How To Create Your Own Nail Polish - Steps To Create Indie Polish

I am super duper excited about sharing this post. This is all about my first attempt at creating a home grown nail polish (yeah one day I'm going to start my own brand *dreams!). Below are two beauties - midnight sparkle on the left and purple romance on the right!

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish (Indie Polishes)

The above picture is of the two polishes I created - will tell you more details in the post below.

I always used to wonder when people used the term 'Indie' or 'franken' for polishes. I learnt that home grown polishes are called Indie or franken and there is a difference in when you call a home made polish an Indie polish versus when you call it a franken.

Lets clarify the two terms.

Indie Polish

A polish that is made from scratch - yes this is what I'll show you soon. This is where you take a suspension base, color pigment and optional glitter elements to create your very own polish.

franken Polish

This is a polish that you create by using any existing polish and mixing it with other colors or adding glitter to it - basically starting off with something pre-existing and transforming it into your own.

Now getting to the fun part.

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish

To create your nail polish from scratch you need some materials. I chose the UK website Mica Momma to order the stuff because this was my first attempt and I wanted to get all the things in a single order without having to hunt for each item separately. Unfortunately there can be trouble sending out polish stuff from the UK to India so I got this delivered to an aunt in the UK who got it for me when she came a few days ago.

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish (Franken Kit By Mica Momma)

Above pic shows the content of the kit I got - I took this picture once I had already tried (yes I know I was too impatient to try it out, couldn't wait for 'good' pictures) and that is why you see the spoons and spatula all dirty and stained. The kit I got had two suspension bases, two measuring spoons, a funnel, steel balls, glitter in 3 colors and mica in two shades.

Things you need to create a nail polish

1. A suspension base (you can use a clear polish but only if you are making a non glitter polish - glitter tends to settle down in clear polishes and ruins your creation)

2. Mica pigments in the color that you wish to create (you can replace this with any old eye shadow that you have but only if it has good color payoff)

3. Glitter - this is optional

4. A small funnel

5. Measuring spoons

6. An empty polish bottle

7. Steel balls to help shake up the stuff

8. Newspapers to create a working base

You begin by laying out lots of newspapers on your working surface. We don't want a table full of glitter at the end!

Step 1. Take an empty polish bottle and add some suspension base to it. Fill it about 3/4 of the bottle with suspension base. Add one steel ball to this.

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish (Indie Polishes)

Step 2. Take a funnel and put it on the mouth of the bottle. Make sure the funnel does not touch the suspension base (I ignored this on my first trial and had a hard time getting the Mica and glitter to go into the bottle!) Now taking the measuring spoon add two spoonful of the mica powder. The powder will go down slowly depending on the size of the funnel. Be patient and do this without haste so that you do not spill anything. I actually added one spoon of blue and one spoon of purple to get the color I desired.

Step 3. Next its time to add glitter. The kit by micamomma has a smaller (really cute) spoon for measuring out glitter. I added one spoon each of pink, green and copper glitter.

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish (Indie Polishes)

Step 4. Once all the glitter has gone through the funnel put the cap back on to the polish bottle and its time to shake it about. Shake shake shake till all the materials mix together nicely.

That is it - yes yes you read it right - 4 steps to creating your own polish. The blue one you see in the first picture in this post I can midnight sparkle. Below is a swatch pic of this polish - please do forgive me taking pictures without cleaning up the mess. As you can see the color comes out really pigmented with the glitter nicely spaced out without any clumping. This is why using a suspension base is important. This is just one coat of the polish.

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish (Indie Polishes) - Midnight Sparkle

I actually made another one in which I added the mica and glitter to a clear polish (was experimenting!) and it turned out nice but as I said glitter just settles to the bottom. And this one turned out to be less pigmented because I added only one spoon of the mica. I can still go back and add another spoon and shake it up - will fix it before I use it!

How To Create Your Own Nail Polish (Indie Polishes)

I'm calling this one purple romance! (Oh and I just noticed my hands - they need a good cream - see I was totally not paying attention to these things - I was just super excited to try this out and click pictures!)

The kit from Mica Moma really made this task so much easier. They also have lots of other stuff for creating your own polishes and eye shadows. And lots of shades of mica and types of glitter to chose from if you are buying individual items. If you have never made an indie polish before then I would surely suggest  you to check out their site specially if you stay in the UK.

I hope you girls liked my post and will get inspired to experiment with your own polish making. I had so much fun, in the end I did have glitter all over the place but thankfully the newspapers helped clean up.

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