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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Franken: Tankini Top

Today I have my first attempt at making a franken to dupe a commercial polish. This one rattled around in my head for a while, ever since I did the comparison of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Barracuda and Rescue Beauty Lounge Bikini Bottom since back in June. To refresh all our memories, here's the comparison between the two:


Top to bottom: Bikini Bottom (4 coats), Barracuda (2 coats).


Looking at that, and reading over the comments on the comparison entry, I knew I needed to make Barracuda more sheer and murky to mimic Bikini Bottom. For the sheerness, I needed clear, which was easy enough to find in my frankening drawer. For the murkiness, I wasn't sure; greyed green seemed the right direction, so I grabbed white and black for the grey part and a green from my stash. Here are the raw materials I used:


Left to right: Barracuda, Sally Hansen Clear'd for Takeoff, Wet 'n' Wild French White Creme, Nina Ultra Pro Salsa, Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme.


To make the franken, I poured a lot of the Barracuda into an empty bottle, added some clear, and then added the white, black, and green a few drops at a time. I'd mix it up, swatch on paper next to a swatch of Bikini Bottom, figure out what was missing, add that, swatch on paper again, and so on and so on. It was a process of trial and error, pretty much.

When I had something I thought was close, I moved on to swatching on my nails. First I put four coats of Bikini Bottom on one finger so I could see what I was aiming for. Once on the nail, I could see my franken was not sheer enough, so I added more clear (and cleaned off some nails so I could apply the new version). Still not sheer enough, so more clear, more cleaning, and I decided it was close enough. The franken only takes two coats to Bikini Bottom's four, so it's still not sheer enough to be a true dupe, and I think I could go a little more murky, too, but I think it has a very similar feel. (Somewhere along the way, I smudged the Bikini Bottom nail but failed to notice until I looked at these photos later.)


Top to bottom: Bikini Bottom (4 coats), franken final version #3 (2 coats), franken version #2, franken version #1.



Top to bottom: Bikini Bottom, franken.




I'm tempted to work some more with this to try and get it closer, but there are so many other things I want to do, I think I'll leave it be. It was a fun experiment but since I do have Bikini Bottom, I don't really need to make myself a true dupe as well.


22 comments:

  1. It's pretty darn close! Very nice!!!

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  2. soooo pretty I'm absolutely in love with the blue shades right now :)

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  3. That looks dead on to me! How cool! I'm always in awe of you ladies who do frankens...so cool :)

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  4. Looks verrrry close to me! I'd be more inclined to use the franken...less time applying 4 coats of polish!

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  5. Looks like a great dupe to me! The colour is beautiful looking:) You're really good at frankening^^

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  6. It's very close for sure! Awesome color!

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  7. Awesome franken! It looks super close!

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  8. How cool! The only commercial polish I've tried to dupe before is For Audrey, but since I didn't have it mine was a little off! But it was a nice color anyway.

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  9. That turned out really well! Your blog always makes me want to try frankening... maybe I should pick up some empty bottles next time I'm out!

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  10. WOW! This turned out really well.

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  11. Amazing franken! Very close to RBL

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  12. Wow!!! That's a beautiful franken! It looks exactly like RBL!!!

    xoxo

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  13. You are SO SUPER CLEVER!!!!!!!!!! That is AWESOME!!! I actually think it looks more like the original BB that my friend had which looked slightly more aquatic and a touch more greenish than the 2nd release BB that I owned. I might ask her to lend it to me so I can do a comparison for my blog. Super job as always!!
    BV

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  14. such a gentle color :-D
    i like it :-)

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  15. So pretty! Great pictures! You've got my follow =]

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  16. You've definitely got pretty darn close!

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  17. The blue shades are so pretty. Looks really similar.

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  18. i just came back to study this post because i want to franken this!! i recently saw a picture of Glitter In The Air over Bikini Bottom and it is gorgeous!! gotta make myself a suitable dupe :)
    i don't have barracuda, i think i might use Take Me To Your Chateau... hmm. i'll let you know how it goes!
    :)

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