Nail Polish Organisation: Nail Wheels

I love organising. I really do. And lists. I love making lists.  I like to keep track of things. So to me, it's only natural that I keep track of my nail polish, especially with the rate it is expanding at.

When I found out about nail wheels, I knew it was exactly what I needed. I got my first lot of them last September or so and the initial process of painting the wheels with my entire collection was quite a daunting task. I did it over a few days (the fumes!!) and since then I've tried to keep up to date with them, not letting too many build up. I had to order some more nail wheels and when they arrived last week, I decided that it was about time that I did a post on them.

So why go to the effort of nail wheels? My purpose behind them is to be able to see exactly what the colour looks like when applied and how opaque it is. It is also invaluable when trying to pick a colour to suit an outfit. You can hold up a bunch of colours against the item at once and it really assists in picking the most appropriate shade.

So this is what a typical nail wheel of mine looks like. This one is my 2nd Purple wheel. I number the nails 1-20. This all co-ordinates with an excel sheet.

This is how the excel sheet looks. The numbers on the left co-ordinate with the actual nail wheel. Then I include information such as what brand it is, the name of the polish, how many coats is on the nail wheel and whether or not I have a photo of the polish on my nails.

The number of coats is a great thing to keep track of. It means if I'm in a rush and I want to put on green nail polish, I can just go to the green wheels section of the excel sheet and scan the list for polishes that are opaque in 1 coat.

From this picture you can see that in the excel document there is another sheet which I have called the database. 

In the database tab, I keep track of my nail polish by brand. In this I include information such as the name of the polish, the collection it's from (if any), the colour of the polish, whether I have tried it (this also doubles as whether I have swatch photos of it) and whether or not it has been included in a blog post.

 Finally this is where I keep my nail wheels. Nothing fancy, just in a little basket in a drawer.

Is all this necessary? Probably not. But it makes me happy. It's not like I have loads of time on my hands to do all this excessive orgainsing but once the initial work is done, it really isn't that much effort. 

Wait until you see my make-up inventory post in a week or so, then you'll think I'm really crazy, ha.