Mixed Media

  The other day as I was admiring my latest nail polish color and ogling over my color collecting addiction, I told my boyfriend I had enough nail polishes to paint my nails a different color every week for an entire year. To which he responded, "You should do that! And make a blog about it!"

WEEK 11: Mixed Media

Being the Pinterest roamer that I am, I'm all about those DIYs! But like most people I find myself living in the much overrated 'someday' mindset. So this week I decided to actually try one those brilliant ideas I so often ooh and aww over but never seem to do. Maybe you've seen this idea floating around, or maybe it will blow your mind as it did mine when I first came across it, but apparently you can make your own nail polish color using eye shadow and a clear top coat. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, I guess I'll find out.

My adventure began with a trip to the store where I picked up a beautiful teal CoverGirl eye shadow  and a cheap top coat. Just to add a little design to the idea I grabbed my used and abused silver as well as some ring reinforcers I stole from my father's office ages ago. He never missed them, and I like to believe I gave them a greater purpose in life.

I started out by using a toothpick to scrape a small pile of eye shadow onto a piece of paper, then I gradually added top coat to the powder drip by drip, stirring it periodically with the toothpick. I wanted to make sure I had just the right consistency. Not too chunky, but not too watery either. Once I felt I had it exactly where I wanted it, I used a brush to paint it onto my nails.  Not one of my nice brushes mind you, but one of those super cheap Crayola watercolor brushes I had lying around. I like to save my nice brushes for detailing and use crappy plastic ones for the grunt work. You may call that inequality, but I call it optimizing resources.

For the bit of design I talked about, I painted my ring finger with silver and then after it had dried I used one of the ring reinforcers to mask off a little half moon at the base of the nail. Whenever I use these I always like to make a slit in one side of the ring in order to help it lay more evenly across the curve of the nail. After I removed the ring I used the other end of my stirring toothpick (and who says I'm not environmentally conscious?) to line the edge with little silver dots. 

 Now I'll be honest, painting this polish onto my nails felt like painting them with chalkboard paint, which I happen to absolutely despise, and it even looked rather chalky and pasty on my nails, but after a couple layers of top coat alone they began to glisten and look more like actual nail polish, but with a little bit of a grainy texture.

After this experiment I think I would personally rather just stick to regular nail polish, not because I don't like the way it turned out, but just because of the extra work needed to paint them. But I will admit, knowing that this works could open a whole new door for ideas and experimentation with different colors and textures. And I'm sure the more I do it, the easier and quicker the process will become. Who knows, maybe we'll see another eye shadow polish blog down the road, but for now, it stays on my eyes. 

Products Used:
 

- CoverGirl - Turquoise Tempest
- Pure Ice - Top Coat
- Wet N Seal WildShine - Metallica