I thought it would be fun to do a behind the scenes post about The Nail Polish Project.  I was going to just do a stash post to start with, but I figured why not show all the glamour (or lack there of) that goes into my blog.  A lot of the big bloggers seem to have dedicated rooms for their polish…not so here.  With rent being so high in Sydney, the idea of a third bedroom I could convert into a polish room is just  a dream so everything has to fit in wherever there is a spare space in my apartment.

First up my polishing space

All my day to day polishing happens on my coffee table in the living room.  I have lots of natural light in here during the day, plus good ventilation.  There is also the bonus of the TV etc right in front of me (not that I actually pay much attention when I’m painting but I like the background noise…today’s choice is the 1966 classic Grand Prix!)  I have a few boxes on the shelf under the table where I stash a lot of nail art supplies and I can fit the acrylic holder with all my essentials in the big box to hide it when we have visitors.  Anything waiting to be swatched goes in my soap and glory tin so I don’t forget it and I also keep a stash of swatchicles on the table for anything new that has come in (I’m all out of lolly sticks at the moment, so I’ve run out of white ones).

My lightbox lives on my dining table.  I originally planned to only put up my lightbox when I was swatching but it rarely gets put away these days unless we have visitors.  As you can see, bottles tend to accumulate here once they’re swatched and photographed until I get around to putting them all away.  The nurofen box is to prop up my camera when I take bottle shots as my tripod is too high for those swatches.  I think the tape goes with the wrapping paper from wrapping a gift up recently!

All my polishes get stored in two Helmers in the bedroom – currently 9 drawers are dedicated to polish and three are all my odds and ends like sponges, cotton wool, extra hand creams etc.  I also still have my Moppe drawers which I use for more stashing of odds and ends.  I quite often use one of these drawers to carry polishes between my bedroom and living room so I can carry more in one go without dropping anything.  I don’t usually have flowers there, my boyfriend bought those for me on Friday to cheer me up after a particularly brutal day but they have to stay in the bedroom to stop my cats eating them!

Finally the stash shots – I took photos of each Helmer drawer.  My camera does warp photos at the edges, so all the drawers look weirdly bowed, ignore that!  They’re all lined with a non slip material at the bottom but still bottles fall over all the time :(

Random professional brands – Color Club, Misa, Zoya, Nubar, Nfu Oh, Orly, Quo by Orly, Essie and CND

Indies – A England, Lynnderella, Nail-venturous, Ninja Polish, Picture Polish, American Apparel (not an indie but the bottles fit well), Pretty Serious, Emily de Molly, Ozotic, Cult Nails, Nostalgic Lacquer

Indies (round bottles) – Lush Lacquer, Rosie Sparkles, Hare Polish (cannot believe I have 18 Hares now!), Nail Pattern Boldness, Smitten Polish, Pahlish, CrowsToes, Girly Bits, Jindie Nails, Candeo Colors, Different Dimension, Coco Allure.  This drawer is slightly misshapen - can’t blame the camera for this, one of my cats rolled around in it and bent it out of shape.

Random Drugstore Polishes – includes Rimmel, Bourjois, Claires Accessories.  I’m planning on purging a lot of these soon as I never use them and generally dislike most of them.  The real estate could be better used for…a 3rd indie drawer!

More Drugstore Brands – Essence, Australis, Joe Fresh, Revlon, Kleancolor, Milani and some odds and ends

More Drugstore Brands – Barielle, Ulta3, Nicole by OPI, Sally Hansen

Salon Brands – Butter London and OPI plus a couple of Inglots and a Bloom polish.  This used to be dedicated to OPI but they had to start sharing after my indie collection got so big!

China Glaze – this drawer is dedicated to warm polishes (orange, red, pink, purple plus golds/coppers)

China Glaze – this drawer is dedicated to cool polishes (green, blue, grey, black, silver and white)

So there you have it, there are over 400 polishes in here in total.  I have 394 in my spreadsheet but it is missing quite a few drug store polishes that I’m going to purge.  After putting my spreadsheet together, I created a few word clouds by brand, colour and finish to see what I really love for a bit of fun:

The dominant polishes in my collection are China Glaze (72), OPI (42), Sally Hansen (32) and Hare Polish (18).

My favourite colour are Glitter (111), Blue (68), Pink (45) and Purple (43)

Finally my most common finishes are Creme (99), Straight Glitter (81) and Shimmer (71)

If I ever get a polish room, I’m making some word clouds like these to go up on the wall, they’re such fun! I loved making them using tagxedo.com.  There are so many different colour combinations, shapes and fonts to choose from.  I could have played all day!  You can download the images in resolutions upto 16mp, so definitely a possibility to use these for print.

Hope you enjoy this post as much as I did putting it together.  Where do you all put on your polish? Are you a couch potato like me or do you have a dedicated space? And how do you store it all?  I’m quietly in love with the Alex units from Ikea too but they don’t go with my bedroom decor…another dream for a polish room.