Somebody got me a DIY nail polish kit for Christmas, and I was super excited to play with it. When I opened the box, I almost didn’t want to disturb the amazing packing job the Etsy seller did with the content. She somehow managed to get 10 bottles of base, 20-something mixing balls and eight different glitters into one of the tiny Priority mail boxes.

Glitter and suspension base especially made for sparkly polish? You know what I had to do.

To color the base, you add “pigment” of some sort, and this usually means eyeshadow. Luckily, I had an old, cheap E.L.F. palette lying around, and other friend donated her 55-color palette to the cause.

I made paper funnels to add the mixing balls, shadow and glitter. I started out by carefully measuring how much shadow I was adding, but I soon gave up. The measuring spoon was also too large to dig out the shadow, so I broke the shadows with a chopstick and made a scoop out of a straw.

I should have paid more attention, though, because this polish became too thick, and I had to use clear polish to thin it.

And as it turns out, I need to revisit my color wheel — I was convinced that blue shadow + gold shadow = swirly blue polish with streaks of gold. It does, as long as you don’t mix the polish:

But it quickly turns into green. Who’d have thought?



Here’s what they look like on:









Thanks for the awesome Christmas gift, Steph!