How To Salvage a Broken Nail Polish Bottle

Hello everyone!

I went Mothers Day shopping today... at Winners, what a surprise?! Anyways, I found the most beautiful blue polish from OPI, it's called "Teal The Cows Come Home" (Nothing makes me happier than a pun). As I was at the cash, the cashier was looking for paper to wrap it in and I said "no no, just throw it in the bag, it will be fine", here's where I admit that the bag had some marble-esque coasters, a cook book, and a paper holder/rack thing.

When I got home, I realized that the bottle broke at the stem of the bottle (The irony)! The good news is that this had happened to me before and I could fix it!

Here is what you will need: - Acetone (Nail polish remover works too, but acetone is better)

- An old nail polish bottle (In this case we had an old OPI bottle)

- Paper towel

- Something you don't mind getting nail polish on (an old towel, an open grocery bag, both)

- Crazy glue or contact cement (Glue that will last a long time)

Here's how to fix it:

Take the broken bottle of nail polish and set it aside on the thing you don't mind getting nail polish on. Leave it there until you are ready to transfer the product into the new bottle.

Now most of you don't have empty bottles of nail polish lying around. We had an old bottle, but the polish was half dry and we weren't going to use it again. Over the garbage can (You can lay paper towel in the garbage can to absorb) If you don't have an old bottle, all I can say is, which one do you hate the most? Take the old bottle and drain as much polish as you can in the garbage can.

Once that is done, take the acetone and pour it into the bottle and put the cap back on. Let it sit there for a while (5 minutes max) at the half way point, you can shake the bottle to loosen the nail polish. Dump the acetone mixture into the garbage can. The bottle should be cleaned out of nail polish, but if it's not, repeat until it is.

Clean the old bottle of nail polish off with the acetone and a new piece of paper towel. The cap will most likely have the old nail colour in it too, the brush should be clean because you just had it soaking in acetone, but to really clean inside the cap, turn it over and pour some acetone into it. Let it soak. Pour the acetone out and take a paper towel and twist it into the cap. If the brush part comes out, that's good, then you can really clean the cap properly.

Once the cap is clean and the brush part fell out, it's time to glue the cap and brush back together. Put a dab of glue on the end of the brush (not the bristle side, but the plastic side) and shove it back into the cap.

Now it's time to pour the polish. This isn't hard, it just may get a little messy at first. All you have to do is take the broken bottle and pour it into the opening of the old nail polish bottle that you just cleaned. You can use a funnel, but you'll lose product. If the little metal balls don't fall out of the bottle, all you need to do is pour a little acetone in the broken bottle and turn it over on the thing you don't mind getting nail polish on. The little balls should come out and you can just pop them back into the new/old bottle. The little balls help mix the polish and is necessary if you want to keep the polish.

That's it, you just saved your new nail polish! It's relatively simple, just a little messy. At $10 a bottle, I never want to just throw away good polish.

Thanks for reading,

Samantha