Manicure Mondays – How To Train Your Dragon PLUS Winner Announced!

Happy Monday, everybody!

Look at those eyes!

As you may have gotten from our review, Kizerezik and I saw “How to Train Your Dragon 2” last week, and we both loved it. So, naturally, this week’s installment of Manicure Mondays had to feature everyone’s favourite Night Fury, Toothless!

Let’s get started with a base coat of white.

BAM.

From there, paint your middle and ring fingers yellow from the centre of the nail to the tip, and then start to draw out your line art with a black nail polish pen.

Or you can finish the line are and brush the yellow inside of the eye if you’ve got a very steady hand.

Fill in the black and clear coat.

He’s looking at you. With his EYES.

Now, on to the thumb, which we’ve styled after Toothless’s tail flag. Paint the whole nail red and clear coat it once it’s dry. Fun fact: This top coat is the worst I’ve ever used!

The clear coat helps the white pen to show, and with that stupid thing, every little bit helps.

Bust out that white nail polish pen and prepare to exercise your patience because you’ll need a couple of coats to really get this to pop.

Five million coats later…

Clear coat again and you’re done!

See how the white on the thumb is already bleeding? That’s that stupid top coat crap.

And now for what a good number of folks have been waiting for:

MacBook not included. And yes, that is me working on this post. So meta!

And the winner is

@winonapatt !

Congratulations, Winona! We’ll send out your prize just as soon as you PM us your mailing address via FB or Twitter! (We’ll be on the lookout for it!)

 

Thanks to all of who entered, all of our fans, old and new, and keep sharing TFP with your friends! We’ll have our next giveaway at 250 FB likes, so help us get there together!

See you at the next Manicure Mondays!

 

 

Manicure Mondays – Tardis Tips PLUS a Giveaway!

In anticipation of the next series of Doctor Who, we… Well, we just can’t wait.

So it’s time for Tardis Tips!

One day, I’ll actually remember to clean up the cuticles before I take these pictures. One day.

It’s like French tips… But completely unlike French tips.

Manicure Mondays – Wolverine!

After a long hiatus– and because I managed to break every single nail repeatedly for several weeks Ina row– Manicure Mondays are back at TFP!

This week, we do a little mutant magic and have a set of nails inspired by probably the best known of the X-Men, Wolverine!

Modeled after his classic blue and yellow costume, of course.

Start out with a nice bright yellow, painting every nail the same colour.

Now, for the designs, you really have got quite a few options here. And all that you’ll need is a blue nail polish pen.

For the first nail, a simple set of three thin lines at an angle to represent his trademarked adamantium claws.

For the second, a set of three triangular marks like those on his costume over the obliques.

Fill them in…

For the third, a double-walled yellow knockout of a triangle surrounded by a flood of blue, like it looks coming up and over his collarbones.

For the fourth, the pinkie, an easy set of simple, tapered lines, like the ones that run down the front of his torso.

And, last, the thumb, with artwork inspired by his mask.

Of course, you don’t have to stick to these five designs by any means. Throw in an “X” symbol in a circle. Reverse some of the colours. Use the brown and burnt orange palette or black and yellow or black and grey to reflect some of his other costumes. Just have fun with it!

Let us know if you try any of our Monday Manicures for yourselves! We love comments and unique takes on our stuff!

And, of course, suggestions for future Manicure Mondays are always welcomed.

Until next week!

TFP Manicure Mondays! – “Dragon Scales”

Happy Monday!

 

Game of Thrones Season 4 starts on April 6th, which is creeping up on us pretty fast (HOORAY!). So, what better way to celebrate than by…

Um…

Painting your nails like dragon skin? PAINTING YOUR NAILS LIKE DRAGON SKIN!

Enthusiasm!

No, but for realsies. It’s Manicure Monday and I felt like lighting some shit on FIRE this weekend, so I’m hoping these nails will give me dominion over fire and dragons and then the world of man!

Because that’s a completely realistic expectation.

So, let’s start. First, paint a base layer of a nail bed or flesh tone-ish colour. Something fairly light and natural-looking.

Or, really, whatever light colour you have on hand, because that’s what I did!

Then paint a nice dark green, dark brown, or deep red colour. Nothing with sparkles. Not yet.

Obviously, I went with green. Again, ’tis what I had already.

Now, this part takes a teensy bit of artistic ability… But really, the leat amount you could possibly ever need. While the second layer of polish is still wet, take a toothpick or bobby pin or a round-tiped tool of some kind and start drawing out your scales, one “V” shape at a time.Be sure to clean off whatever tool you used often to prevent unnecessary scratches and smearing.

That’s how I did this, no matter how much it looks like I just zigzagged this shit.

When you’re finished, it should look something like this…

Or hopefully better because I don’t know what happened to me towards the end here.

Now, we’re going to add some shimmery stuff here, so that it gives the nail a bit more depth and snazziness. I used a translucent polish that looks gray until it hits the sunlight; then it gives a purple colour, which is a pretty nifty effect. Use a fine brush to get it over the “scales” only, or you can just apply one thin layer over the whole nail if you’ve given up. if you want the nail shimmer to appear to be a bit more subtle.

You can’t prove that I gave up! …I’m so tired.

Now give it a top coat, and ignore the fact that I changed nails for this picture. On my thumb… I had applied the top coat while the shimmer was still a little bit not dry, and then it all kind of smushed together.

It actually gave a pretty cool effect on the other nail, but A.) I couldn’t repeat the results and B.) It was super duper NOT a fucking dragon-y nail. So, I present you with my middle finger! …Wait.

And then you clean up and that’s pretty much it. So, it is a little bit tricky, but once you get your first good nail, the rest become way easier. You can start drawing your scales from the tip or from the root of the nail. I found that scales drawn from the tip tended to become uneven towards the root, but nails started from the root would stay relatively even.

Let us know if you try it for yourselves, and feel free to post your results!

Enthusiasm!

See you next time!