores...well ok, that last one is a bit obvious  But drugstore bottles tend to be cheap so its not that hard to justify picking up a couple when you happen to be in the area. How often you "happen to be in the area" is what you need to justify :) Anyway if you start to collect, one day it will happen. You find that gorgeous glitter you can't live without only to get home and find you already have it or one by another brand identical to it. You could return it, but some stores put up a stink about returns. You could keep it, most of us do. But how to avoid the problem in the first place? You can't very well bring your whole collection with you everywhere...can you?

You can with a Nail Polish Journal. Take a peek into mine after the jump.