Polish Galore Guest Post!

Hey y'all! Today I have a special treat for us, it's a guest post by Krystal from PolishGalore! A while back she and I did a little polish trade in which she sent me one of the OPI Serena Williams sets (with Spark de Triomphe and White Shatter) and so I decided to make her a franken as a thank you! She told me she loves purple, and sparkle, so I went to work! Without further ado....
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Thank you Amy, for letting me be a guest writer on your blog!  Today I have your own custom creation, named for me by you – Krystal.  Krystal is a squishy purple almost jelly with multicolored and multisized glitter – kind of like a deborah lippmann Happy Birthday or Forget You but in a purple base!  Amy made this knowing my love of purple and glitter.  I used a base coat of Zoya Get Even and 3 coats of Krystal.  I did not use a top coat (didn’t need one for the shine!).

As you can see in the sun, the glitter is suspended within the layers of purple, so while it’s not totally in your face, it’s also not hidden by any means.  The glitter refused to focus for the camera, but you can at least see it nicely in the bottle!

In the shade, the base color appears a bit darker, but it’s just the absence of sun.  This purple is not as blue as China Glaze Grape Pop, but I feel it’s in the same family. (FYI Note from Amy: The purple I used it Ulta - Celebutante!)

This is probably my favorite shot of this polish – you can see how some of the glitter is sandwiched into the base color and how others is bright on top.  The formula on this was super smooth and removal was not an issue, even with the glitter.

Finally indoors with the flash – again you can see how nice the polish wears.  If you’d want more glitter, you’d just need to make sure your brush was loaded a bit more.  I may need to add a few ballz to the polish to help shake it up, but otherwise I’m in love with the custom franken!

Thanks again for having me!  For more PolishGalore, you can follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook,or just visit the blog!

Amy's Nails 50 Follower Giveaway! - CLOSED

EDIT: We've blown past 50 and into the 60s, thanks to Jeanette from The Swatchaholic for the tweet and Trace from the Trace Face Philes for the Facebook love, which means THE GIVEAWAY IS WAS OPEN! If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see saw the form to enter! THANKS for the love everyone I can't wait to see who our two winners are! *puts on patience pants to last until November 30th!*

Here is a photo of our two prizes -

As you can see in the photo, there are two prizes - listed below:

Prize 1 - Sinful Colors Prize!

• Pearl Harbor
• Daddy's Girl
• Bon Bon's Clear Flakie

Prize 2 - Franken Prize!

• Pink franken similar to Deborah Lippmann's Candy Shop (but a bit darker pink)
• Black franken similar to Deborah Lippmann's Forget You
• Bon Bon's Clear Flakie

THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO ENTERED! WINNERS SHOULD BE POSTED AND CONTACTED BY FRIDAY EVENING AT THE LATEST!

Grape Shimmer - Franken!

Hi everyone! I'm finally back for an update, yay! I have been sooo busy lately, my nails have been naked more than painted but...oh well. I recently indulged in a pedicure, since a salon just opened next to the Starbucks I work at! They were doing 40% off and it was sooo luxurious! But anyways, I'll post a couple pics of that in a later entry so I won't spoil anything else :)

On to the good stuff!

Here is my fifth Franken, I call it Grape Shimmer! It is a mixture of OPI Funky Dunkey (Zoya Mira dupe...I prefer Mira's formula but I thought I'd rather use up Funky Dunkey instead of Mira if it turned out badly haha!) plus a little clear polish, mixed with Sally Hansen HD nail color in DVD. You may remember that Zoya Mira and Sally Hansen DVD made up one of my favorite manicures ever - so I thought I'd try and create something similar, a nice purple with the purple/blue shimmer of DVD mixed in. Well, the shimmer is a little more subtle than I'd like, but that's ok! It's a nice alternative to layering the two polishes, but gives you a similar look!

Here are some photos!

Sorry these two are rotated funky! I didn't realize til I uploaded it to Blogger and now can't figure out how to rotate them, haha! Anyways...You can't see the shimmer too much on the nail but it shows up nicely in the bottle! In person the shimmer is visible but not overly so.

These photos are all three coats of Grape Shimmer plus Zoya Armor topcoat.

Next I added China Glaze silver crackle! It seemed to work a little better than OPI Silver Shatter for me, but I'm just happy to have a shatter bottle that isn't all funky and dried up at the top! I topped this with two coats of Zoya Armor top coat.

