The Day I Designed My Own Nail Polish

Here's the Deborah Lippmann nail polish that I designed. (Similar here) It kinda matches NYC taxi seats, huh?

A big part of the beauty editor job is attending launch events for new products; we go to several of them a week. It's always exciting to get a sneak peek at products months before they hit shelves, and often the events themselves are really fun. Case in point: The recent launch of Deborah Lippmann's spring nail collection where we were able to design and mix our own polish! Here's how it worked: They had set up what I can really only describe as a "sparkle buffet," with bowls and jars filled with ten rainbows' worth of glitter, shimmer, and dye. After agonizing over which colors I would pick, I finally decided to go for a sparkly charcoal. I started by adding black dye to a thick base solution, then loaded that up with spoonful after spoonful of chunky gunmetal and silver glitters. (They suggested starting out with a single spoonful of glitter--I think I ended up using 10 or 15 helpings. But, hello? Have you seen the name of my blog? This isn't The Subtle Life...) The finished polish is above. It ended up being exactly what I envisioned: a deep sheer charcoal with tons of glitz. I dubbed it "The Sparkly Life." (Of course.) What do you think?

The "sparkle buffet" and row upon row of empty polish bottles

                                 

                                               I almost went with a mix of the two greens at the bottom.

The glitters I used (left) & the finished product, before bottling (right).

Me, playing chemist. (Please ignore the unfortunate goggles...!)

P.S.: The shade I created is one of a kind, so FYI, you can't buy it. (Though here's a similar shade if you're interested.) But I think mine would fit rather nicely into an upcoming collection, don't you? ;)