I’ve been playing around with nail polish a lot lately, and I’ve been getting interested in frankening. Thus far, I haven’t gone so far as to buy suspension base & glitters to make my own nail polish from scratch, but I’ve been combining store-bought nail polishes to create new colors and finishes.

My most recent adventure – and most successful polish to date – was a super-easy combination of clear polish with a coral creme to make a jelly polish.  Depending on the light, the polish looks either orange or strawberry.  On my swatch wheel, I have one, two, three, four coats of my franken, the a full-strength coat of the creme I used – Revlon Delicious, from the Colorstay line.

Making this polish was super simple; I started off with a bottle of Wet n Wild clear polish, and poured out half.  Then, I added some of Revlon Delicious – I’d guess less than a quarter bottle; so the ratio was about 2/3 clear and 1/3 creme polish, though I’m not exactly sure.  I left space at the top of the bottle, so I could shake it up and mix it easily.

When I swatched it on my nail wheel, it was a bit streaky:

So, I added some nail polish thinner.  The thinner worked perfectly – leaving me with a thin, smooth, and glossy jelly polish!

Here it is on my nails – this is three coats:

You can see that it looks more orange here than in the swatch wheel photo; like I noted above, it seems to vary from more orange to more strawberry/ reddish based on the light.

Overall, I’m so thrilled with it! I love jelly finish polishes, and this is a super-cheap way to turn my cremes into jellies (and keep the cremes too, since it only uses about a quarter of the creme).

Have you tried frankening? Any notable successes or failures?