Why am I Such a Misfit?

I find that spirit week sometimes inspires some great, and odd nail art. Today was based on the Island of Misfit Toys, and the criteria was to just be mismatched. I took this quite to heart, and my dad this morning (not knowing it was spirit week) thought I had gone off my rocker!

I used:

Maybelline Onyx Rush

Pure Ice Platinum Basecoat

NYC Sidewalkers

Essie We're in it Together

Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac

Julep Clara

Julep Coco

Revlon Infamous

Stripe Rite Green, Pink, and Yellow

I pretty much just included designs from all the elements in my outfit. This post taught me that I need to figure out another way to take ootd pics without my brother, since all of his turned out blurry. So became the weird leg-selfies. If you want to see my doll make-up you can check it out on my Instagram, @haleighbug333. I only took a picture of that right before washing it off sadly, so it's a little smeared. Expect more spirit filled nails from me this week!

Oh! I included a video of the misfit toys themselves in case you also had the song stuck in your head :)

Christmas Coco

So originally I only intended to take the first month of my senior year away from blogging to really focus… but then it turned into a whole semester. The longer I stayed away the harder I found to get back into it. I wanted to come back when my year bloggiversary was, but I had to work on my school's premier gala. Then about halfway through November I figured I would just come back after my ORLA was done, this huge assignment that all the seniors have to do where you basically write fourteen essays on one book. It was no bueno. So now as of today it's been four months since my last post, and high time I get back into it. I need more than just school and Netflix to stay sane lol. So today while I was deciding what I should paint, I was inspired by my mug of hot coco. I've got a sore throat and it really helps. I started playing around with the colors and patterns on it and really liked this one.

The trees on my cup have these little starbursts patterns, so I did this kinda loose interpretation of them. I think after this I'm going to end up making another cup.

I used:
Revlon Posh
Pure Ice Platinum White

I hope you are all keeping warm this winter and have a hot beverage of your own!

Next Stop: the Twilight Zone

Do do do do do do do do. The Twilight Zone is a classic example of science fiction, starting in 1959. The episodes that stand out the most to me is the one where a lady finds a stopwatch that freezes time, and the one where the English language changes so everybody is saying that Wednesday means a cat and dinosaur means lunch, but one guy isn't apart if the trasition so he's just left extreamly confused. 

At first I was going to do a skittle manicure of the different symbols from the intro, but the spiral was just so much fun to draw that I ended up doing all of my nails like that. I used a white gel pen to draw the spiral, it's much more precise than a nail art brush, and you can wipe it off if you mess up.

I used:

Maybelline Onyx Rush

White Gel Pen

Tokyo

I just couldn't get the manicure I wanted to do for Tokyo right before I had to leave, but here's the inlinks!

Red for Luck

Hey guys! I'm coming at you from the opposite side of the country, I'm in New York! My little brother is participating in a tournament in Cooper's Town, and I got to tag along. We're finally settled in to the rental house we're sharing with the rest of the team. I did all of my posts right before I left, so I'm editing and writing from my iPad. The only drawback so far is that I can't label the posts.

I decided on a simple look for Beijing, just a red and gold gradient. Red is often used as a symbol for good luck in China, it's everywhere on the New Year. 

I used:

Revlon Red

Maybelline Bold Gold

This is the last night to enter the giveaway, so if you haven't yet go now, there's a link in the side bar! If you want to see what I'm up to in New York you can follow me on Instagram, I'll try to post some cool pictures besides selfies. The other day I was at Niagara Falls and totally spaced taking any pictures!

I don't know how to auto-post.

Big apologizes to all my guest posters for the past week, apparently the way I thought you auto-post is not the way you auto-post. This is the first I've been able to get on the web, I'm at my grandparents house for the day then heading home tomorrow. I've posted them all now with the respective dates, I didn't see a reason as to waste perfectly fantastic guest posts. Thank you again to Dina, Charlie, Laura, Emily, and the other Laura for helping me out. Hopefully next time I'll have things figured out correctly :)

Laura is Guilty as Charged

So this is a little different for a guest post, I'm writing it, but the nail art wasn't done by me. It was done by my friend Laura, who I've mentioned before. She spent the night awhile ago and wanted to join in on my nail art stuff. So we walked to Walmart and bought some fake nails for her to play with. I also scooped up some new polishes which I will be sharing soon. Turns out what Laura can do on a huge canvas she can also do on nails. Who knew?

