Clarins 230 / Max Factor Fantasy Fire Franken-dupe

This is a franken I made using the red to green color morphing powder I got from More Nail Polish (she is sold out of color morphing powders but also offers Spectraflair for frankening holo polishes. She has a link to someone who sells the color morphing top coats, though!).

There are a lot of pictures for this one! It is shown at two coats over Diamond Cosmetics Not Your "Hum Drum" Plum (a royal indigo creme).

The duochrome is awesome, but my favorite part is just the glowy red sparkles on the indigo background.
So insanely gorgeous!

Kind of a bad picture, but it shows the red and green togther!

Normally duochromes tend to show off their colors more in low/indirect lighting, but this one was even more vibrant in the sun! Check out the beautiful greens in this!

It also didn't show as much in the water as normal duochromes. Maybe I'll have to try and take a picture of it in water in the sun.

From the pictures I've seen, this LOOKS like a close dupe for Clarins 230 or Max Factor Fantasy Fire. I don't have either to actually compare, but I'm pretty sure it's the same pigment that they used (it's sort of a standard color change). What do you think? For those of you that have 230 or Fantasy Fire, do you think it compares?

The recipe I used was about three "scoops" (using a nail swatch stick) of powder with about a 1/4 bottle of Milani Rad Purple, a few drops of a blue jelly (like Barielle Berry Blue, but I can't remember which I used) and the rest filled with Glamour Base from TKB Trading (for glitter suspensions).

Butter London Tart with a Heart (layered)

First of all, I should give credit where credit is due: I didn't come up with this layering combo. The original creator of this masterpiece is Scrangie. In fact, if not for her post about these two polishes, I would never have bought or wanted Tart with a Heart at all.

If you remember, I had no interest in this set at all because I immediately deemed Black Knight "easily franken-duped." So I did just that, I frankened what I believe is a pretty close dupe (you can see it here on its own). But once I saw Scrangie's post where she layered the two, I just HAD to have Tart.

Check out the EPIC layered combo of Mid Knight (Black Knight dupe) with one coat of Tart with a Heart!

Mid Knight and Butter London Tart with a Heart

Incidentally, I had just a plain glossy black polish (China Glaze Liquid Leather) on for a couple days and it was showing major shrinkage from the China Glaze Fast Forward top coat, so I figured I'd quickly swatch this combo over it so I could put it up on the blog. Well, this is yet another example where I decided to go ahead and put it on every other finger and actually WEAR it for a couple days. Seriously, this combo is so awesome. Even though it made me spend $15 for Tart (on ebay), I love Scrangie for posting it. In my mind, it's worth every penny.

My Black Knight Franken: Mid Knight

Sometimes I like frankening just to attempt to dupe something. I don't know what it is, but I do it with other things to (I like to try and replicate movie costumes that are as screen accurate as possible - I have an Elizabeth Swann dress, a Hogwarts school uniform, and I made Chief an authentic Obi-Wan jedi tunic).

I didn't even LIKE Butter London's Black Knight very much, but as soon as I saw it I thought "that looks like Rockstar Pink with a black jelly base!" so I HAD to try it.

Mid Knight - my BL Black Knight Franken-dupe

Unfortunately, I don't have the original to compare the two (in fact, the whole point of frankening it was to avoid paying $25 for the set). However, I think it looks close compared to Scrangie's swatches. In fact, Scrangie's post made me run off to ebay to buy the other half of the collection, Tart with a Heart, just to go with my franken... oh well.

The best part about this??  It is SOOOO easy to make at home!  I started with a base of China Glaze Liquid Leather (about half the bottle), and added in Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink.  Because it didn't have quite enough blue in it, I added a little tiny bit of OPI Absolutely Alice.  The only one of those that isn't readily available is the OPI, but it is easily substitutable with another fine blue glitter like Pure Ice Strapless.  So there you have it - a cheap, easy way to get the Black Knight look!