And because I can't resist sparkle, I added a couple coats of China Glaze Fairy Dust on top of all that!! It looked very sparkly in the sunlight :)

What do you think?

Franken #4 - Pink Sparkle!

Hi everyone! I'm back with some photos of Franken #4, which I'll call Pink Sparkle. It's a pretty generic name but....oh well! To create this pretty pink, I mixed the rest of my Petites Pretty in Pink with a little clear, and Zoya Astra, which is a super sparkly raspberry jelly-ish polish. Astra is GORGEOUS but I get frustrated when trying to remove the super-glitters, plus I wanted to give it a little solid color to mix in with the sparkle. I like how it turned out! :)

Sorry it's a little messy! I did it in the car while my husband and I were driving to watch a soccer game! :P I love the bright pink shade from Pretty in Pink, and Astra adds just the right amount of sparkle for my liking! :)

Mango Piñata - Franken!!

Hi guys!

OK I am getting totally into Frankens. I may have a problem.....we'll see soon I guess! So my second franken attempt turned out so well, I decided I had to make more! I went to Walmart and picked up some more clear polish, some BB's (to put in the polishes to help them shake up!), and came home and got to work on Franken #3, which I am dubbing Mango Piñata.


I combined:
Approximately 1/3 Wet'n'Wild Clear
Approximately 1/3 Forever 21 No Name Coral color
Approximately 1/3 Ulta Piñata-Yada-Yada
And a little dash of Petites Mango
Plus 2 Balls


I was totally inspired by Cristina's recent Franken (HERE) that had the same glitter polish in it, but decided to go for a saucy bright color! I love her super jelly finish on that one, and think maybe if I replicated Mango Piñata that I might do a tad less color, a tad less clear, and a tad more glitter! A tad is a very scientific unit, you know!


Here is the end result! I like it! Not quite as jelly as Pink Lily Love, a bit more opaque, with a little sparkle from the confetti! I wish that Piñata-Yada-Yada showed up a little better but I think it's just so dense, it's hard to get it evenly distributed in the bottle. Much shaking is needed, I think.

Yay! What do you all think? :)

Pink Lily Love - Franken!!

I was going through some polishes I was going to get rid of, and I found a half used Petites clear, and I thought oooooh franken! I previously have made one other franken that was semi successful but was a pain in the butt to photograph. I'll put a pic up anyways though! For my first franken a few weeks ago, I used some NYC Black polish, and mixed it with Sally Hansen HD in Byte plus a few pink sparkles from a Bonbons polish, but just a few of those! I mixed them with a toothpick on a piece of paper and they looked so pretty, black with a pink shimmer! When I frankened them, it didn't work quite as well, but it does have a kind of nice shimmer to it. The issue with the photography was that I could only capture Byte's blue flash, not the pink, and it was irritating me! I think my real issue with it is that I don't really care for black mani's. I really want to like them, I just am not super hot on them. Anyways, here's a pic of my first Franken attempt. I took about 30 pics of this trying desperately to get the pink shimmer to show up, but this was the closest I got, under an artificial light :-/

ANYWAYS....for my second franken attempt I am mixing Petites clear with a Petites bright pink and OPI I Lily Love You. I hope it turns out gorgeous, because I really like I Lily Love You and don't want to waste it ^.^

EDIT: I'm back! Franken #2 is complete! I am dubbing it Pink Lily Love! It went much more smoothly than Franken attempt #1, I'm pleased to report! (I used a Bonbons bottle for that one and it's tiny neck made combining polishes a real pain in the you know what) But yay! This was much easier - I poured out a little of my Petites Clear (I had already used some of it, I poured it out until it was about half empty/full), then I mixed a generous helping of Petites Pretty In Pink, a few drops of Seche Vite to try and get a little glossiness (didn't work), and then the remaining ~20% I added OPI I Lily Love You! It is so pretty and squishy and I really like it! I actually wish it had a little bit more clear in it to give it a tad more squishiness but...I'll take it :)

This is two coats of Pink Lily Love topped with Seche Vite. On my pointer finger I did just one coat so you can see how it builds. I think next time I would do 3 coats to eliminate the VNL but it was starting to get dark and I was really excited to take a picture haha! Due to the iPhone pics it's a little blurry, sorry. But you can see in the bottle how it looks pretty well :) I love love love the flakies from I Lily Love You!!

I love Pink Lily Love! What do you guys think?!