She loves Adventure Time, so she did some based on these ones at Chalkboard Nails. She used acrylic paint for these, and Essie In the Cab-ana for Beemo. 

 I have no idea where she drew inspiration from for these, I think she had a reference picture on my iPad. If you know where they're from please link to it in the comments. I also don't know what polishes she used, I'm guessing acrylic paint, but the purple might have been Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac.

These are also a mystery, I believe this was her own design. I know she used Julep Rebel  and Maybelline Onyx Rush for these. I went to sleep and when I woke up she had done like six sets. I didn't get to take pictures of all of them before she left, but the others were a Union Jack, pokeballs with Pikachu, some kind of drippy thing, and a silver black bubble thing. She's like a little nail art elf.

Birds of a feather flock to...Orly fOWL Play!

Hello readers of Guilty As Charged!  It's such an honor to be a guest of the lovely & talented Haleigh in her absence.  This is actually my first-ever guest post, so it's extra exciting for me! :-)

My original mani plan ended up having an element that just would not work, so after going back over the ideas I'd had for this post, I decided this one was much more fitting anyways, since Haleigh's blog features such great nail art.  I hope mine is worthy of being here!  I give you Fowl Play:

I cannot even tell you how excited I was to find out that OPI's Merry Midnight has an almost exact dupe.  I wanted MM after seeing only one photo of it, but when I discovered it was going for upwards of $25 on eBay, I was quite sad.  Then along came a comparison post (or several!) with Orly Fowl Play, and with some trepidation, I headed back over to eBay.  This time however, I was overjoyed to find I could get my dream polish for only $5!!!  Mmmm...just feast your eyes on that vampy purple, flaky, sparkly, rainbow-y goodness!

Being a huge fan of plays on words, I had a "liiiightbulb" moment and realized that freehanding an owl as an accent nail would mean I could entitle my post Fowl Play! ;-) hehehe

Isn't he a cute 'lil guy?!  :-D  I think he needs a name...any ideas?  

Mr. Unnamed Owl is composed of Zoya Reagan, Sinful Colors My Buoyfriend, Zoya Arizona, and just any old black & white for the eyes, against a background of OPI Can't Find My Czechbook.  The color combos are truly endless, which is super fun!  :-)  I don't actually have a nail art brush set, but a detail brush from my roommate's set of craft brushes (from Wal-Mart) worked just fine.  I also used a pin - yes, A PIN - for the beak & the dots on the owl's body, as well as the black pupil & the teensy, infinitesimal, tiny, microscopic white glint on the pupil.

In case you were curious, I did end up doing my right hand because I really want to be able to wear this mani for a few days, so I had to at least attempt to make my hands match!  He's a tad...deformed, but still loveable. :-)  OH!  I almost forgot - the branches are China Glaze Ingrid.  Pretty much the only brown I have in my stash.  And of course, it has a fine gold shimmer in it, so my apologies, but Houston, we have a sparkly branch!

The application of all these polishes was really great.  Ok, yes, I used most of them in minute quantities, but I was glad to see they were all very opaque as there was a lot of layering going on!  This is only two coats of Fowl Play.  I think I would classify it as a couple-shades-lighter-than-eggplant purple jelly base, but it's highly pigmented, so the coverage is great - as is the drying time.  I've had SO many issues with bubbling cremes lately, so this was quite a welcome relief.

If any of you have read my blog, you know I'm very long-winded, and I'm sure I could continue on about this mani, but I feel I've kept you long enough, especially since this is a guest post!  I leave you with one final shot:

Thank you so much for reading!  I hope this inspires you to be creative & boldly go where you've never gone before...on your nails. ;-)  Or in life.

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You can check out Emily's blog here!

Little Laura Loves is Guilty as Charged

Hello readers of Guilty As Charged,

I'm Laura from littlelauraloves.blogspot.com

If you haven't checked out my blog already please do :)

I was so excited when Haleigh emailed me and asked me to do a Guest post, I am such a fan of her nail art and am inspired by it so much :)

My mani today is inspired by Darling Nails;

http://darlingnails.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/blue-and-white-wares.html
Please check out her page too.

I love gradients and fine detail nail art so I was really excited to try this one.

Pocket Money Polish is Guilty as Charged

Hello! 
Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes here - so happy to be visiting you today and sharing this mani. I apologise for the short stature of my nails but I have been playing a lot of guitar recently and the nails were getting in the way - I also had a bit of flaking so it will be nice to grow them all fresh and new.

