Blogger Nominations- The Verstile Blogger and The Liebster Award

Over the past couple of months I've been nominated for both the Versatile Blogger and the Liebster Award but kept forgetting to do them so I'm sorry this is going to be a fairly large post.

Rules:

1) Thank the person who nominated you

2) Include a link to their blog

3) Select 15 new blogs/bloggers that you've recently discovered or follow regularly

4) Nominate those bloggers for a Versatile Blogger Award, leave a link to their page and let them know they have been nominated

5) Tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself


I was nominated by Jayna over at the Sequinned Nail for the versatile blogger, thanks Jayna :).
7 facts about me: 
1) I can sing and play the clarinet
2) Before university I lived in Australia for a year and worked on a racing horse stud farm
3) I am really short, 5'2" which is really irritating sometimes
4) I studied Biology at university
5) I really want a pet Degu (shown to the right)
6) I love to read and my favourite book is Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
7) I do ballroom and latin dancing competitively (there's a video of me dancing at the bottom of this post)

Rules
1. You must nominate 11 other bloggers, all with fewer than 200 followers, and you must notify them of your nomination.
2. You must answer 11 questions given to you by the blogger who nominated you.
3. You must give your nominees 11 questions to answer.
4. You must link back to the blogger who nominated you.

I have been nominated by both Danielle of a Shi..p Load of Polish and Take me to Your Lacquer

Do you have any other passions, besides nail painting? Yes- I am a keen singer and I love science (particularly conservation science)
If you could live anywhere, where would you choose? Australia, I love it there but it's just too far away from my family and friends to move permanently
Is there a polish brand that you love most, is there a brand that started your addiction? This is a hard one, I think OPI started my polish addiction and Digital Nails started my indie addiction
What/ who got you into blogging? Once I discovered that nail blogs existed I decided to start one up straight away- I love being able to share my art with people who also love it
When was your last act of kindness, and what was it? A very small one but my housemate is ill and I did her washing up for her so she could go to bed
Is there anyone you would really like to meet (celeb, polish maker, etc), and why? I would love to meet David Attenborough- the things he's seen are just incredible, he must have so many stories. Or Stephen Fry- I saw this the other day and it made me giggle so much

Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? I would like to be settled with a steady job living with my partner. 
What superpower would you most like to have? Most people say flying or invisibility, I think teleportation would be awesome so you never had any travel time.
Describe your typical day: I'm currently job hunting so I work from home searching the recruitment sites and writing CVs and cover letters. In the evening I'll often go meet friends or go dancing
What is your comfort food? Crisps and chips ( have you tried potato wedges with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce?)
Favourite & least favourite colour? My favourite colour is definitely blue, my least favourite is black (I like it on occasion but not to wear)

Do you prefer brands or indies? Brands for Cremes Indies for everything else

Do you have a hand/cuticle routine or are you one of the chosen few who don't have to look after their cuticles too much? I don't have a routine (I'm not a routine person) I just put on OPI Avoplex oil if things are starting to feel dry

Are you allowed to wear your nail art in work? If not, do you do it anyway? :p As above currently job searching so I wear what I like

Favourite author? Terry Pratchett

Do you update your blog as regularly as you'd like to? I update every day so I guess the answer is yes, I'm planning on dialling back a little actually

Playstation, Xbox or PC? I'm not really a gamer

Do you use a lightbox when taking photos of your nails? No, I don't own a lightbox and haven't felt the need for it yet (maybe in the middle of British winter I'll think differently)

Favourite and least favourite nail art trends? My favourite is glitter, my least favourite is a tie between caviar beads and flocking, yuck

Are you a fan of delicious flavour? This is a reference to a TV show I've never even heard of before lol

Are you the kind of person who hears a new song then listens to it over and over until you hate it? Yes but I don't hate them I just stop really hearing them
What do you need more of in your nail polish stash? Jelly polishes, they don't seem very prevalent in the UK and I really want some. Plus Digital Nails- I just want every polish she's ever made

PHEW- congratulations if you made it this far! I'm now going to link 10 bloggers to do whichever of these they prefer (or both if they're so inclined) and who I think you guys should check out:

A Sparkling Finish

Delight in Nails

Finger Food

My Nail Files

Nailipedia

Neon Sparkly Nails

Penguins Left Green Polish

Pocket Money Polishes

Tinker Nails

Ninja Blossom Nails

And should you choose to do the Liebster Award I would like to know:

What's your favourite design you've ever done?

Who's your favourite blogger?

Do you plan your blog posts or just wing it?

Do you have any pets?

What's your favourite TV show?

If you could time travel where would you go?

What colour do you have the most of in your polish collection?

What are you most proud of in your life?

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31DC Flowers

As soon as I saw this design by Mr. Candiipants I knew it was a floral design that I would actually want to wear on my nails. I'm not a flower person at all but this soft out of focus look I really like. I also managed this on both my hands so I'm very happy.

