Frankening

I learned a new neologism a few days ago. I have been looking for a nail polish that is very close to the natural colour of my nails, but opaque enough that it would reduce the contrast between the tips and the part on the nail bed. Something that I can wear as an everyday polish, in girl mode and in boy mode without being too obvious. Very few people say anything about my long nails, so maybe, like getting my ears pierced, I'll eventually find that people don't care and I'll wear bright colours all of the time but I'm just not ready to try that yet! I want to work my way up to it.

To that end, I bought a cheap light pink nail polish last Thursday night. I tried it on Friday and was disappointed to not only find the polish didn't flow or apply well (poor consistency and a poor quality brush), but that it was too bright and pale to look natural, as can be seen in the above photo.

I then looked at an orange nail polish that I bought some time ago, that is far too orange to look natural, and too transparent. It flowed and applied really well, but gave my nails an orange tinge that reminded me of the stained nails of a smoker. Yuck!

What I really want is a shade between the two, that goes on as well as the orange one but is more opaque. Now, if I was to add some of the pink to the orange...

Since the orange polish had only been used a few times, the bottle was still fairly full. I added pink until the bottle was full to the bottom of the neck, shook it up and found that it was a more apricot shade and looked more opaque in the bottle than it had been, so I tried applying it and found that it's still a bit too orange and a lot too transparent.

Tonight, I topped up the bottle with a little bit more pink and applied it again. It's still too orange and far too transparent, although not as bad as before.

One of my friends on Facebook suggested adding some pearl white polish to the bottle to make it more opaque. Guess what I'll be looking for when I'm out shopping tomorrow night. :)

When I made a comment on the Beauty Heaven forums about having experimented with mixing nail polishes to try to get the result that I am after, one of the other posters responded by pointing out that mixing nail polishes is called frankening. A quick google search indicates that the term is derived from Frankenstein, in reference to putting bits and pieces together to make a monster. :)