I recently grabbed a bargain bundle from a blog sale - 5 kikos for just £8, it is well worth keeping an eye out for polishes on sales as a lot of the polishes bloggers sell have barely been touched. Today I have one of those kikos (360 'Strawberry Pink') which applies fairly evenly but needs a good 2-3 coats to be fully opaque. It does read coral/orangey under a lot of lights but in natural light it is a very fruity pink (sorry the pictures make it look SO MUCH more orange). 

To jazz this up I started by applying some striping tape and a quick coat of Barrym Gelly Blue Grape (a super yummy blue) to my thumb and  ring fingers. The great things about these vertical stripes is that they do make your nails look longer. For clean lines you really do need to pull the tape up quickly and cleanly - I now use an old pair of tweezers to get a good hold. On the remaining fingers I decided to go a bit jewel crazy with some blue and silver/clear stones from a nail art wheel - tiny bit of clear polish and an orange stick to wrestle them into place. 

The thing I like about this particular mani is it doesn't require any skill and therefore can be done easily on both hands. The pink pops and the gems sparkle. I think the diamond shape on my middle finger is the most stones I have ever worn on one nail. I was told for this guest post to go crazy and I think this is definitely a step out of my comfort zone in terms of blingy-ness... what do you think? Does this work for you, what's the most gems you've ever worn on one nail? What bargains have you found on blog sales? Drop me a comment and let me know! 

Big thanks for having me today - I hope you'll pop over to my blog and see what I am up to, there is usually something going on whether it's my indie polishes, stamping or crazy bargain hauls. 

_______________________________________________________

You can check out Charlie's blog here!

Secretary's Nail Art is Guilty as Charged

Hi I am Dina from Secretary's Nail Art (http://secretarysnailart.blogspot.co.uk/)

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to make a guest post. I hope you're having a great vacation. Summer is great. Butterflies in the air, the smell of flowers ...

Perfect. 

So I felt the need to do a butterfly manicure. 

I had just the thing for it. A fimo wheel that I picked up at Poundland, in Manchester. Full of butterflies in different colors. I decided to use Accessorize - Dragonfly. The glitter removal on this one is a pain, but it looks really good, and I have somehow ...kinda... fell in love with this polish.
For full opacity this polish needed three coats. I used Sinful Colors - Exotic Green for the accent, also this was three coats. 

Feel free to jump over to my blog, for more posts. Hope you are all having a great Summer. 

In Soviet Russia, Nail Paint YOU

I've spent all day packing and getting things together for my trip. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything! I'll add in the nail art for this post later, I didn't schedual my time very well. I wanted the inlinks to be open though since we're getting towards the end of the challenge. So now I'm handing over the reigns to my wonderful guest posters, fingers crossed I did the auto-post thing right. I'm off to Utah, see you guys in a week!

Greetings Earthlings

*in which Haleigh still avoids doing galaxy nails*

Space! One of my favorite things. Space absolutely fascinates me. If being an astronaut didn't require so much math I totally would have wanted to be one. Weightlessness? Getting to see Earth from an arial view? Yes please! I even have an app from howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com on my phone. Space is wicked cool.

I am a firm believer of us not being alone. The universe is so spacious (hehe space pun), I'm sure that theres plenty of planets in the Goldilocks Zone of their sun. They may not be small and green, but hopefully they would still come in peace! I used new nail art brushes from Born Pretty that I am in love with, they're sooo much better than the ones I bought from Amazon. Great for small details and letter writing.

I used:

Maybelline Onyx Rush

Revlon Posh

Revlon First Class

Revlon Red

NYC Sidewalkers

NYC French Tip White

Julep  Rebel

I'm not ashamed to admit that while I was wearing these I occasionally made spaceship sounds while texting. It looked like a spaceship flying over my keyboard and I am an inner five year old.

