Originally Posted by
limitles
Also, I assume that if I overdo the nail polish I can cut that down as well?
I guess by overdo, what I meant was make sure you aren't painting over any existing, undamaged areas. That makes the touchup look like shit. Essentially, stay inside the lines. You're using a single-stage touchup (I assume), and the car has a basecoat/clearcoat finish. When you're touching it up you're basically camouflaging the damage so you don't notice is as much. It's extremely tough to exactly match touchup to factory paint, even if you're using OEM touchup paint (variances in color mixing, etc.) So your goal is to camouflage it as best you can, without making it look obvious that you did a shitty touchup job.
Some rubbing compounds do a good job of knocking excess paint down, others don't. You'd have better luck with some 2000 grit wet/dry sandpaper (wet, obv) and then use rubbing compound as a second step. If you leave runs and/or drips, you did it wrong.
I'll defer to OSA on the application of fingernail polish part.