Suffice it to say, I haven't been able to paint my nails lately; but, I didn't want to go any longer without posting. It occurred to me that maybe there was something I could share that didn't involve painting my nails (a.k.a., a "light bulb moment"). I remember being intrigued by other bloggers who have showed their nail polish areas on YouTube or in a blog post...so I'm hoping this post gives some of you ideas for your own polish places. (In case you're wondering, this collection of polishes & nail art tools has been amassed over three years.)
Alright, without any more babbling, here we go! I hope you read through to see where I paint my nails and also how I organize my polish collection.
 |
| Are you curious? Have you been waiting to get a glimpse into the Kolor Kave? |
This is a (slightly imperfect) panoramic view of my polish station which takes up one wall in the Kolor Kave:
You can see that this room is downstairs in a finished basement and these windows look out at ground level to a small terrace behind the house. Bonus: there are often little chipmunks or the neighbors' cats who come and peek into the windows at me. Using two folding tables side-by-side against the wall, I sit on the left side to paint,and stand on the right side picking polish and stamping plates.
Here are some closer views:
Using the recess along the wall under the windows as a little extra shelf space where I store my acrylic paints, foils, striping tapes, stones and studs. In addition to the overhead lighting in the room, I have a floor lamp to the left (which also holds my apron made just for me - thanks, Mom!) and an Ott-Lite on my work table. There is a plastic drawer storage section on the floor that has my cotton wipes, Q-tips, and other back-up supplies. On top of it is my stamping tool basket and paper towels (I've learned the hard way to keep them within reach at all times - LOL.) On the table, I have an acrylic polish rack - I'll show a closer view later - it also holds items I want within reach.
In the middle is my tray with all the liquids, nail-art brushes, nail files, cuticle oils, and misc. tools. And, then my stamping plate collection rests up against the "Melmers" which hold my nail polishes. (These are actually craft storage furniture cubes sold by Michaels.) On top of them are my swatch sticks and inspiration sources/sketch notebook.
The topic of how to sort/store our nail polish is often discussed among polish bloggers/collectors. At the moment, I use two methods. One, my polish swatch sticks are orgaized by colors and the polish bottles are in these drawers alphabetically by brand name. This gives me a couple ways of finding the polish for a design.
I absolutely love seeing the swatch sticks all together - like a great bouquet of colors (see first and last picture in this post). I organize them in small boxes, roughly by these groupings:
- Red
- Pink
- Purple
- Blue
- Teal/Mint/Aqua
- Green
- Yellow & Orange
- Brown & Gold
- Black & White
- Silver & Grey
- Multicolored Toppers
- Stamping Polishes
Early on, I found that while creating nail-art, I would often change my mind about which top-coat or stamping color I wanted to use. And, reaching into the drawers with wet nails was asking for trouble. So, I asked for this acrylic polish rack for Christmas last year - and thanks to Santa, walla! Starting from the bottom, here is how I organize this rack by row:
- Basecoats, Zoya color-lock system, matte top-coats
- Quick-dry and Regular Topcoats, Gelous (for heavy glitters that need extra smoothing), and clear polish
- Special Effect toppers (holo, sparkle, shimmer, etc.) and Striping Polishes
- Top 3 rows are Stamping Polishes
Another popular discussion with nail-artists who do stamping, is figuring out how a polish will look when stamped over other polishes. Before I owned true stamping polishes, if I found a regular polish stamped well, I would stamp a small image on the neck of the swatch stick.
Why? Two reasons: 1) I'd remember that I thought that polish has stamping potential. And, 2) because when it's such a thin layer stamped, it tends to look different than the full-color of the swatch, especially layered over other polishes. In the picture, I think you can see how different the dark-green holo (2nd from right) looks on the swatch -vs- the stamped flower on the neck.Then, when I began getting polishes made for stamping, I just pick a full-nail image and stamp that on the swatch stick. I can hold these over another swatch sticks to see if I might like that combination or not.
Here's a glimpse of me swatching both regular polish and stamping swatches. I use a label maker with the brand and color name on each stick.
One last look at all the pretty colors....
If you're interested to see what polishes I have, I've updated my Polish List page. There is a link to a shared portion of my spreadsheet that goes along with my swatch sticks. In it, I include how many coats of polish is on the swatch and other information about each polish.
Well, what did you think? How do you store and organize your polishes?
Got questions? I'd love to answer them...ask away in the comments!
And - a huge THANKS for sticking with me. I'm constantly flattered that you're out there interested in my contribution to this fun and addicting hobby!!
Till next time,
Kimett