My Work Area

June 10, 2012

Hi Everyone! I thought it would be fun to share my polish room as well as how I store and organize my nail polish and polish making supplies. I have been slowly adding pieces to this room since January, and it is almost completed! All I need is closet doors! I also thought I would share what I like and don't like about my room. Maybe that will help you if you are planning on designing a work area.

You can click on any photo to enlarge it.

This is to the right of my room.

The workstation to the far right is where I do my nail art/paint my nails. The area to the far left is my business station. Part of the station is used for glitter and pigment storage. I will have close up photos later in the post.

I got this black and white flower print chair from Burlington Coat Factory for around $100 back in February. I think this chair is suppose to be a decorative piece, but I use it all the time. It is very comfortable, the perfect height for the desk, and is holding up well. It is firm but comfortable.

My walls are two shades of gray. The wall with wall decal is a couple shades darker than the rest of the walls. My accent color is purple (pillows, baskets, and curtains).

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This is the left of my room. The workstation to the far left is where I make polishes.

I love my floating shelves hanging above the desk. My husband put these up for me last weekend, so I could display my homemade nail polishes!

I also like having the bench at this desk as opposed to a chair because I can use it to set supplies on while I work. I do regret this particular bench. I got it from Burlington Coat Factory for around $100 back in February. It already has wear and tear. The seams are ripping. I can't be upset because I do believe this bench was designed to be more of a decorative piece.

I bought the Cherry Blossom Branch + Birds Wall Sticker Vinyl Decal off eBay for around $120. It was a bit pricey. They do have smaller sizes for cheaper ($35), but I wanted it to cover the entire wall. I don't know if this is standard or not, but I got to choose my branch, blossoms, and bird color from the seller on eBay. The link is above. The seller was awesome and had fast shipping! The decal itself was surprisingly easy to put up. It is time consuming. It is not a fast project. If I had to estimate, it took about 4 hours to put it up. None of the flowers or birds are attached to the branches, so you get to pick your placement. I even have left over flowers and birds I did not use. I am considering placing them in random spots all over the room.

I do love my "furniture" I choose for this room. Surprisingly, I didn't spend as much as you think. I bought all the pieces from Michaels on New Years Day. This includes all the storage units and the two desk stations. So everything in this room!

There was a major sale. I purposely waited to buy all my pieces on that day. All storage was 50% off, and I also got $5 off for every $25 I spent (with a coupon). I think Michaels does the 50% off storage sale twice a year (don't quote on me on that), but they always have %40 off storage sales which is just as good. This means I got each piece for half price. They also have random coupons with %50 of a single item that is not on sale. So you could potentially get a ton of those coupons and get your pieces! The only down side is that normally you can only use one coupon per customer.

So needless to say, I spent a lot of money that day, but I also saved a lot of money. This was my Christmas present from my husband. I do regret getting the desks from Michaels. They are wobbly and unstable, but not unusable. It doesn't frustrate me to the point of wanting to chunk them out the window haha... I do love how the desk has built in storage. Maybe I didn't put it together properly.

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The next two photos show how I organize my pigments and glitters. I group my glitters and pigments by brand/store except for the bulk purchase glitters. Those are grouped together. I also store my shipping supplies, empty polish bottles, and extra lacquer base in my closet.

The area to the far right are drawers filled with shipping tape, labels, printer paper, pens, etc. The thing I love about Michaels storage is that you can customize the area how you want and select pieces that will have storage to fit your needs. For example, the open drawers have slots where I can group my pigments by color if I want.

This is the section to the right of my nail polish making workstation. Of course, I have even more glitter. I bought the plastic bins from the dollar store. As you can see, the shelves do slide out.

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Moving on to the right side of my room where I have my "nail art" workstation...

The above photo shows how I store my "store brand" polishes as well as my nail art supplies. I think each drawer can hold approximately 100 polishes (don't quote me on that). Any polish I still need to add to my tracking worksheet I place on top of the drawers.

I have my polishes organized by color as opposed to brand name.

Here is where I store my stamping plates, nail decals, nail art pins, brushes, striping tape, etc. I also keep my stamping polishes with my stamping plates. When I find a polish that works well with stamping, I tend to keep it in this drawer as a reminder! (See photo below)

This is the section to the right of my nail art workstation. These are all my "indie brand" polishes! I love these the most out of my collection, so I display them! I just love how these were made by someone with an idea! It is so awesome to have a creation made by someone, not in a factory. Cheesy, but this section of my room makes me the happiest !

You might wonder why I have two desk lamps on the floor and not on my desk... haha..... well you see, its a funny thing... I close my curtains, turn on the lamps, and it makes the perfect photo box. So yes, I take my photos under my desk... weird? This is a very recent discovery of mine, and I am SUPER excited. I still need to do some tweaking to the area. Have you noticed a difference in my photos lately?

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Below is how I organize my "store brand" polishes. I have a drawer labeled for each color (purple, pinks, greens, etc.). I also have a drawer that is dedicated for all my glitter polishes. These are mainly the layering polishes. I always think I messed up by having a glitter drawer. I think I should have grouped the glitter polishes into a colored drawer. Some polishes I really don't know where to store them, either the glitter drawer or in the appropriate colored drawer. Oh well!

I swatch all my polishes on a nail wheel and associate a number to each polish.

I place a sticker on the polish bottle that is associated with the swatch on the nail wheel. I got these stickers at the dollar store. I also track all my polishes in a spreadsheet. You can see a current list of the polishes I own by going to this link. There are tabs at the top of the page. I store my nail wheels in a container (see two photos below). I got this at the dollar store as well.