Swatch Stick Organization

Friday, October 5, 2012

Hey folks! Just wanted to do a quick post about how I organize my swatch sticks. This has actually been a five month long process, I just FINALLY finished painting and sorting the sticks.

Why did it take me five months? Well, I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to menial (yet daunting) tasks like swatching all of my polishes and labeling them. Er, well the other reason it took me so long is because I kept severely under estimating how many polishes I had, so I kept having to order more and more sticks.

Where to buy it: Swatch sticks are on eBay for about $3.60 for 50 sticks. It comes with a straight threaded long screw but I wanted to put them on rings. Search for "Nail art display sticks" or something like that.

I have two sizes of rings. One are 2" book rings I bought from Staples. a 12 pack for... gosh, $4? I needed about 3 of those packs. Then I bought 3" rings from eBay, it was like $12 for something crazy, like 80 rings. The problem is that the swatch sticks don't fit on the 3" rings (the ring is too thick to pass through the holes) but the 2" rings barely hold any sticks. So I group them together and put similar rings on a super ring. For example, 25 of my layering glitters might be on a 2" ring, then that and other 2" full of glitters on on the mega 3" glitter ring. I'm hardcore.

Before you ask, how many polishes do I actually have? Er, I'm still in denial about it. I won't count them. Also every time I do start to count, I lose track. I think like 550-600ish.

It feels so good to finally have them all sorted out! Have you swatched all your polishes yet? What did you use and how do you organize them?