Lisa Norman-Hudson, a nail technician at. The Art of Nails in Lafayette, Ind., has found an easy and inexpensive source for nail pads: blue shop towels found in automotive sections of stores like Wal-Mart and Target. “We use shop towels because they are tough enough to really rub with and they don’t leave the cotton fuzzies that some squares do. The white shop towels are not as absorbent,” she says. At the salon, they use a paper cutter to cut the towels into 2-inch by 2-inch squares. Norman-Hudson estimates this practice has saved them several hundred dollars a year on polish removal squares.

Lisa Norman-Hudson shares a tip she learned from a former coworker: blue shop towels can be cut up to make inexpensive, lint-free nail pads.

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