It's ALIVE!! - Frankening Experimentation #1

Hey Everyone!

It's been a while hasn't it? haha my apologies. My BB (blackberry) screen died then I decided to get a camera for better quality pictures but I'm still learning on how to use it so my pictures don't turn out all yellow/orange or whitewashed by the flash!! oh blogging problems..

Okay, so other than spending my time being clueless about technology..I tried frankening!! yes just call me Dr. Mir-stein.

Basically Frankening is mixing your own polish concoction. It's super easy to do.
Take a few unwanted / almost empty colours and get creative!

Some tips which might be helpful that I learned from my first time:

-Don't mix complementary colours (colours opposite of the colour wheel), such as red & green, blue & orange, purple & yellow.. you'll just end up with a grey or brown mess.. unless that's your thing..if so , then mix all the colours!!
- Always find an area which won't be ruined by polish / acetone or use a tray.
- It might get messy, so keep a bowl of acetone / nail polish remover out to dip fingers or else all your bottles etc will get polish prints on it                                                 

- for emptying polish you don't want, such as emptying a colour for its bottle, take another bowl and fill it with cotton to absorb the polish for easier clean up

- be in a well ventilated area!!! 

- don't decide to franken if you have on a manicure you just did or wanted to keep (hehe learnt the hard way) Or be smart and wear gloves lol :)

Hope some of those tips help you, there are so much more but maybe one day later, we'll have a more extensive post up. 

It's Alive!!

Anyway back to my experiment.

I went to a friend's house and she was going to throw away alot of half used polishes, so of course I took them!! I thinned some out for her and the ones she didn't want I kept. There were alot of pinks and reds...not really my style so I thought "Why not Franken!??" 

I set up my tray which included:

• A bowl for acetone / nail polish remover
• Acetone / nail polish remover
• a bowl filled with cotton
• extra cotton balls for clean up and spills
• the polishes I want to franken with
• empty polish bottles for my creations (optional) 
• pieces of scrap paper for testing (or use your nails)

During my experiment, it got really messy. Mainly because as I was pouring the mixing balls kept flying everywhere hahaa, good thing I had a lot of acetone / cotton balls!

For this particular franken, I used 3 polishes: bright teal, black, pink shimmer (all by Sally Hansen)

I took an empty NOPI bottle (15ml) & poured almost 3/4 full of the bright teal.

Then I added a few drops of black, shook it and repeated adding more black and shaking it until I reached a colour I like. Sometimes the colour you see may not be the colour it actually is, so just test it on a piece of paper!

After I thought it was boring and I had a bit of space left, so I poured in a bit of the pink shimmer & to my surprise, I really liked it. Sadly there wasn't anymore room & I didn't have much left so it's actually not noticeable on the nail .. ^_^ I will just have to add more after I use this colour for a few manicures. 

I really liked the outcome, so yay! 

Sorry for the lack of detail / pictures of my process.. just did it out of a whim..! But I posted a few pictures of the Franken below..I couldn't really capture the faint pink shimmer but oh well.. excuse the accent nails, i tried to see what looks nice and i think.. it's best plain!

Left hand w/ OPI's The Living Daylights accent nail

right hand with Joe Fresh's Twilight accent nail

application: no basecoat, 2 coats of Frankened colour, no topcoat..

just a messy manicure to show the colour :)

So tell me, have you ever tried frankening ?? what colours / types did you come up with?

I might make a few more tonight since it is a super snowy day outside!! 

- Mir

Enabler Alert! Fauxnad set spotted at Dollarama.

Hi all! We didn't forget about you guys we promise, we've just been so bad with updating. Today I have a little product review/comparison. I recently found out that Dollarama (a pretty popular dollar store around here in Southern Ontario) has been selling Fauxnad stamping kits at a price of $3 a pop. I remember my basic Konad kit, which included a scraper, a stamper, 2 image plates and 3 mini sized stamping polishes was priced at about $30 so this is an awesome deal in comparison. The packaging has a "As seen on TV" logo on the top and when I went to look on their site I believe they're referring to the Salon Express that is available for sale on the site for $10.95 or here for $10. The contents and images plates look exactly the same but oddly enough no where on the packaging does it say Salon Express nor do the stamper or scrapper have the logo printed on them. So I imagine I got the bootleg version of the bootleg version. lol

 In the kit it contained a scraper, a double ended stamper, an image plate holder and 5 different image plates.

Here is the fauxnad scraper and stamper next to the Konad stamper and scraper. The fauxnad stamper looks like a giant next to the teeny tiny Konad stamper but it is so much easier to use because you're not trying to stamp with a little bitty thing with a small handle. I like how it's dual ended, the big end for full nail patterns and the small end for smaller accent designs. The large end of the fauxnad stamp is slightly smaller than the Konad, but not by much. Another great thing is the colour of the material, when I first got the Konad stamper it was a nightmare trying to stamp with red polish! It was so difficult to see the stamped image let alone stamp it. With the scraper, while I appreciate the bigger handle I am ultimately indifferent about it because I find all metal scrappers scratch the image plates. What I like to use instead are old business cards or used gift cards.

I didn't take a picture of the plate holder on it's own but I need to add that it fit all my other Konad/Bundle Monster plates so that's a plus! Of the 5 plates included only 1 was a full nail pattern plate. The images on the plates are varied but there's a decent selection.

My only complaint is that the full nail patterns were too small for my thumbs. Which is a shame because that was my favourite plate from the bunch.

In conclusion, I would say this is a fantastic deal and for $3 you really can't go wrong. This set would be perfect for someone who is interested in venturing into the nail stamping world since contains all the basic tools and a pretty good selection of images to choose from. I had to check 2 other Dollaramas before finding this kit, I believe it was first spotted in stores early to mid December of 2012.
Hope you all enjoyed my post!

Annie