Rococo Gold Leaf Nail Lacquer Dupe (DIY Gold Bling)

Rococo Gold Leaf Nail Lacquer Dupe (DIY Gold Bling)

Thursday, July 8, 2010

stock image from Space NK

See this nail polish? You know what that is? Pure, distilled decadence. Also known as Rococo Gold Leaf Nail Lacquer, it kinda of speaks for itself.  Now, considering that it looks expensive, it makes sense that it also comes with a hefty price tag- $32.50 to be exact. There's no way in heck I'm going to spend that much on a single bottle of polish (Mr. MakeupWithdrawal would kill me first) so I was pretty excited when I saw instructions for a DIY dupe of this gold foil polish. 
MissHavisham from MakeupAlley graciously allowed me to share her recipe, and I attempted it myself. 
Materials: 
-Nail safe gold foil 
-metal file
-clear polish
-manicure stick
-buttload of patience
Optional: latex gloves
These are the original directions:
"I laid one sheet [of gold foil] down at a time on a piece of paper. Wear gloves or else it'll stick to your skin and you won't be able to get it back off. Also, try not to breathe on it or POOF they fly everywhere. Then I ground them up with the side of a metal file. This takes forever. Then I made a little funnel out of paper, and used the sheet of paper to carefully pour them into the funnel into the bottle of topcoat. (I used a spare LeChat Dare to Wear I had laying around) If they don't go right in, just gently poke with an orange stick. And I used the brush from the topcoat to pick up any remaining stragglers. That's about six sheets in that bottle. And they do settle to the bottom, so shake shake shake before using. Someone else said they had tried to make this and the leaf had turned green in the polish, but I think because I bought leaf specifically for nails (to be used in acrylics, I think?) it won't. It hasn't happened yet and its been in there for two days. *crosses fingers*"


Here's how I did- 

First, the nail foil. You can get gold foil from Micheals, but since I was worried about possible oxidation, I ordered nail foil from Ebay for about $4 (including s/h). *NOTE*- Make sure the foil is intended for use with acrylics or nail art, to make sure that it will not oxidize* I was sent 2 colors, silver and gold. Each sheet was about 3"x3" and packaged in its own little sample jar, and very fragile. I did one sheet at a time, and tore it into 4 sections, and worked on one section at a time. 

Using the manicure stick, I pushed the foil against the file and ground it down. It was time consuming, the duration of about 2 episodes of True Blood to do 4 sheets of foil. I didn't wear gloves, but didn't get anything stuck to my hands, think it's because I was working with a tiny bit at a time. I managed to funnel it in without mishap. 
I used 2 sheets of foil per bottle, and I guess I could have used more but I liked a less dense formula. 
Here's the silver and gold:

And finally, here's what it looks like on my nails! Sloppy, I know. But I wanted to get this post up and running.

Left two nails: gold foil, right nails: silver foil
Dark color is Wet'n'Wild Nocturnal 

So let's do the math: $4 for the foil + 2 hours of my time + 2 bottles of clear coat = 2 bottles of expensive looking Rococo dupe. Seems pretty good to me! Thanks again to MissHavisham for this amazing recipe.




All products mentioned/shown were purchased by me/given to me for my own use.

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DIY, Dupes, Nails, Recipe

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DIY, Dupes, Nails, Recipe

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DIY, Dupes, Nails, Recipe

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