Mark of Athena

Athens! The city where the Parthenon perches atop the Acropolis! Since I'm and art nerd you know I can't help put put some art history in here, so skip over this to the nail art if it doesn't interest you :). The city of Athens was named after the Greek goddess Athena, as many people know. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and military tactics. She was also an eternal maiden, meaning she remained a virgin. When she had children they were literally a brain child, they came out of her head (like how she came out of Zeus's head) as a gift to the men she admired. This earned her the name Athena Parthenos: Virgin Athena. The Athenians held modesty and virginity as important traits in a woman, so this is why they not only named their city after her (which in mythology was a scorn on Poseidon and is why Poseidon and Athena hate each other) but the Parthenon gets it's name from her too. It is a temple to her, after all. The Parthenon used to have a large marble and gold gilded statue of Athena, but it was stolen by the Romans and lost forever. In mythology it is called the Mark of Athena, and is considered when the power of the west shifted from the Greeks to the Romans. It is said that Athena in her Greek and Roman form (Minerva) would task her demigod children with finding her lost mark to regain her powers (the Romans had made her much less powerful and admired). They always ended up dying in some way or getting lost forever, because what's a Greek Tragedy without the tragedy? Another symbol for Athena was the owl, characterized for it's wisdom. So that is what I have painted on my nails.

This owl was actually inspired by the sweater made by Evelina Barry, one of my favorite Youtubers. You can check out her diy video here.

I used:

Maybelline Onyx Rush

Sally Hansen Brisk Blue

Sally Hansen Cobalt Blue 

Essie In  the Cab-ana

Venique Rolling Tides

Colossal

So my brother went to my grandparent's cabin (same place I'm going next week)... and took my camera with him. Which kinda makes it hard to run a nail art blog. But now he's back, and I yet again have access to a camera. So it's time to get caught up with things!

I used a stamping plate from Wistonia to get the colosseum nails, I'lll be posting more on those later. I chose to keep it really simple, with just black and gold colors. I also like having it traveling from one nail to the next, I'll have to do that with more stamps.

I used:

Maybelline Onyx Rush

Maybelline Bold Gold

W114

German Montana

Today we visit Berlin, another city that is high on my places-to-go list. I was inspired by the end-to-end graffiti on the Berlin Wall for my nail art look.

I tried my hand at making a graffitiesque style. I think I could definitely use some practice, the design in theory has a lot of potential.

I used:

Sally Hansen Brisk Blue

Clair's Black and White Nail Art Pens

Essie In the Cab-ana

Acrylic Paint

Don't forget about the giveaway here!

y=-(sin(x^(1.7/6)+4)+(1/x))+10

Whee moar challenges! I swear I'll finish them all. Someday. Possibly.

This new challenge is I <3 Nerds, which I'm totally psyched for because I am a huge nerd. Today's topic isn't my favorite though. Math xP. My absolute worst subject. I guess it at least makes some pretty cute nail art!

I used:

Pure Ice Magic Platinum Base Coat

Clair's Black, Pink, and Blue Nail Art Pens

Anybody know the origins of this post's title? WITHOUT Googleing it?

Sunshine Award ☀

Hi guys! Today I have been nominated for the Sunshine award by My Adventures in Nail Art. She has some really great freehand work (and the best photos, like, ever). I would highly suggest checking out her blog here!

These are the rules for the Sunshine Award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you

2. Post the award logo on your blog

3. Share 7 facts about yourself

4. Nominate 5 or more other blogs that inspire you

Ok sooo seven facts:

1. I used to want to be an Egyptologist.

2. My favorite book genre is Sci-Fi

3. I have a functioning antique rotary phone on my desk. It's gold and has a castle on the wheel.

4. I named my dog after Prince Eric's dog from the Little Mermaid. (Max)

5. If I were to gain a billion dollars right now I would use it to explore space.

6. If I were to be a fairy tale creature I'd want to be a mermaid.

7. My favorite magazines are Readers Digest, National Geographic, and Glamour.

I nominate:

One Nail to Rule Them All- Alice does really great detail work, and she created the fantastic Seven Sins Challenge!

Manicurator- Victorias designs are allways pristine and well-executed.

Varnished Valkyrie- These girl's not onky have some rad nails, but a wicked sense of humor too.

Chalkboard Nails- Sarah's gradients are to-die-for *swoon*

Work Play Polish- You have to check out her Mani Cave!

Thanks again to My Adventures in Nail Art for the nomination!

I'm Looking for a Blonde in a Union Jack.

A specific one, mind, I din't just wake up this morning with a craving.

My friend Jessica is currently back home in England, not in London though. She's from Nottingham. I asked her to bring me back the crown jewels, but since she's not willing to commit theft I settled for some chocolate Penguins instead. 

I used:

Pure Ice Platinum White Magic Basecoat

Revlon Red

Clair's Blue Nail Art Pen

Blick White Acrylic Paint

Don't forget to enter the giveaway!