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fucking finally
Aug. 19th, 2025 03:05 amIt's a freakin' miracle, baby. I went through last night, on a whim, and sorted my swatch sticks. Finally. I can't say they're 100% done because they aren't ~perfect~, but they're all on rings with their friends in approximate color groups. I'd been making little steps forward on this, as I went through every couple of months and would tackle a color group and then add in any of the swatch sticks I had from my latest round of swatching.
Problem is, I mostly had left my purples til the end. Do you know what my favorite color is? What polish color I will buy, knowing full well I have eleventy-billion at home but who cares because this one is just so pretty?
FUCKING. PURPLE.
*cries*
I did learn that for someone who leans really hard into the blue leaning purples, the colors that gave me the biggest jolt of serotonin were bright purples with a reddish shimmer.
I also re-learned that I don't like certain things in polish, but I'm too lazy to try and word this properly, so at some point I'll either take pictures or look up examples of what I mean. Thankfully, some of these I have remembered over the past year or two, like purples with red/blue glitter or shimmer particles that are big enough to make out each piece. I just don't like it and I dunno why.
There was also a moment when I feared I'd lost most of my blue swatch sticks and would have to re-swatch all of them and nearly freaked out because blue is my second biggest color group. Luckily, I remembered I'd put them someplace "safe" since I'd mostly finished sorting them earlier this year.
If memory serves, so long as you don't count black/white/grey, or metallics like bronze/gold, my smallest color group is yellow by a laaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge margin. Even if you added the golds and other similar metallics, yellow is still the smallest group. This makes total sense because I look like ass in yellow and yellow polishes are notorious for having terrible formulas, or at least requiring three coats minimum, and while I'm no longer requiring one coat wonders, I do not have the patience for three coats of a color that's gonna look like shit on me from the jump.
Pinks are the next smallest and only as large as they are because I lump in pinky reds and pinky purples, and also because for a short period of time I told myself I could buy any pink I wanted, within reason, because I KNEW I didn't have very many pinks at all. Orange used to be until I realized I do, in fact, love certain shades of orange. I do not like oranges with pink shimmers though, and when I told Mums, she cheerfully said, "Peach!" and then we both mentioned corals. I buy corals and peaches for Mums and because the color reminds me of her, but most of the time I don't wear them because they look like ass on me. But circling back to the pink shimmer oranges, I really did mean a good orange polish with a pink shimmer. I have a couple I either bought before I realized this or without realizing it had a pink shimmer in the first place. Booooo.
Reds and greens are in the middle for different reasons. Reds probably have a higher percentage than they would normally because red is a color I've been gifted a few times, or it'll be part of a collection and if I'm buying the whole collection, I'm gonna wind up with a red, and reds pop up in pretty much every season because reds sell. I don't wear a ton of reds though, but the ones I love, I love HARD.
Greens I allow myself a decent amount of leeway with because green polishes are harder to come by and I like to encourage brands to freakin' release them. They're also the one color I can almost always guarantee I'll kick myself for not buying later (Talking about you, Essie's Sweater Weather). Greens also have a bigger array of color variations than reds, and there are some I don't mess with much (so sorry, Swampy Greens), and there are some you can guarantee I'll be diving into with wild abandonment (hello, blue leaning green glitters) so that helps things.
In general, the easiest/happiest ones to sort were the blacks (huzzah!) and the silvers, as both provided me a happy little selection of pretties that at some point I know full well my dumbass is gonna swatch on a wheel and then stare at it happily.
At this point, this is what I have left to do:
- Figure out which polishes haven't been swatched at all.
I *think* this is just my last two Holo Taco orders, so that shouldn't be terrible. eta: yup, just the last two HT orders.
- Figure out which polishes need to be re-swatched.
Apparently some Revlon polishes and topcoats have a chemical reaction with certain swatch sticks, so that sometime later they get this white film on them and it's annoying as shit. I need to go through and figure out which ones are affected by the topcoat issue and also see if just putting another brand of topcoat over will work (eta: iffy) or if that'll just be a waste of time, either because the film will get stuck between layers and ruin everything or just go through the new topcoat anyway.
Also, some polishes in general kind of eat away at the swatch sticks but if you do a gel layer on the stick first, it'll negate that. I need to see if it's something I can do after the fact (doubtful) or if I just need to re-swatch the toppers and any unfortunate others. (gonna need to just flat out redo these, using the gel topcoat first, then painting)
Finally, any polishes I painted on the underside of the swatch sticks probably just need to be redone in general because of either the aforementioned problems or humidity made them bubble. There's a polish that also turned funky on the swatch stick and I need to redo that one or see if the polish itself turned. Like a blue turned browny-orange. It's ugly as hell and the only reason I haven't gone hunting for it already is because it's from a brand I don't fuck with anymore so it's low on the priority list.
- Acquire more rings of the correct size.
As it is, I have some on really big, too thick rings and a lot of the smaller rings are too full to add anything. Whenever I do go back through and fix things, I do think I will just go ahead and sort out polishes by finish types for the most part with the exceptions being any where I specifically want to keep similar colors together so I can compare them, regardless of finish.
- Figure out how to store/display them properly.
This'll be easier once I get them on proper rings but I'd kinda like to figure this one out sooner rather than later.
- Figure out storage for the collection proper.
I still think the various Helmers/not!Helmers aren't all that pretty but I don't really want to find a piece of furniture I love only to realize the hard way that the drawers cannot hold the polish. That would just not be a fun day. I suppose if I do go the Helmer route, I can just put the swatch sticks in the top drawer.