Bloop H198 Franken

I've been drooling forever over Kaz's swatch of Bloop H198 over at Pretty Random, so I decided to try and franken a dupe for it.  I think it came out fairly well!  Bloop H198 is a teal jelly filled with multi-color micro glitter.

Bloop H198 Franken (3 coats)

So what do you think? It's a tad bit more vibrant and green in person that the photo shows, but I couldn't get my camera to capture it without making my skin look super yellow. Honestly in person it looks nearly identical to Kaz's photo except that I think Bloop's base is a little less greyed. I think I added a little too much black to the mix so the Bloop looks more vibrant teal at two coats than mine. However, when they're built up to three coats, they look like very near dupes to me. Also, I can't tell whether the Bloop just contains holo glitter or whether it has actual multi-colored glitter, so I used both and love the way it looks.

If you'd like to try this franken for yourself, here is the general recipe (thought I don't know proportions because I added things little bits at a time):

Multi-colored micro glitter - I used Kleancolor Midnight Seduction
Silver holo micro glitter - I used China Glaze Fairy Dust
Dark green jelly - I used Nfu-Oh 569
Dark royal blue jelly - I used NYX Ink Heart
Black jelly - I used China Glaze Liquid Leather
Clear - I used some glitter suspension base and some plain clear, but I don't know if this is necessary

I just had to play around with the proportions until I found what looked right, but I suggest not adding too much black to the mix to begin with like I did. I may add some more of the blue and green jellies in the future to try and counteract the grey in the mix, but for now, I love it!

My version of RBL's Piú Mosso

When Michelle first posted about the Firebird collection from Rescue Beauty Lounge (at All Lacquered Up here), I fell head over heels for Piú Mosso. What an amazing navy blue with fiery copper shimmer!

Since I'm not too big on paying that much for polish (although I have a few RBLs that I love!), I decided I'd try to replicate it using some polishes that I already have. Here are the results:

First I tried CND Effects Copper Shimmer over RBL's Dead Calm but since Copper Shimmer is so dense (is showed up as more of a pearl finish), I decided I'd decant some of it into a partially emptied Wet'n'Wild clear bottle. It turned out to be the perfect copper shimmer - exactly what I was looking for. However, because the clear was not a suspension base, it all settles to the bottom and must be shaken for a while each time I use it.  For the blue, I decided dead calm was a little too bright and wasn't quite as inky as Piú Mosso appeared to be, so instead I used China Glaze Calypso Blue as the base.

All in all I think my version came pretty close to the original.  I think the shimmer in mine might be slightly more prominent in low-lighting than in Piú Mosso, but I think it's just about as fiery in the sunlight!  Overall, it's one of my favorite polish combos I've done in a while!

What do you think?  Did I come close?

Emerald Green Holo!! (Franken)

One of Michelle's (from All Lacquered Up) wishes this year was for an emerald green holo. I found a gorgeous forest green holo on Konad-licious the other day (here), and absolutely HAD to have one, so I decided I'd try frankening one. I've only made one or two other frankens that were nothing special, so I didn't have very high hopes for this one...

But holy gooses, it came out SO AWESOME! I was able to capture some of the rainbows in this, but not as well as I'd liked. Imagine this looking a lot like a green version of DS Glamour. It's kind of in between a smooth (Nfu-Oh) holo and a scattered holo (like DS Extravagance).












And of course, the recipe! I think I used about 1/3 Nfu-Oh 62 (though I think any Nfu-Oh holo would work) and 2/3 Nfu-Oh 569 (Nars Zulu close dupe). Then I added just a couple drops of China Glaze Calypso Blue (you can use any dark blue jelly) to even out the green and give it that perfect emerald hue.


I'm pretty sure the key to making darker holo frankens is to use jelly polishes instead of cremes. I only made a tiny bottle of this, and I'm wishing I made more. I might actually buy more Nfu-Oh's just to make more of this one!

Now I need your help in naming this beauty! It deserves a freaking cool name, but I haven't been able to come up with one yet... help me out!

So what do you think of this green holo? Have you frankened any awesome brightly colored holos? What other bright holos would you like to see?