How to Blend your Nail Colors
We have all heard about blending and customizing your own nail
polish, but if you are anything like me, it seems a bit intimidating
isn’t it? Well, I decided to finally give it a whirl, do a
bit of research and practice to see if a challenged nail polishing fool
such as myself could pull this off! Why go through this challenge? I
like variety and change and options to boot! There are days when I will
spend hours looking for the right color of nail polish and just can’t
find it. You know what I mean. That yellow is just too yellow, and the
red is just a bit too fire engine red for what I need it for. Blues?
Don’t even get me started; I think there are at least 1, 267 types of
blues out there and I can never find just the right one for that outfit
I want to wear Friday night. So off I went to search the mysterious
realm of blending colors to get just the right one for any occasion.
I figured that mixing colors that I already had would be a great
start. I had several bottles of colors
more than halfway used and decided to start with those. I got some
toothpicks from my cupboard and two small tipped artist brushes along
with a thick piece of paper to start off with and just went to town. I
assumed that once I found the ‘right’ color I was looking for, I could
mix a batch in one of my more used bottles and am I glad I did.
Mixing nail polish colors is not any different than an artist mixing
colors on a palate board. I had colors everywhere but was careful to at
least note which colors I had mixed and a general ratio noted to each
one.
I learned that even after I thought I had found the perfect color, I
still had to test it on one of my nails because different ingredients
such as shimmer and glimmer affected the way the color looked on paper
rather than on my fingernail.
I also experimented with the illusion technique. I applied two coats
of a dark base, of which the matte seemed to come out looking much
better, and I quickly learned to allow enough drying time between each
coat to avoid that streaky, icky look. After learning my lesson with the
base coat, I applied a top layer of lighter color to create an illusion
of a custom color. This seemed to work really well without the fuss of
actually having to mix two or more colors together and I was able to
even apply a shimmery, metallic color in addition to the other two
colors. I had a lot of fun with this method even though I was unable to
exactly replicate the formula in a bottle like I wanted to.
However you choose to blend your nail colors, drop by drop, add as
you go or by using the illusion method, blending and customizing your
own nail color is rewarding and allows for some very creative results
that you can have a lot of fun with! |
