The Loch Ness Monster Likes Makeup Too

This blog is a safe space, so I feel comfortable telling you that I have a problem -- a serious problem -- with buying nail polishes for the name. Like, I will not buy a polish -- even if I like the color -- if I don't like the name, and, if I really like the name of a polish, I will buy it even if I don't really like it/ will never wear it. Half the fun of nail polish collection releases is reading the names of all the new polishes. Themed collections are particular fun. Like, somehow or another I manage to convince myself that I need a particular nail polish because I like the name. Any nail polish brand can name any polish of any color after anything in Game of Thrones and I'll just be like, "take my money." For example, I have a polish that's named after one of my favorite characters on Game of Thrones , and I legitimately felt like I would be letting her down if I didn't buy it. Why? I don't know. I know that she's fictional, but I had to ha...

Game of Thrones Sword Nails There are a lot of swords in Game of Thrones : Needle, Heartsbane, Longclaw, Ice, Oathkeeper, etc. The Iron Throne itself is said to be forged from the swords of the vanquished enemies of Aegon the Conquerer (which is a creative way to get a new chair, if nothing else). So, for this week's episode of Game of Thrones , I created a sword manicure. This design may look complicated, but it's actually quite simple. All you'll need to produce this manicure is nail polish (preferably silver and black) and a set of dotting tools . To start out, I painted two coats of black polish on four of my nails ( Black Out by Sally Hansen ) and two coats of silver on one of my nails ( Silver Dollar by Revlon ). You could also do the reverse of this (four silver nails and one black nail), which I did on my non dominant hand. Silver Dollar is a basic, metallic silver, and Black Out is a regular, creme black polish. I used these polishes because I had them on h...

In honor of the new episode of Game of Thrones that is airing tomorrow, I have decided to continue my series of Game of Thrones inspired manicures. This one was inspired by Jon Snow (aka, the guy with the best hair on television) and House Stark. For this manicure, I used t he same gradient technique that I used to create this Targaryen manicure a few weeks ago . The gradient technique is a simple way to get cool, unique manicures without lots of tools or expertise. If you aren't familiar with gradient techniques, or you didn't read my Targaryen manicure blog , I'll walk you through the steps. 1) Before you start, you'll need a wedge shaped makeup application sponge . You can buy bags of these sponges at drug stores or cosmetic stores. They're very cheap. Using scissors, trim a sponge so that the thick end is roughly the size of your largest nail. 2) After you have your materials ready and have chosen the colors for your gradient, paint  a latex bar...

So, last week I wrote a blog about a Game of Thrones inspired nail look and people seemed to like it, so I decided to do a follow up blog with my Game of Thrones nails for this week. This week's nails were inspired by House Targaryen because I love Daenerys Targaryen and she always looks fierce -- even when she's been walking through the dessert for weeks. I created this nail using a very simple gradient technique . Because House Targaryen's colors are black and red, I did a black and red gradient. Before you start, you'll need a wedge shaped makeup application sponge . You can buy bags of these sponges at drug stores or cosmetic stores. They're very cheap. Using scissors, trim a sponge so that the thick end is the size of your largest nail. To start out, I painted a latex barrier around my nails. If you don't know, latex barriers (also known as the peel off stuff) are very useful for messy nail art -- and gradient nails are messy nail art. Yo...

So, if you've been reading my other blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Game of Thrones and I'm super excited that it's back for season 6. For this week's episode, I decided to do a Night's Watch inspired manicure because I had a feeling (and I was correct) that important things were going to happen at the Wall in this episode. Anyway, I started off with two coats of black polish because, of course, the Night's Watch wear black. I used Sally Hansen's Black Out , but you can use any black polish you have. It doesn't have to be anything special, just basic black. Next, I applied a holographic top coat over four of my nails. I used Butter London Stardust , which has a nice rainbow effect, but any holo top coat will do. The rainbow holo reminds me a bit of the way light reflects on snow, which seemed very appropriate for Jon Snow. (Who is definitely my favorite reanimated corpse). For my accent nail, I just put a coat of Butter...