I’m not certain how the question arose. It was one of those conversations that takes place between women at work at lunchtime. I was chatting with several of the twentysomethings, who are clever, interesting and full of good-natured energy. It was yet another of those endlessly rainy days in June and we stared out the rain-streaked window speaking ominously but jokingly about the possibility of becoming victims of the horrors of mildew.

The question fluttered into the air: “What do you do with old bottles of nail polish anyway?” The question was probably apropos of something, but I don’t remember what. Perhaps we were lamenting that the rain had prevented the wearing of sandals and flip-flops and therefore had postponed that quintessentially female ritual of painting our toenails in bright colors to celebrate the warm days of summer.

“I have a drawer full,” Kate said, referring to the amount of nail polish she had stashed away. Yin, sitting at another table, confessed that she, too, had accumulated many bottles of nail polish. Color preferences and styles had changed season by season according to the whim of cosmetic fashion, leaving them with an excess of nail enamel they didn’t use anymore.

As questions go, it wasn’t one that needed an answer other than the laughter it sparked. But my mind got tangled up in the question and I pondered it as I bit into my sandwich and stared out at the rain making brown puddles on the sodden parking lot.

“Plant pots,” I said a few minutes later when the conversation had veered to some other subject that had nothing at all to do with nail polish. “I know what to do with leftover nail polish. Decorate plant pots.”

“I’m in,” Kate said immediately, grasping the idea. Yin jumped right in and agreed to participate, too. And I knew that Aimee and Michele, who also work here at the BDN, would be good to go when I asked them to join the plant-pot-painting scheme.

I bought five small terra cotta plants pots at the hardware store in Hampden for 79 cents each and gave one apiece to Kate, Yin, Michelle and Aimee. I kept one for myself because it didn’t seem fair to ask them to decorate plant pots with nail polish unless I did, too.

Kate dove into the project with her characteristic enthusiasm and within a few days produced a pot painted in dark green, turquoise, brick red and yellow-green. “It’s a desert scene,” she said. Her pot sports a turquoise moon and clouds floating over dark red buttes. It evokes an exotic place of big sky and wide spaces.

“This was a good excuse to buy new nail polish,” she said with a laugh. She used Wing It Wine Creme from NYC New York Colors; Strong from L’Oreal Bijou Gems; Hopeful from L’Oreal Bijou Facets; and Mania from Rimmel 60 Seconds EXTREME.

Aimee gave her pot a subtle design, using a palette in shades of pink to embellish it with a pearlescent arrangement of flaring stripes. “I’m such a girl,” she said, poking fun at herself and referring to the pink color scheme. She said she was so excited about doing the project and enjoyed it so much, she plans to paint other pots to coordinate with her kitchen. She used Headstrong from L’Oreal Paris 500; Jewel Frost from Sally Hanson Hard as Nails; Feelin’ Flirty from Revlon Limited Edition; and Planet Purple from Maybelline Express Finish Glitter.

Michele created an intricate design on her pot. She said she used “every color I have” to decorate it. “It was dab, dab, dab,” she said of her process of painting on the pot a pattern of dots and stripes that put me in mind of the speckles on brook trout. She began with an undercoat of Sally Hanson’s Crystal Chrome and added dots big and small of NailSlicks Espresso Express, L’Oreal Crimson Wine, Maybelline Plum Motion, Orly Gold Rush, and Nina Ultra Pro’s Expresso and Tequila Gold. She also used a bit of Top Coat and Nail Savvy in colors whose name labels got lost. Her design has the look of underwater entities rising to the surface.

Yin discussed with her co-workers ideas for painting her plant pot. They thought a flower motif would be the perfect choice. Thus, delicate blue flowers with green foliage twine around the pot Yin decorated. She used CQ French White as an undercoat, which gives a mottled effect and lets the terra cotta color of the pot show through. She painted the leaves and vines in Bon Bons nail polish in green with gold sparkles. The flowers are made with Wet ‘n’ Wild in silvery blue Shiver-Frisson, with centers of darker blue and orange Bon Bons nail polish, whose labels also got lost. Yin’s design has a 19th century feel to it that is graceful and airy. “This project was fun,” Yin said.

My nail polish collection consists of three bottles in two shades of red, Wet ‘n’ Wild Dark Red Berry, and Petites by Scherer in Napa Merlot Red; and a shade of pink, Avon Speed Dry nail enamel in Delicate Mauve. To decorate my pot, using a foam brush, I first applied a single coat of Old Village acrylic latex satin finish paint in steeple white. Over that I painted the pot with rose shapes and single lines of color to evoke an old-fashioned garden trellis. I worked freehand and drew the shapes I wanted with the nail polish brush as I worked. I painted my pot while standing at the kitchen counter. I think it took me about 15 minutes and I really didn’t have to think too hard about what I wanted it to look like. It just evolved.

Painting plant pots with nail polish is simple and so easy to do even a child could do it with some supervision. However, it’s important to work in a well-ventilated area, or outdoors, because nail polish emits fumes that aren’t exactly what you want to breathe for any length of time. And, for a few hours after the pot has been painted, it smells like nail polish. That smell disappears after a while.

Now I’m wondering what else the young women I work with have tucked away that we can use for creative purposes other than what the manufacturer originally intended. Lipstick? Eye shadow?

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.