DIY Nail Polish

Hello again lovelies! I was floating around the internet today and I happened across a couple of DIY nail polish posts, so I thought I would give it a whirl. I was super surprised at just how simple the process was, and it seriously took me less than 10 minutes to make my own color of nail polish. And because it was super fun and super easy, I thought I should share it with you guys.

What You'll Need:

• A half empty bottle of clear nail polish
• Loose eyeshadow of your choosing (you can mix pigments to make your own unique color or if you have regular pressed shadow, you can crumble it up really fine to make it loose. Bottom line, when you mix, it needs to be loose lol)
• A toothpick to stir, or those awesome little ball bearing mixing bead thingies for polish
• A funnel or a small scoop

Alright, let's get started!! I didn't take step by step pics because I'm a bad blogger, but it's really easy and I'm sure you lovelies can figure it out.

1. Get all your stuff laid out and prepped. If you want to mix pigments for a unique color, do it now. If you need to crush up a solid shadow, do it now. If you don't know how to go about crushing up a pressed shadow all you really need to do is scrape out the shadow into a plastic bag and kind of crumple it with your fingers, then go over the bag with a rolling pin until the shadow is nice and smooth. 
2. Open up your clear nail polish and insert funnel into the spout. If you don't have a funnel and are using a small scoop, skip this step!
3. Pour your loose shadows (already mixed if you're going for a custom color!!!) into the funnel and work it into the polish. If you aren't using a funnel and are using a scoop, scoop the eyeshadow in.
4. Stir the eyeshadow into the polish to help blend with a toothpick. I don't have any toothpicks, so I just cut up an emery board to fit. If you have those little mixing ball things, add those in now.
5. Shake the shit out of that polish!!! No joke people, you really gotta get your shake on to avoid clumping and help distribute the pigment into the eyeshadow. It's important, kay?

When going about trying this yourself, there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly, the quality of the pigments you decide to use as well as the quality of clear polish you use will effect the end result. More finely milled shadows will clump less and distribute the color better. Also, you might want to add the shadow bit by bit to the polish. If you add too much, it will totally clump on you.

So here's my finished polish, and I'm pretty pleased with it. The color is really pretty and it was opaque after 2 coats.

My polish, no flash in natural light

My polish with flash

Sorry about the big ole watermarks over my work, but I recently had a fellow beauty blogger go through some bs because somebody decided to steal her work and enter it into a scholarship contest. So I figure better safe than sorry.
And if you're curious, I used a random clear coat I've had laying around for a couple of years from ONS and I loaded it up with an e.l.f. Studio Pigment Eyeshadow in Tropical Teal. I applied two coats of this over my natural nail and I think it's really pretty. My daughter recently destroyed my go-to teal polish (she dumped it all over the bathroom floor) so it's a welcome addition to my rather small nail polish collection.

But I had a total blast doing this, and I'm thinking that maybe I should throw my hat into the indie polish scene. But it's quite an investment to get up and started there, so we'll see...
If you decide to give this quick and easy DIY polish a try make sure to let me know!! Send me your pictures on Facebook so we can all see what everyone created. Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Til next time!