versatile blogger award

Liebster Award (and a couple of others too!)

Thank you very much to Cute Berry who has nominated me for the Liebster Award! I absolutely love her blog so it was a great compliment to receive the award from her. Plus she sent the nomination on the day when I re-sprained my ankle so it really cheered me up when I saw it!
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I have also recently been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award and the One Lovely Blog Award (both for the second time) by the Nailinator and Brijit’s Digits, so thank you very much for those nominations too! Again, both bloggers I really admire for their gorgeous designs! I’m so excited that people actually read this blog let alone like it enough to nominate me for awards!

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I’m going to focus on the Liebster Award for this post as I’ve already received the other two awards and posted about them.

Here are the rules:
The recipient must post 11 fun facts about themselves
The recipient must also answer 11 questions created by the award giver
The recipient must give the award to 11 new bloggers with less than 200 followers and post 11 questions for them to answer
These 11 bloggers must be told they have been given the award
They will in turn pass the award on to 11 new bloggers of their choice (no tagging back the award giver)

Here are my fun facts:

1. I love running but have recently had several injuries and haven’t been able to run. 😣
2. The place I most want to travel to is Morocco.
3. I like drinking tea – all kinds of tea (except chamomile)
4. Using the telephone makes me nervous.
5. My favourite piece of jewellery is a white gold necklace my mum gave me when I graduated from my first degree.
6. I can’t sing but rather enjoyed going to karaoke when I lived in Japan.
7. My favourite place I’ve ever visited is the state of Oaxaca in Mexico.
8. I love Italian food.
9. My best ever Halloween costume was Poison Ivy.
10. I have tons of stuff and I’m a bit of a hoarder, but I can’t think of a single thing i own that I couldn’t live without…
11. I enjoy watching TV series but I’m not a big movie person. Short attention span.

Here are the questions that Cute Berry gave me:

What is your favourite nail polish brand?
I don’t really have a favourite. I love OPI’s range of colours but it’s just so expensive here in Spain. I also love Nails Inc and have a lot of their polishes.

What is the worst nail polish mishap you’ve ever had?
Nothing very dramatic. Mainly mishaps of the spending hours and hours on a design only to fall asleep before its fully dried and wake up the next day with a sludgy mess on one or two nails variety.

When you break a nail, do you cut them all short or do you keep them long?
It depends how bad the break is. I like my nails to look even, so usually I’d cut them all down.

What nail trends do you like?
I like all these textured nails – caviar, leather, velvet etc although I haven’t really tried any of them yet – they’re all on my to do list, but I’m waiting for the right occasion.

What is your favourite nail art design to do on your own nails?
I love sponging and gradients – they always make me feel happy! I’ve recently discovered water marbling and will be doing a lot more of it in future!

Do you wear unusual nail colours to work?
Yes, I do! I’m an ESL teacher and the kids, teens and adults i teach all love my nails – they make a great conversation topic in my teenage girls’ classes!

Which celebrity manicure do you like the most?
I’m not that interested in celebrity fashion and beauty, but even I can’t ignore Lady Gaga and how she pushes fashion and beauty to extremes, including her nail art.

Who is your favourite nail polish blogger, or your biggest nail polish inspiration?
This has to be the most difficult question! there are so many bloggers I love out there, but I’d have to list Polish Alcoholic as one of my all time favourites – there’s very little that she does to her nails that doesn’t make me go “wow!”

What nail trend do you refuse to try?
I don’t think I’d ever try the crazy 3D Japanese nail art (despite living in Japan for 3 years). I’m a practical kinda girl and all those jewels and bits of fimo and plastic toys dangling from your nails can’t make day to day tasks like writing or doing the washing up easy..

Show a picture of your best manicure ever!
Difficult to know what to pick here! This one got a lot of likes and I was really pleased with the result:

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Would you like to do nails professionally or own a salon?
No. This is just a hobby for me – it’s relaxing and if I had to do it as a job it would lose that destressing factor which I enjoy so much.

My questions for my nominees:
1. What nail polish makes you feel happiest?
2. What products do you use to take care of you nails and hands?
3. What would you prefer to spend your money on: one high quality brand nail polish or several cheap polishes?
4. Do you ever do nail art or manicures on your friends’ nails, or only ever on your own?
5. Are there any techniques you really want to try but haven’t done yet?
6. How do you photograph your manicures?
7. What has been your greatest nail achievement so far?
8. How often do you change your manicure?
9. Do you paint your toenails too?
10. What nail art tool is your favourite to use?
11. What would you wear on your nails if you were having a winter wedding in the snow? (serious question – I need inspiration!)

My nominations:

Brijit’s Digits

10 Nice Nails

A Sparkling Finish

Daily Charme

The Bubbly Brunette

Confessions of a Swatchaholic

Varnished Reputation

Nail Polish Galore

Mental for Polish

Nail Art for Funn

Sarah Speaks

Versatile Blogger Award

I was so excited when I saw that the extremely talented Eeeek! Nail Polish! nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award. It’s the first award I’ve received and to receive it from someone whose nail art I admire so much makes it really special – thanks!

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The rules are as follows:
Nominate 15 fellow bloggers who are relatively new to blogging
Let them know that you have nominated them.
Share 7 random facts about yourself.
Thank the blogger who has nominated you.
Add the Versatile Blogger Award picture to your post.

Well at first I thought it would be easy to choose 15 other bloggers but it turned out that Brijit Elouise who was also nominated by Eeeek! At the same time as me has very similar taste in blogs and had beaten me to it and nominated almost exactly the same list of blogs as I had planned to!

Now I’m sure no one would mind being nominated twice, but I like the idea that these kinds of awards are about spreading the love around so I wanted to choose people who hadn’t already been nominated. So some of the blogs I’ve chosen are ones I’ve been following for a while but there are also some new ones in there which I’ve only discovered very recently. Most of them have been blogging for less than a year (a couple of them just over a year, but I didn’t think that was too much like cheating…)

So here are my nominations:

Midn1ght Butterfly

Nail Chark

Creepmynails

Les Ongles de Lucie

Lekker Lacquer

Naillion

Erin’s Enamel

The Lacquer Laboratory

26 Nails

Fatjunkie

Spellbound Nails

Kokoro Nails

Lefty Nails

The Polish Fox

Nail Notes

And here are seven facts about me:

1. I’ve lived in 5 different countries so far – the UK (where I’m from), Greece, Mexico, Japan and currently Spain.

2. My greatest love in life is travel.

3. I’m a cat person. Although I don’t have any cats of my own, I’m always happy when I go back to visit my mum’s cats or friends’ cats. I even went to a cat cafe a couple of times when I lived in Japan.

4. I’m vegetarian and have been for more than half my life.

5. I’m getting married in an ice hotel in Finland in January and I’m very excited about it!

6. I’m terrified of spiders.

7. I’m an obsessive planner and enjoy planning things (especially trips and holidays) almost as much as I enjoy actually doing them!

So thanks again for the award and I hope you’ll check out some of the blogs I’ve nominated if you don’t already know them.