Hello hello! A quick tutorial for everyone today… Swatching the colours in the Gem Collection has obviously required a lot of practice removing glitter, and I thought I would share the method I use with everyone… I’d say the whole process takes about 7 minutes, and when you compare that to how long you usually take to remove glitter one finger at a time I bet you’ll be impressed! (Unless you already use this technique, in which case you’ll be like “Ahhhh, yes.”)
Detailed steps below the cut!
1) Get a round cotton ball. One per hand is what I use. I say round because there are weird cotton balls that are NOT round, and that you can’t actually unroll. You don’t want those cotton balls. I get mine at the dollar store in a large bag for $2.
2) Unroll that cotton ball.
3) Get some scissors and cut that cotton ball into nail-sized pieces. Some people rip their cotton balls instead of cutting, but I find scissors way more exact and way quicker.
4) Make sure you have at least 5 pieces per ball, which leaves a nice sized chunk left for the removal in Step 10.
5) Pour some nail polish remover into the bottle cap. I fill it right to near the top, since you’re going to need about a full cap per hand. I usually use normal nail polish remover, but I suppose you could use acetone if you really wanted to. You shouldn’t need to with this method, though.
6) Get the 5 cuts of cotton ball you made.
7) Dip a piece of the cotton ball into the remover. You want it to be saturated but not dripping.
8) Place the saturated piece of cotton ball on top of your nail and press down so it’s in contact with all of the nail. Don’t press it down super hard, or you’re going to see all your remover drip off.
9) Repeat the soaking and placing for the rest of your nails and let them sit for about 3-5 minutes. If you notice the cotton pieces are getting too dry, dip the tips of your cotton covered nails into some more remover so it re-saturates. Make sure the cotton pieces are in direct contact with your nails for this entire time.
10) Take that piece of left over cotton ball from Step 4 and use it to press down at the top of your nail and firmly wipe the soaked cotton ball and polish off. Do the nails one at a time. If you’ve done it right, most if not all of the polish will come off with the saturated ball. If there’s some glitter left just add some extra polish remover to the already-dirty collection of cotton pieces and wipe down the nail like you would normally until the glitter stragglers are all gone.
And that’s it! 🙂 Here’s a look at all of it together:
I find this way much easier and quicker than the tinfoil method, and I’m happy it works with regular polish instead of acetone so that my nails don’t dry out when I’m doing a lot of glitter swatching. You can of course use this method with non-glitter polish too, and if you do that you shouldn’t have to let the saturated balls sit nearly as long. Maybe a minute or two.
What method do you use to remove polish, I wonder? Have you tried this one before? Let me know!!
Thanks for visiting! xx
