Do-It-Yourself Orly Iron Butterfly

And so it begins. Here is my first nail polish entry. :D

I saw this really cool polish that is trending right now called Iron Butterfly from Orly. It's a dark charcoal almost-black glitter polish with a matte finish. I added this to my wish list but thought twice about buying it, thinking that I had something similar from way back.

I looked through my stash and there it was, my Ice It! Auto Hem. It got all dried up and gooey over the years--I bought it from the US way back when I was still in high school (go figure)--so I had to refurbish it somehow and bring it back to life. I mixed it with some nail polish solvent which I bought from Watsons and revived the old polish back to the right consistency. On its own, it actually dries pretty matte but it had a very rough texture. It was a good opportunity for me to play with my new Orly matte top coat for some added matte finish.

So here's what it came down to. I already had my China Glaze Concrete Catwalk on from days past. It's a dupe of Deborah Lippmann's Stormy Weather which I thought was quite appropriate for the rainy season. (I'll blog more about it in a future post.) But I got bored with it after a few days and just wanted to do something extra to make them pop out more. What started to be accent nails on my ring finger and my index finger turned out to be a whole new manicure.

Over my 1 coat of Orly Bonder, I had 2 coats of China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, and 1 coat of Seche Vite dry fast top coat. Then, I layered on 1 thick coat of Ice It! Auto Hem, another coat of Seche Vite dry fast top coat, and to seal and top it all off, I put on 1 coat of Orly Matte Top coat. (I decided to put Seche Vite on top of the glitter instead of going straight to the matte top because it makes the texture smoother to the touch. On my right hand, I skipped the extra layer of Seche and it just felt rough and icky.) All in all, 6 coats of polish that came pretty close to Orly’s Iron Butterfly.

You can do this yourself and with much less layers too. You can be flexible and playful. Just experiment! If you have a glossy, densely-packed silver glitter polish that is of the same color as Orly, then all you need is a matte top coat. If the glitters aren’t as packed, do more layers and have a dark, almost-black base. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, you don’t necessarily have to buy every single nail polish color out there. If you have something similar, you can try to be creative. And, a matte top coat is really cool. You can simply layer it over any polish to create a whole new look!

Going back to the Orly comparison, to be honest, I don't really have any grounds for it other than the similarities of the pictures. I have not tried the Iron Butterfly myself, but from the looks of the pictures, you get pretty much the same effect.You can compare my results with this swatch from alllaqueredup.com.

At the end of the day, I'm really glad how it all turned out! I had fun showing it off to my friends and it was received very well! But that doesn't mean I'm still not curious about the real deal!

If you've tried Iron Butterfly for yourself, would you say this is pretty close? Or can you convince me into buying it still? Haha! Then again, maybe that's not such a hard thing to do! I easily give in to impulse cravings!

That's all I have for you now! Still have to catch up with so many backlog posts!

Catch you later! :)


**UPDATE 2/23/2013: Those looking for a great charcoal gray or black polish should check out my new post on the Zoya PixieDust Collection. London (fog gray sparkle) and Dahlia (black beauty sparkle) look great!!