Today my kitten knocked my bottle of Orly Halley’s Comet on the floor, breaking the top from the rest of the bottle. It was nearly full and it’s one of my favorite colors, so I wasn’t about to let it go—I had to rescue it. But how? I’m sure that many manicure lovers encounter this over the course of their lives, so I’m sharing my methods.

Things you’ll need:

• an empty (or near-empty) bottle of polish
• tin foil
• polish remover
• a plastic cup—ideally the clear kind like you find at water coolers, because they’re bendier than solo cups and you’ll need it to be bendy
• scissors
• an elastic hair band or a rubber band

How to rescue your polish:

1. Carefully wrap the broken bottle in foil. I don’t know if this actually helps, but I did it to keep the polish from drying out while I figured out the rest of the rescue plan. I say “carefully” because you don’t want to cut yourself on the broken glass of the bottle.
2. Choose the bottle that will be your polish’s new home. If it still has a bit of other polish in it, pour in some polish remover, twist the cap back on and shake it about. Pour out the mixture and repeat a few times until you can see that the inside of the bottle is clean. Then fill the bottle with water and empty it, to rinse out any polish remover residue—you don’t want that mixed in with the polish you’re rescuing!
3. Cut straight down one side of the plastic cup, and then cut the bottom off. Again, be careful, because the cut plastic can sometimes be sharp enough to slice or stab you, and no one wants that.
4. Twist the plastic into a funnel. The bottom should be small enough to fit into your empty replacement bottle, and the top should be big enough to fit your broken bottle.
5. Wrap the hair elastic/rubber band around the funnel to hold it together. It may take a few tries to find the right place, but once you’ve found it, it’ll stay.
6. Put the funnel in the new bottle and, while holding the contraption carefully to make sure it’s stable, turn your broken bottle upside-down into the top of the funnel. The polish should make its merry way into its new home with little trouble. The entire ordeal will look a little something like this:
   
   
   
   
7. Cap your rescued polish and congratulate yourself on a successful mission!

If you, like me, want the new bottle to say the name of its new polish, follow this second set of steps below the cut.

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