Four years ago, I posted about how I finally figured out
a pretty good system to keep track of all the shades, finishes, etc in my nail polish collection. To date, it is still one of my most popular blog posts. It has been a super convenient resource when I'm picking out polishes and comparing one similar shade to another.
Every time I got a new polish (press sample or personal purchase), I swatched it on a nail stick right away. Then I ran out of nail swatch sticks and had THE WORST luck ever buying more sticks that exactly matched the ones I already had: eBay sellers I purchased from before didn't carry them anymore, I was getting product that didn't match the listing, etc. After about a year or two of running out of swatch sticks, I caved and settled on these swatch sticks that were close, but very slightly shorter than the originals /sigh
Anyway, I thought it would be cool to share what my swatch system looks like now (hint: it's gotten
a lot bigger). There are a lot of photos because I had way too much fun photographing this.
I have 7 rings right now, organized by colour: pinks/reds, oranges/yellows, greens, blues, purples, glittery top coats, and neutrals. Neutrals is the biggest ring because it encompasses colours like black, white, beige, grey, metallic foils, etc, but my blues and greens also need to be upgraded to bigger rings.
This is what my blues ring looked like, circa 2012 (20-22 polishes)...
... And what it looks like now (38 polishes).
My greens ring must have reproduced asexually or something, because somehow it's doubled in size (15 → 32) and
definitely has nothing to do with my bias for turquoise 9___9
Pink, red, orange, yellow shades all used to share one ring, but it got quite crowded and I had to split them up.
The other thing about organizing them by colour (rather than by brand, for example) is that I can see how many polishes I have that are nearly identical. As a result, I almost never buy polishes anymore, because I know I'll end up taking home something super similar to something I already own.
My polish collection is just about the only thing in my room that's organized, seriously.
Hope you enjoyed this peek at my collection! How do you keep track of your polishes?
