Mixing your own nail polish colours

So i couldn't wait to christen this blog with my first post, so i decided I'd just go for it. However, after this I'll have to force myself not to post until after my exams next week.

So I thought I'd start the new year with something that I love doing, that’s mixing polishes, making new colours out of old polishes that I no longer wear by adding pigments or eye shadows. It’s a really great thing to do, you use a polish you wouldn’t have otherwise used, and an eye shadow that you don’t use or want. You can also buy them specifically for this, its your choice. You can do this with a clear coat or a coloured one, bearing in mind that when you add pigment to a clear coat, it’s likely to be fairly transparent.I used an old eye shadow by FCeyes that I never use. It’s a great colour, blue that changes to greens and purples in the light. It looks horrible on my skin, and I cant imagine it looking that great on anyone, but I thought it would look great as a nail polish. It's difficult to see the colour of holo-effect things, but its a shimmery blue colour with purple and green, it just turns out grey on pictures.

First I did a tester, I scraped some of the eye shadow out of the pot using a steel nail file (you can really use anything you think will work),and added about the same amount of polish. I used a white polish that I never use because it’s too thin and needed about 3 layers to build up to a good enough white for French tips. Its from 2true which is a superdrug own brand polish (UK) that’s like £1.99. It turned out to be the perfect polish to use, as it’s thin enough to mix with the pigment well, and show the colour, but because it’s already slightly opaque, the end product is much better than with a clear coat

I added what I guesstimated was about the same amount as there was polish in the bottle, and added it a bit at a time, shaking it thoroughly after I’d added some.The end result is a polish that’s the same colour as the eye shadow, it still has the same colour, shimmer and holo effect that I could never pull off as an eyeshadow, but now it’s a nail polish that is perfectly wearable.

I used it as a French tip in this photo because I had a nail coloured polish that I was wanting to try out, I think it actually looks kind of nice. I thought i'd do a little list of do's and don'ts for mixing nail polishes

• When mixing 2 polishes, try and use ones with similar formulas and i dont recommend using anything expensive
• always do a test first, pour out a little of the polish on to some paper or plastic and mix it with your eye shadow or polish so you can make sure its the colour you wanted, and also to get an idea of the ratios
• dont add too much eye shadow as it will make the polish quite matte when it dries, it will also chip easier
• after adding your eye shadow or other polish, it's going to take a hell of a lot of mixing to get the colour through evenly

Good luck :)

Nikki