Danglefoot Nail Polish - Behind The Scenes (Guest Post)

Hello lovelies, and Happy New Year! I hope you've all had an amazing Christmas and are having a good start to the year! Today I have a super exciting guest post for you. Hayley from Danglefoot Nail Polish agreed to do a behind the scenes Q&A for you all. Read on to find out more!

Hi everyone! I'm Hayley the creator of Indie brand Danglefoot Nail Polish and while Becca is off on her travels (jealous!) she's having lots of guest contributors and I'm one of them! This post will be a little ‘behind the scenes’ of making indie polish. Well the way I do it anyway! I collected some questions off my followers on Instagram so I'll answer them best I can.

Hayley's Little Brown Book of Recipes

When and why did you get the idea of making your own polish?

When I went on maternity leave I could start wearing nail polish again and as I started adding mainstream brands to my collection I was mostly disappointed by the glitter ones and as a crafty type person wondered if I could make any myself! A quick google later and I’d ordered some bits of eBay! Due to some circumstances surrounding baby Fletchers health, I decided not to go back to work so was looking to work from home and decided to take the plunge into the indie world! It took a good 6 months to get money together and testing and practice before I sold any.

Danglefoot Stock & Supplies

Where does the brand name and logo come from?

To be honest the logo I just thought of and really liked! Got a little company on Etsy to design it for me and I love my little tree. The name is after my niece who was we called Danglefoot when she born as she was a lazy little thing and always being carried around with her limp feet dangling everywhere!

Danglefoot Polish Logo

How do you choose collection themes and polish names?

Collections I normally have planned months in advance and mostly choose the themes based on things I like! I sometime struggle with names and often ask my lovely followers and friends on Instagram for ideas.

(Becca: I have to sneak in here just to add that I've named a polish for Hayley before - I found it a bit too exciting!)

How do you come up with how each polish will look like?

I'll consider what theme I'm using and try to do a selection of different types of polishes per collection. I'm a nail polish addict myself so make something I'd really like, and take into consideration what's popular in the indie world at the moment! I also listen to customer suggestions and often custom polishes make it into collections too. I make anything sparkly, glittery and holo! I don't make many creme polishes though.

Danglefoot Nail Polish Army!

What's the process of indie making?

Well without giving away all my trade secrets lol I personally make small prototype batches which then get nicked by friends and family while the rest get sold as grab bags! Then I finalise the ‘recipe’ and make up bigger batches. It can take a good couple of hours to make one batch of a shade as I tweak and write it all down as I go then they need to be bottled up, labelled, named, listed in my Etsy shop, then there's all the packing and posting. It keeps me very busy! I've managed to turn lots of my friends into nail polish addicts and introduced them to indie polish. I very rarely wear mainstream polish myself and like to support indie makers! Especially us UK ones as we are limited due to Royal Mail! I've ‘met’ some lovely people online and have the best customers ever! It's a lovely community.

Danglefoot Swatches & Progress Shot

Thanks for reading and check back for more guest posts from other nailies!

Hayley x

Thank you so much to Hayley for a little insight into the indie polish making world! I've always been really interested as to how it all works, if I had the patience I'd probably try and make my own! Make sure you check out Hayley's Instagram here and her Etsy shop here. I definitely recommend grabbing a few of her polishes. If nothing else, make sure you try her cuticle oil - it's amazing (and the cedarwood and lime scent smells like yummy sherbety goodness).

Hope to see you in the next post!
Becca x

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