My Personal In-Home Nail Salon! Pics!

Hello, Beautiful!

I've wanted to post pics of my personal in-home nail salon for awhile now - which just to be clear, is not an actual nail salon; it's just my own set-up for my nail obsession. I've had this set up since the end of May but for some reason never found time to take pics. Then today, as I was putting everything away before my trip, I realized I could take some pics of it while it was nice and clean.

Originally my nail polish shelf and all nail supplies were upstairs in our bedroom, but my collection grew really quickly and it took over our bedroom. With the help of my husband I was able to transform half our dining room into my own personal in-home nail salon.

I love the set-up! My son thinks its awesome too. I give both my husband and my son weekly mani's and pedi's and ever since I set-up my nail salon my son is loving it even more. He pretends to call and make an appointment with me, and when I'm doing my husband's nails he will pretend to be my helper and get drinks for the "client", hand me polish, etc. It's cute. It's also come in handy when my family is over, making it super easy to do their nails at one central location. Everything I need for my nails is in one place and easy to find. It functions so well.

Check out the pics below. I will take detailed pics of my nail art, supplies, polishes, etc. at a later time. I just wanted to post these few pics today before I left for my trip. Then I will get back to my Mally Beauty Celebration swatch posts!

Enjoy!

* Click on pics to enlarge them! *

Here's a wide shot of the entire set-up:

My nail polish collection...

First up are my nail polish shelves that my husband and son built for me. They don't hold all my polish (although at one time they did), so I have all my other polish on a book shelf, which you'll see in a pic below.



This book shelf holds all the polish that doesn't fit on my custom nail polish shelves. The book shelf is getting full really quickly and I will soon need to figure out what to do with additional polish. My husband says he'll add a lot more shelves soon, which will span the entire back wall.



This is my supply shelf. It holds basically all the day-to-day stuff and all my nail art supplies. On top of the shelf are a stack of nail wheels I use for random stuff (seeing if polishes layer nicely), two Deborah Lippmann travel bags - which roll out and fit polish really nicely, and a "Nail Perfect" thing I found at Ross - which is really stupid, but it intrigued me. I'll have to do a post about that in the future.



The top shelf holds all my polish remover, hand scrubs, hand creams, foot scrubs and foot creams.


The next shelf down holds my toe separators, nail files, nail blocks, foot files, clippers, toothpicks, nail glue, orange sticks, droppers, my nail filing machine/system, tape, clear glue, pens, pencils, markers, scissors, little stickers (for marking polish that isn't labeled), a ruler (for keeping my polish in neat straight lines on the book shelf), and a little ramp (which is made for bracelet display) I use for people to put their fingers on when I'm doing nail art on them.


The next shelf down holds all my base coats, top coats, quick-dry top coats, cuticle oils, cuticle removers, and other polish stuff (like Deborah Lippmann's 2 Second Nail Primer and Seche Vite Restore) - which are all grouped by type - and q-tips.


The next shelf down holds almost all my nail art. I have eight containers that each hold little round circles (I think each pack holds 16 to 20 little round circles - I can't remember right now what the exact amount is). Each little round circle is filled with some type of nail art - like little rhinestones, bows, pearls, googley eyes, mini feathers, fimo clay slices, etc. I also have all my nail stamping plates, stampers and scrapers (old gift cards and old credit cards) in two little square bins. I plan to put all my stamping plates in a nice photo album to display them nicely, but for now that's where they are. I have another small square container full of fimo clay sticks that I haven't had the time to slice. Behind those little square bins is a shoe box of my acrylic nail art supplies - which include colored acrylic powders, acrylic liquid, brush cleaner, a container for both and molds to create stuff (like roses, chocolate bars, ice cream, etc.). On top of that I have some random nail art supplies like feathers, stickers, etc. And I also have some masks to put over my nose & mouth whenever I work with the acrylic nail art. The dark blue skinny bin is something I use when picking out nail polish from my racks. It's just easier to transport it that way. The glass bowl and funnel are used with polish remover. I soak my fingers in the glass bowl filled with acetone remover, and then funnel the remaining remover back into the bottle. The striped bin has my nail art pens.


The last shelf holds my duplicate polish in those two striped bins. In the purple bin is a mix of stuff - nail wheels, fake nails, a hand, nail strips (like the Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail strips), Zoya palettes, included info/instruction booklets to things, etc.



On my desk I have a pink lamp that I bought at Wal-Mart for like $10. It has a pink base with compartments for things. I put some pens, Sharpies, nails files and my phone in those compartments.


I use an old container to store my brushes for nail art, cuticle pushers, dotting tools, cuticle cream and cuticle pens.


I keep my nail wheels on my desk. I have a bin just for nail wheels by brand and a bin for nail wheels by color. Currently I'm re-doing all the nail wheels by color because I stopped adding polish to them back when my collection was only around 500, which means I have nearly 1,000 polishes to add to them and I don't know which ones so I'm just re-doing them all.


Since I'm always buying polish but sometimes don't always have time to swatch, I started a "Polishes To Swatch" bin.



In this same room I have my lighting set-up for all my swatch photos. Here's what that looks like, although the lights are both off to the side right now. You can see one of my transparency sheets with swatches on it from the Mally swatches I was working on.