Miss Universe ~ OPI ~ This Gown Needs A Crown

Hi everyone! Hope you're all doing well. I finally finished my first term of grad school! Now I'll have plenty of time to catch up, write and share over winter break =)

Today I have for you: 
OPI ~ This Gown Needs A Crown

It's from the new OPI Miss Universe Collection 2013

This polish is special because it's also a new finish type. They call it a satin finish and you are not supposed to use a top coat. I find it's a cross between a suede finish and a matte glitter/foil finish, but it dries extremely smooth! The finish is very unique.

I also like that this polish dries super quickly, which is nice considering you can't use a top coat with it or you'll lose the satin finish. The application is also smooth and easy. I used 2 coats here. I also saw swatches in the store where they used 1 thin coat over a different coloured polish and it looked really neat.

The bottle also comes with a pretty jewelled crown on a plastic band. I suppose you could use it as a ring?


I have a ton of glitter and silver polishes, but This Gown Needs A Crown is unlike any polish I own! Overall it has a unique finish that is nice to feel after wearing all these "sand" textured polishes that are out now. It is build-able in that you can wear it sheer or opaque. It's also super sparkly in the light! Really great for when you want sparkle without it being too in your face =)

   

   
Have you tried this polish? Do you like the finish??

My New Franken!

Hello! Today I want to show you a new franken I just made!

For those who don't already know, a franken is a polish that you make by mixing other polishes, glitter, pigments etc. together to make a polish your own! It's super fun and a great way to create colours you dream of but can't find!

I wanted to experiment with making my own suedes/mattes. So here is my first attempt and I'd classify it as a satin, not entirely matte and not entirely glossy!

Take a look and tell me what you think!

For this polish I was inspired by the OPI Suede collection. I love the way they sparkle when you add top coat, and the glitter really shows in their natural, suede form. You can see a little bit of OPI Lincoln Park After Dark Suede (with top coat) here.

 For this franken I started with a matte/suede base

Revlon "Powder Puff"

then I tinted it teal with

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Teal-y Fast"

then I added some sparkle with Sally Hansen Extreme Wear "Celeb City"

~You can see here, that the polish isn't really matte or glossy, it's in between

~Initially, I wasn't sure if mixing matte/suede polish and normal glossy polish would work. 

~The first time I swatched my fraken it separated on the nail, kind of like when you apply a nfu oh holo. It was a disaster! 

~I figured out that the key to applying this glossy-matte franken was to shake it like crazy beforehand!! This way, the 2 type of polish are well mixed together and apply like a dream! It also dries super fast!

The bottles I use for my frankens right now are ones I got from Daiso, a Japanese store. I bought a whole bunch of their holo collection and decanted the small 5ml bottles into larger 15ml ones, and now I use the empty bottles for frankening! 

Most of the empty bottles I've seen at supply stores have the cheap skinny round brush that makes my application even more horrid! A plus side to doing this is that these bottles have a nice flat, thick brush that applies like a dream! (I took these photos without any clean-up. Partly because I'm lazy, and party because I think I did a pretty good job!) 

Here's a close up of the glitter! 

Click to enlarge

Aside*** Since most of the polishes I own have already been swatched to death by other bloggers, I think I will try to post more about my frankens as well as my international + unique polishes that are hard to find on google. I don't do the swatch thing very well so I will entertain you with the various stuff I like and not bore you with my horrid nail art (just got my brushes in from ebay btw!). I want to keeps things interesting!