Ariadne and The Minotaur Nail Art

A little while ago Shades of Phoenix announced they were having a nail art challenge on Instagram. I don't usually take part in nail art challenges because the competition is CRAZY, but since this one had the theme of Greek mythology, I couldn't possibly resist.

Mythology is my jam

I decided to attempt to portray the story of Theseus and the Minotaur - particularly the part where Ariadne saves Theseus from certain death, and gets little to no credit for it. If you haven't heard the story before, here's a quick and dirty version.

Lady of The Lake - A England Review

One of the things I love the most about mythology and folklore is the way they illustrate just how pervasive and incredibly old a lot of archetypes and tropes are, particularly in relation to women. I know rather more than I really should about all sorts of different folklore, and one of my favourite things to do with this knowledge is to find patterns that can be seen across different cultures. I have a confession to make though - I've always shied away from the Arthurian legends. They're just so....messy. The lore is made up of poems, and stories, and songs, and all of them have so many different versions that it's really more like a genre than a narrative as such. I can rattle off Swedish lore about women who turn into birch trees, but until recently I couldn't have confidently named more than three characters in the Arthurian stories, and one of them was King Arthur. Which is a bit sad, considering my entire family on my mothers side are so utterly English it's hard to believe they're real.

However, once I came across marvelous indie nail polish maker A England, I decided I was obviously going to have to do some research in order to do these gorgeous polishes justice. I know you all like the pretty pictures, but I know you like the wordy parts as well, and I would feel bad showing something so lovely and not knowing anything about the characters they are named for.

So today, we're going to learn about The Lady of The Lake, in between pictures of this stunningly soft lavender holographic polish. If you're just here to find out whether it's any good or not, the TL:DR version is that is very, very good. It's beautiful, easy to use, and wears for ages, and you should totally go and buy it.