Around the House

#77 · Stir nail polish

Insert a chopstick into a thickening nail polish bottle and stir it back to life. Beats shaking it and getting bubbles everywhere.

Nail polish separates as the pigment settles out of the solvent, and the instinctive fix - shaking the bottle - is the one that ruins it. A chopstick stirs it back together without whipping in the bubbles that then dry into a pitted finish.

How to do it

1. Roll the bottle slowly between your palms first to warm and loosen it.
2. Slide a chopstick tip down the inside wall of the bottle to the bottom.
3. Stir slowly in one direction for 20 to 30 seconds - you are folding, not beating.
4. Wipe the chopstick on kitchen roll and cap the bottle tightly.

Why it works

Shaking traps air as bubbles throughout the polish. Because polish is viscous and dries from the surface, those bubbles cannot rise and escape before the film sets, so they dry in as tiny craters. Stirring moves the pigment back into suspension without introducing an air-liquid interface at all.

Tips & warnings

• If it is thick as well as separated, that is solvent loss, not settling. A drop or two of proper polish thinner fixes it.
• Never thin with acetone or remover - it breaks the film-forming resins and the polish will never harden properly.
• Wipe the bottle neck before capping. Dried polish in the threads is why bottles seize shut.
• One chopstick per colour, unless you are going for an unplanned shade.