DIY Nail Polish Remover Jar

Good morning everyone! I have a tutorial that my friend Kate put together for me. She was telling me how she made a nail polish remover jar and how well it was working, so I asked her if she’d mind doing a step-by-step picture tutorial for me. She was inspired by this tutorial she found on pinterest, but she wanted one solid sponge piece like the jars you buy in stores.

What you’ll need:
-choice of nail polish remover – pure acetone or non-acetone remover
-sponge (in this case a car wash sponge as it is really soft and springy, a mop sponge might work as well)
-your choice of jar (any jar will work but smaller is better to avoid wasting nail polish remover); pictured here is a blue hookah jar (2 oz, similar to this), a jelly jar (4 oz), and a Palmer’s Olive Oil jar (1 oz).
-something to mark the sponge like a sharpie
-something to cut the sponge with like an exacto knife

Step One:
Trace the jar onto the sponge.

Step Two:
Cut the sponge. Exactness is not necessary.

Step Three:
Since the car wash sponge is so big, you have to cut it down if you are using a smaller jar. The sponge will expand quite a bit and will overflow your jar. Aim to make it a little shorter than the jar, if it still expands too much you can take it out, squeeze out the remover and trim it shorter.

Step Four & Five:
Put the sponge in the jar and cut a little cross to dip your finger in.

Step Six:
Add your choice of remover and you’re done! For the little jelly jar, 3 TBs of nail polish remover. For the one ounce Palmer’s jar, it was 1-1.5 TBs.

Kate said she’s been using the small jar for about a week now and removed a half dozen manicures between herself and her girls. The sponge hasn’t melted or disintergrated with pure acetone. Regular creme/shimmer polish is cleaned off in seconds, with flakie polish taking a few seconds longer to soak them off. Glitter polish doesn’t fare as well, pieces of it got left behind on the nail and it tore up the sponge. (Kate said she’s impatient and really scrubbed the glitter with the sponge, so the tears in the sponge are probably her own fault.) If you’re impatient like Kate, you might try another type of sponge, or just try being patient for an extra minute. 😉

If you feel so inclined, here’s a pinnable image for you!

I’d like to give a huge shout-out to my friend Kate for helping me out with this. She is seriously the most crafty person I know (she was sewing hammocks for pet rats this week for goodness’ sake!). Please help me tell her thank you!

Have you tried out DIY stuff like this before? What have you done? I’m the least artsy-craftsy person I know, but I think even I could pull this off. Tomorrow I will have some OPI swatch spam, so until then,