A Jersey Girl Loves Her Nails

If you're a dude, you might want to come back next week. I promise to blog about football and beef jerky and other manly stuff.

Today, I'm talking about one of my most favorite things in all the land.

Nail polish.

Remember when I showed you my medicine cabinet full of deodorant?  Well, that was the tiny one.  THIS is the big one.

A few weeks ago, I planned to write a post on some new polishes I'd gotten myself over the holidays (a present for you, a present for me).  Um, I mean, SANTA brought me 5 pretty new shades from Deborah Lippmann and Ciaté.

That quickly became 12.  Which turned into 17.  (He's magic, you know.)

Which brought on the swift realization that I'm a nail polish addict.  Silly me.  A single blog post couldn't possibly contain my enthusiasm!   So I created a brand new blog: 52 Shades of Nail Polish.

I know, I know -- should I really be starting a new blog when I don't update this one enough?

Well... no.   I shouldn't.  But I'm doing it anyway.

After working for the last 12 years in digital, the last 6 of which have been at a company that publishes the world's best beauty and fashion mags, I've learned a thing or two.

Why not put it to work for me?

I paint my nails all the time.  It's peaceful and indulgent, and I'm from Jersey so it's basically in my DNA.  Now, each week I'm taking a quick pic, posting the shade and a short review. I'll be sharing my favorites and trying new techniques, like velvet manicures, at-home gel manicures, and I might even name my own polish.

The blog is well optimized for search, so hopefully I can grab a tiny slice of the 1.2 million Google searches for nail polish that are done in the US each month (incidentally, a $770 million dollar industry, AND the fastest-growing beauty segment).

I also wanted to do some things with the new blog that I don't want to do here -- like include advertising.  So I joined 2 affiliate programs (LinkShare and Commission Junction) and got approved by Kay Jewelers, Starbucks, Vera Bradley, Dylan's Candy Bar, and 1800-Flowers to display their ads.  I also got rejected by a bunch of companies because I'm too small. 

For now.

Then, I joined Amazon Associates and created a store so I could hand-pick nail polishes I like and offer them for sale on my blog.  And because I couldn't possibly endorse Amazon's beauty vendors without sampling them myself, I ordered 2 sets -- aka 24 glorious bottles -- of full-size China Glaze polish, so I now own more neon than I did in the 80's PLUS their entire Hunger Games collection. 

It was a great price, I couldn't resist.  (See?  I told you!  Addict.)

Now, I haven't gone delusional from the fumes.  As much as I love my lacquer, I don't think the road to early retirement in Tahiti is paved with nail polish.  But if the tiny commissions I might earn from the ads and the store could fund my habit, that would be cool by me.

Plus, it's fun.

I'll keep it going for at least a year, so I can post a full 52 shades.  After that, who knows? 

So have YOU been stockpiling nail polish too, or am I the only one who will have great looking hands in the zombie apocalypse?  Have any favorite shades or brands I need to try? 

Colorful comments are always welcome below...


tags: beauty, work, writing