Nail Swatches

If you're anything like me and have over 200 bottles of nail polish and can't remember what every polish looks like on, then you might want to swatch all your polish. I've had all my polished swatched for the last three or so years, but I recently revamped my swatches and did them all over.

When I first swatched all my polishes I only had like four wheels. So I put them all in rainbow order, and numbered them all. The problem came when I got new polish, I've more than doubled my polish since then. Every time I got a new polish I just added it to the last wheel, which meant that I had pinks at the beginning of the wheels and then a random one at the end. This made it hard when I wanted to see all of one color, I'd miss the random ones.

Anyways, I decided to get all new wheels and redo them all. So I went on eBay, the cheapest place I've been able to find wheels. These are the ones I got. I tried to find ones that came in sets of ten, and I ordered five sets. This was probably way more than I needed, but I wanted to have extra for later  and I test designs on them. Mine came from Hong Kong. Which takes a while to arrive, about two weeks, keep this in mind. In the mean time while I waited for my wheels I went ahead and numbered all my polishes. I decide the best way was to number each color separately, and put on their own wheels. This way when I get a new pink I can just add it to the pink wheel with the others. I started each color with number one and labeled them R1, R2 and so on (so Red 1, Red 2. then started each color over again) Before I just used a Sharpie to write the numbers on the bottles but I decided a dot sticker would be better. It took a couple of different stickers to find ones that would actually stay on the bottle. Make sure your stickers say permanent and not removable. I also found that since my bottles sit out in the open and get a little dusty, and they also get lotions and natural oils from your hands when you handle them; that I needed to rub the bottles down with rubbing alcohol. This made the stickers stick much better.

Once my wheels arrived I numbered each set of wheels for each color. I also put a number in the center of the wheel, so I could keep the multiple wheels for each color in order easier. Then came the fun part, swatching all the polish! I made the slight mistake of doing about 150 in one day without a window open. I was a little light headed after from all the fumes, I suggest doing this in a well ventilated area. While swatching all my polish it helped me find polish that I had kind of forgot about. I'm really happy with my new swatches, much more organized. It's also easier to pick a color from the swatches instead of digging through all the bottles.

Do you have a special way you organize your polish? Do you think I'm super obsessive compulsive for being this organized? Hahaha.