I figure my next polish play day that isn't swatching the HT polishes (I might do that today), will either be going through the sticks and writing down which polishes to yoink for re-swatching purposes, or just grabbing the toppers in general and going in on that, though that'll depend on whether I've got a gel TC for this.
Problem is, I mostly had left my purples til the end. Do you know what my favorite color is? What polish color I will buy, knowing full well I have eleventy-billion at home but who cares because this one is just so pretty?
FUCKING. PURPLE.
*cries*
I did learn that for someone who leans really hard into the blue leaning purples, the colors that gave me the biggest jolt of serotonin were bright purples with a reddish shimmer.
I also re-learned that I don't like certain things in polish, but I'm too lazy to try and word this properly, so at some point I'll either take pictures or look up examples of what I mean. Thankfully, some of these I have remembered over the past year or two, like purples with red/blue glitter or shimmer particles that are big enough to make out each piece. I just don't like it and I dunno why.
There was also a moment when I feared I'd lost most of my blue swatch sticks and would have to re-swatch all of them and nearly freaked out because blue is my second biggest color group. Luckily, I remembered I'd put them someplace "safe" since I'd mostly finished sorting them earlier this year.
If memory serves, so long as you don't count black/white/grey, or metallics like bronze/gold, my smallest color group is yellow by a laaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge margin. Even if you added the golds and other similar metallics, yellow is still the smallest group. This makes total sense because I look like ass in yellow and yellow polishes are notorious for having terrible formulas, or at least requiring three coats minimum, and while I'm no longer requiring one coat wonders, I do not have the patience for three coats of a color that's gonna look like shit on me from the jump.
Pinks are the next smallest and only as large as they are because I lump in pinky reds and pinky purples, and also because for a short period of time I told myself I could buy any pink I wanted, within reason, because I KNEW I didn't have very many pinks at all. Orange used to be until I realized I do, in fact, love certain shades of orange. I do not like oranges with pink shimmers though, and when I told Mums, she cheerfully said, "Peach!" and then we both mentioned corals. I buy corals and peaches for Mums and because the color reminds me of her, but most of the time I don't wear them because they look like ass on me. But circling back to the pink shimmer oranges, I really did mean a good orange polish with a pink shimmer. I have a couple I either bought before I realized this or without realizing it had a pink shimmer in the first place. Booooo.
Reds and greens are in the middle for different reasons. Reds probably have a higher percentage than they would normally because red is a color I've been gifted a few times, or it'll be part of a collection and if I'm buying the whole collection, I'm gonna wind up with a red, and reds pop up in pretty much every season because reds sell. I don't wear a ton of reds though, but the ones I love, I love HARD.
Greens I allow myself a decent amount of leeway with because green polishes are harder to come by and I like to encourage brands to freakin' release them. They're also the one color I can almost always guarantee I'll kick myself for not buying later (Talking about you, Essie's Sweater Weather). Greens also have a bigger array of color variations than reds, and there are some I don't mess with much (so sorry, Swampy Greens), and there are some you can guarantee I'll be diving into with wild abandonment (hello, blue leaning green glitters) so that helps things.
In general, the easiest/happiest ones to sort were the blacks (huzzah!) and the silvers, as both provided me a happy little selection of pretties that at some point I know full well my dumbass is gonna swatch on a wheel and then stare at it happily.
At this point, this is what I have left to do:
- Figure out which polishes haven't been swatched at all.
I *think* this is just my last two Holo Taco orders, so that shouldn't be terrible. eta: yup, just the last two HT orders.
- Figure out which polishes need to be re-swatched.
Apparently some Revlon polishes and topcoats have a chemical reaction with certain swatch sticks, so that sometime later they get this white film on them and it's annoying as shit. I need to go through and figure out which ones are affected by the topcoat issue and also see if just putting another brand of topcoat over will work (eta: iffy) or if that'll just be a waste of time, either because the film will get stuck between layers and ruin everything or just go through the new topcoat anyway.
Also, some polishes in general kind of eat away at the swatch sticks but if you do a gel layer on the stick first, it'll negate that. I need to see if it's something I can do after the fact (doubtful) or if I just need to re-swatch the toppers and any unfortunate others. (gonna need to just flat out redo these, using the gel topcoat first, then painting)
Finally, any polishes I painted on the underside of the swatch sticks probably just need to be redone in general because of either the aforementioned problems or humidity made them bubble. There's a polish that also turned funky on the swatch stick and I need to redo that one or see if the polish itself turned. Like a blue turned browny-orange. It's ugly as hell and the only reason I haven't gone hunting for it already is because it's from a brand I don't fuck with anymore so it's low on the priority list.
- Acquire more rings of the correct size.
As it is, I have some on really big, too thick rings and a lot of the smaller rings are too full to add anything. Whenever I do go back through and fix things, I do think I will just go ahead and sort out polishes by finish types for the most part with the exceptions being any where I specifically want to keep similar colors together so I can compare them, regardless of finish.
- Figure out how to store/display them properly.
This'll be easier once I get them on proper rings but I'd kinda like to figure this one out sooner rather than later.
- Figure out storage for the collection proper.
I still think the various Helmers/not!Helmers aren't all that pretty but I don't really want to find a piece of furniture I love only to realize the hard way that the drawers cannot hold the polish. That would just not be a fun day. I suppose if I do go the Helmer route, I can just put the swatch sticks in the top drawer.
I figure my next polish play day that isn't swatching the HT polishes (I might do that today), will either be going through the sticks and writing down which polishes to yoink for re-swatching purposes, or just grabbing the toppers in general and going in on that, though that'll depend on whether I've got a gel TC for this.
