Make Your Own Nail Polish Rack

I came across this YouTube video Shit Nail Polish Addicts Say.  There's a bunch of videos of this genre going around but this one definitely spoke to me.  I could relate to several of the stereotypes in the video.

One particular part in the video caught me off guard.  She holds up a foam board and mentions having to make another nail polish rack.  WHAT??  I have never heard of making your own rack.  I looked into buying some in the past but they're so expensive or the shipping is.  Or they don't hold very many bottles of polish.  So I Googled this rack making business and found this YouTube tutorial.

I went to work!  I wanted to make racks that fit 50 bottles so my racks have 5 tiers and holds 10 bottles each tier. So my measurements are much different than hers on the tutorial. I picked up 4 foam boards at $3.49 apiece.  The foam boards I got were 22x28 inches big and each rack took slightly over 1 board.    The math is by far the most time consuming aspect of this project.  Triple check your measurements!!  I have a bunch of different shaped bottles so when I laid out my 50 bottles for the original measurement I made sure to include a variety to get a truer size.

I don't really have any place to put these so I bought two shelves from the hardware store.  The shelves and hardware came to about $21.  If you're also buying shelves, make sure to get ones that will support the weight of all your polish!  The shelves I got are long enough to hold 2 racks or 100 bottles of polish and support up to 100 pounds.

Since the only wall space I really have for the shelves is in my living room, I knew I wanted my DIY racks to be pretty.  I was given some fabric from a friend who was destashing her craft room.  I cut the fabric as the same size as my side walls and the front "lip."  I used Tacky Glue to glue them on. So easy!

From the 4 foam boards I was able to make 3 racks to hold approximately 150 bottles of nail polish for only  $14.  Yay!  I organized my polish by color since I'm not particularly loyal to a brand or collection.  Isn't my polish pretty?  So much nicer than being shoved in several shoe boxes.

Holo Glitter Frankenpolish

Did you know you can make your own nail polish color?  Take an empty bottle, mix colors together and there you go!  There's a huge community of nail enthusiasts who make their own polish.  It's called frankenpolish or frankening.  Today I made a holographic glitter nail polish.

I bought this holo glitter for $2.99.  Called Glitz by Fantasy Makers owned by Wet N Wild.  The best time to find this stuff is during Halloween so get yours now!  I also bought Sinful Colors Wet Glaze for $1.99.  It's just a clear top coat.

I made a funnel with some paper and poured about a third of the holo glitter into the clear polish.  A quarter of the bottle would have been sufficient but when it comes to glitter I go balls out.

Mix it up really well and viola!  The glitter will settle to the bottom during storage so just make sure to shake it up before you use it.

Nails taken in shade.  Pointer finger has one coat.  Middle finger has two coats.  Ring finger has one coat over Wet N Wild Wild Shine Black Creme.  Pinky finger has two coats of glitter over black.

Nails taken in direct sunlight.  Now I've got an amazing glitter top coat for less than $5 and I have a bunch of glitter left to make more.  Maybe I'll add glitter to a creme polish next.

Nail Polish Collection

I love fingernail polish. It's cheap. Comes in every color. There are so many possibilities. So many moods.

I recently ordered nail wheels on ebay so I could swatch my nail polish collection. You can get a better sense of the color on a fingernail as opposed to simply looking at the bottle.

Here is my nail polish collection. You can view larger photos of the wheels on my flickr page and you can read my spreadsheet to get the names of the colors.

Each polish was done without a basecoat or a topcoat. And nail has two coats of polish.

 The glitters are shown by themselves and then I painted them over black nail polish.

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 15, 2011