Manicure Mondays! Inspired by Darryl Dixon

Howdy, nerds!

 

I was really jazzed up about the premiere of TWD Season 5 last night, and /i found myself with both some free time and nails of a reasonable length! So let’s check out what the heck I’ve done to myself this time.

Paint each fingernail but that of your ring finger white, and paint the ring finger’s nail green, grey, or something that looks less than fresh.

 

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Manicure Mondays – Galaxy Nails

Howdy, nerds!

It’s been a little while, but as summer winds down, and Wizard World approaches, nerd news will be
Kicking up again soon.

Today, in our quest to be nerdy and girly, we bring you another fandom-based nail art tutorial.

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!

Manicure Mondays! – Make Me Laugh, Clownfish

Happy Monday!

 

This week’s nail art inspiration comes from Disney/Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” which, I’m always shocked to find out, a lot of people still haven’t seen.

Hey, Mister Grumpy Gills… You’re fuckin’ up.

If you haven’t seen this adorable and heartwarming and really, and truly, hilarious movie, you need to stop whatever you’re doing– WHATEVER you’re doing, I don’t care, you need to go and watch it right now.

Because it’s so inspirational that I painted my nails. And that’s a metaphor for something, I’m sure. And metaphors are important.

And I’ll spare you a Rachel Berry gif.

On to the nails!

Apply your base coats of colours. I did an accent nail, so you’ll notice a bunch of orange and then one blue. We’ll come back to the blue one later.

I’m totally gonna change the shade of blue later, too. Just you watch.

So, you start with your orange. I only had one orange on hand, and little did I realise that it was one of those “Sugar Coat” or whatever fuzzy, textures tints. Ah, well. I’m not fussy, so we shall work with what we’ve got.

Sometimes, being economical is a part of being a FanGirl.

Now, bust out your white nail polish pen and draw yourself some big, fat, squiggly lines. Make ’em chunky and uneven.

Like nature.

Then, once that’s dry, use your black nail polish pen to follow your egdes and outlines them.

Done and done. And really sloppily done.

Clear coat and clean up and you’ve got your Marlon/Nemo/Clownfish nails!

Over on the accent nail, ignore the fact that I had laid down a blue base coat and paint it a gold or yellow instead.

I was gonna do bubbles but then I had a better idea.

Paint your sides blue, leaving a gold/yellow stripe that tapers off towards the tip of the nail still visible in the centre.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Using your black paint pen once again, trace the edges between your yellow and your black.

Almost looks a little Wolverine-y… Hm. Note to self about future Manicure Mondays.

 

Clear coat that nail and clean up and you’re done!

Fish are friends, not food. Also, same with people. Please don’t eat me.

You now have four clownfish nails and your accent nail, if you’ve chosen to do one, is a blue tang AKA Dory!

Like all of my relationships.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our tutorial and that you were able to follow my slightly muddled instructions this week!

Haha, it’s funny because it’s true!

Later, Nerds!

 

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!

TFP Manicure Mondays! – “Eternal Winter”

Howdy, nerds and nerdettes! Welcome to the first installment of Manicure Mondays! If you follow us on Facebook already, and you totally should, you’ve probably already seen some of the styles we’ve done, but today’s is different. Today’s manicure includes a tutorial so you can achieve the same results at home!

Also congrats to Frozen on winning Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards last night!

 

This icy design is inspired by the Disney movie “Frozen” and the Eternal Winter that those of us in the American MidWest are also currently experiencing. This manicure is, frankly, fucking adorable, and you can achieve the same results by following the steps below.

First, paint your base layer. I went with a very pale blue-gray for all but the accent nail. For that one, which is only on one hand for me rather than both because screw trying to do detail work with my left hand, I picked a much deeper shade of blue to contrast with the white I’ll be using later.

And make claw hands, I guess.

After that, I used a semi-opaque, sparkly turqoise and painted about 1/3 up from the cuticle (and please ignore how bad they look, since I am backwards and clean up my cuticles after I finish painting my nails).

It looks gloopy now, but I promise that it gets better.

Use a Q-Tip or your finger to smudge it around and give it a faded effect towards the middle of the nail.

I do think that the tip of your finger will work better, but the trade off is more clean-up time.

Paint about 1/3 of the nail from the tip inwards with an opaque white polish.

Again, gloop-tastic.

Repeat the smudging, towards the centre of the nail. It should look like this.

Very rough right now, but give it a clear coat and you’re golden.

Use a sparkly clear coat to give the illusion of frost on all nails except the accent nail, and then clear coat all of them, including the accent nail.

To create the snowflake, use a white nail polish pen on top of your dried top coat in this pattern:

Very simple steps, very pretty results.

Give the nail one more layer of top coat after the white pen polish dries.

Ta-Da!

If it’s not shiny enough for you, you can apply more clear sparkles, but be sure to give it a top coat when you’re done. Clean up any fuck-ups with a cotton pad and some acetone, and you’re done!

Pretty darn simple manicure with very cute results, so hopefully you can let the little things like this remind you why you don’t want to set your house on fire just to feel a moment’s warmth!

But really, winter, I’d like to feel my toes again.

Until next week, when we’ll be doing an homage to “Game of Thrones,” the exact opposite of “Frozen!”

Be sure to LIKE us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and let us know in the comments how your nails turn out!