My DIY Polish Rack and Collection

As a polish hoarder, you can imagine that I have accumulated quite a collection over the years. In fact, at my last count I had 210 polishes... not including various topcoats and duplicate bottles of some of my favorites (not to mention a few bottles that are probably mysteriously stashed around my room). As my collection grew, the need for a reasonable storage solution became more and more imperative. At it's beginning my collection found it's home in a shoe box, they were upgraded to a larger hat box from there, and then to multiple drawers in one of those plastic chests of drawers you buy at Target. The problem that I had with all of these is that the polishes always just ended up in a big pile that made it very difficult to ever find the color that I was looking for and, over the years, there was more than one broken bottle incident.

Now I had seen a bunch of tutorials online for making your own polish shelf with foam board etc, but these things always looked so rickety that I can't believe that any of them lasted for very long. Therefore, I decided to just go for it and attempt to make my own polish display shelf out of a much more durable material... wood. I simply picked up some pre-cut hobby boards from Lowe's and with some nails, a hammer, and a bit of craft paint, came up with something that I am proud to hang on my wall and display my polishes.
 

This picture was taken on the day that I made it. As you can see, I have already filled it to the brim! Actually, there were a few polishes that didn't even make it up on the wall. So, alas, I guess it is time to build another. This is actually hung in a corner between the wall and the door to my closet, so my plan is to build another, identical one, and hang it on the other side of the corner.

This project was very cheap and I think that anyone could really do it. I already had the nails, hammer, and paint so all I had to do was buy the wood, which ended up being just about $20. Now, I went to Home Depot first, and just for the wood it was going to be closer to $40, so I definitely recommend hitting up your local Lowe's instead. Also, try to make sure that your boards are relatively equal in length. Even though they are sold as pre-measured and cut pieces I found that not all were created equal and it makes it a bit more challenging to fit the pieces in when some are slightly longer or shorter than others.

Also, make sure that you carefully measure out where your horizontal boards should go and do your best to stick to it. A few of my shelves ended up a bit crooked and they are definitely not all the same height, creating a situation where some of the taller bottles won't fit on just any shelf - very annoying.  I used L-shaped brackets to hang it on my wall - 2 on the top shelf and two on the bottom. Although, I think that on the next one I will put the brackets closer to edges as they caused the shelf to buckle slightly. I haven't found that this has caused any trouble with stability, it just doesn't look quite as perfect as my perfectionist self would like.

Anyway, I hope that this inspires some of you to get your polish in order and if there are any questions about  how I went about this just comment and I will do my best to answer!