Meet Jennifer Fox of Death Valley Nails in The Valley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Fox.

Jennifer, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Death Valley Nails started as a way for me to be able to create while my life is “mobile.” My background is in visual arts, oil painting, and mixed media/sculpture. Sculpture led me to become interested in making films that, from my outsiders perspective, seemed like creating a moving sculpture. I moved from Houston to New York and got a job working in the art department on a Jim Jarmusch film. That led me to working for AMC, Marvel, and making my own feature. I moved from NYC to Austin to work for an indie production company, and then to LA. I have always needed an outlet to work with my hands, but moving so frequently, into spaces essentially the size of a Texas closet, made it difficult to have the space to create.

In LA, I took a break from film and was working as a candle maker for a well-known candle company. One day I was painting my nails and thinking about what the difference was in the chemical makeup of nail paint versus the acrylics and oils I worked with. Then I thought, why don’t I just make my own. I had no awareness that there was a pretty large indie polish making community, and I wasn’t on social media at the time. A year of testing later and I am making nail polish and concrete candles full time. I am passionate about making products that are not harmful to us or to the earth.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In the beginning, I wasted a lot of product testing and learning how to get the texture and colors that I wanted. I didn’t know where to go to find out how to make nail polish so I ended up emailing random indie makers that I found online who were sometimes helpful with bits and pieces of information but mostly wanted to protect their own formulas from be copied. There isn’t a lot of easily accessible information for people who want to make polish that isn’t a “franken” polish. For that reason I do tutorials on my Instagram and am happy to give helpful resources to anyone who reaches out to me wanting to learn how to make it. Transparency and the sharing of knowledge is important to me, from our ingredients to our process.

Death Valley Nails – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We make vegan, nontoxic, cruelty-free, ten-free nail polish in small batches that is mixed by hand. Ten-free means that our polish is formulated without the ten most harmful chemicals in drug store nail polish: formaldehyde, toluene DBP, camphor, formaldehyde resin, xylene, ethyl tosylamide, parabens, phthalates, or added fragrances. Our polish is also free of ingredients derived from animals. Right now we have over sixty polishes in our collection and growing. We also make waste-free cleaning burning soy concrete candles and are about to release our tenth fragrance. All of our candle vessels are made by us, by hand. I believe that concrete is the new clay and that you can create almost anything with it. Our candle vessels can be made with light, dark, and pink concrete. Because we are waste-free and stamp the labels by hand we can customize candles for any occasion and the vessels can be re-used for a number of things (cups, makeup brush holder, plant vase, etc.).

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I love when my mom sends me photos of her, back home, getting her nails done in a salon using our polish. There is something remarkable about physically doing an artistic process, mixing polish and mixing concrete, and then seeing the finished product out in the world being worn and smelled by people I may or may not know. To me, our products are just another form of storytelling. Finding joy in color and smell is a tangible way that connects many of us.

Pricing:

• Nail polish – $10.00
• 6oz candles – $25
• 16oz candles – $40

Contact Info:

• Website: https://deathvalleynails.com/
• Email: deathvalleynails@gmail.com
• Instagram: @deathvalleynails
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Death-Valley-Nails-961548760701161/?modal=admin_todo_tour

Image Credit:
Jennifer Fox

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