The polishes I used in this were NYC Lincoln Centre, High Line Green and Pinstripe White, Nails Inc Blenheim terrace,  Jessica Lime Cooler and Essie Rock the Boat

This was noticed and admired by several people which is always a really nice boost :)

I don't have much more to say about this apart from that it looks really classy and fresh on the nails and it's super easy so you should give it a go :).

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31 DC Animal Print

I feel like I am bending the prompt a little bit with this one, I didn't want to do any standard safari animal print so I decided to take my inspiration from four British birds. To make them look like a well rounded mani I made them all into half moon designs.

I won't list any of the colours I used for this because typically I was mixing three colours together and sponging them on so you wouldn't have a colour accurate idea.  The barn swallow has yellow in it not orange because the gapes(what you can see when their mouths are open) of the chicks are bright yellow.

I really like how this came out :) and I'm really glad I went for something inventive rather than falling back on the old favourite leopard print.

Admittedly these are much more sparkly than the real birds but hey, it's nail art and in my opinion the sparklier the better :).

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31DC Stripes

For stripes day I went with a half moon design and horizontal stripes. I really wanted to use Tara's Talons Envy in a Bottle again and it goes really well with a nude nail so I decided to leave a bare half moon and then use a striping brush to add horizontal stripes with A England St. George.

This is a mani made up using only UK indies :). The UK indie scene is flourishing and there are some amazing polishes appearing all over the place. This is great news for those of us here in the UK who can't afford to pay the steep shipping charges from the US.

This mani is simple but eye catching because of the searingly bright green polish. I am still in love with Envy in a Bottle (I used it here) and St George goes with it perfectly.

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31DC Polka Dots

I love challenges! I love when you push yourself to do something a little unusual because 40 other people are doing the same prompt and you come up with something like this:

This is so not me; it's bright pink but also subtle because of the nude base.

This manicure started off with two coats of Deborah Lippmann Prelude to a Kiss. I then used a striping brush to add the shapes in Emily de Molly Where Boys Fear to Tread. I picked this up on a sale site on facebook and it's not one I would have bought new but I do love it, it's so holographic and the colour is a gorgeous bright fuchsia. I used my striping brush to add pink dots with Where boys fear to tread and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls then for the finishing touch added the dots in black with my Barry M nail art pen. The following photo is deliberately blurred to show off the holographic nature of the polish.

This is one of those "I'm not really sure where it was going when I started but I love where it ended up" nail art designs. You can do this too, just stick to a really simple colour palette (I chose pink and ran with it) and try to keep your lines curvy because that way they look much more organic than if there are sharp corners.

I feel like my skills with my nail art brushes are getting better and I'm really pleased with the content I've been making for this challenge and I hope you've been enjoying it too :)

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31DC Gradient

The A England polishes that I have make fantastic gradients, they all have the same finish and blend seamlessly into one another. Every polish in this post was bought secondhand or in a sale :).

I love this gradient because it looks like the colours of a duck and the glitter I used was called mallard.

She Walks in Beauty is very difficult to photograph, its a gold base with rose gold hexagons and this is two coats of it. It's much more attractive in real life than it looks here.

Purple and green is a fairly unusual combination but I really like it, the glitter works very well over the top :)

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31DC Rainbow

I'm sure a lot of people will have done a gradient mani for this but I went for it anyway and I'm pretty pleased with myself because I only used four colours to make this manicure and my nails are long enough for this. The colours I used were NYC Chelsea Cherry, Lexington Yellow, Lavender Cupcake and Orly Blue Collar. This is my first time going into a gradient deliberately trying to mix different colours (green and orange).

I use a gradient technique where you put the colours on a plastic bag and mix them a little bit before picking them up with a sponge and dabbing onto your nails. I use makeup sponges from Primark (something ridiculous like 20 for £1!) I also painted my nails in white first as this reduces the amount of coats you need to get an even coverage. 

Clean up is one of the things that would put me off doing gradients so I thought I'd show you how I minimise the amount of mess created. First I tape off my fingers round the sides and across the cuticle (as close to the nail polish line as I can) then I sponge on my gradient and carefully remove the tape, you can see between 1 and 2 how much clean up this has saved. I then top coat the design and wait a few seconds for it to dry before cleaning up on my skin with a cotton bud dipped in nail polish remover followed by using a clean up brush to remove the nail polish very close to my nail and to create a nice line at the cuticle.

Bright gradients are one of the easiest ways to achieve high impact nail art but without the clean up they do have a tendency to look messy and unprofessional. I would recommend that you have a go but keep your sellotape and cotton buds handy.  On an unrelated note I have been approached by the Born Pretty Store to review products for them and I have also been given a 10% discount code to pass on to my readers :). My first products won't be coming for a couple of weeks but if you want any nail art supplies you can click on the picture below to be taken to their website, remember to use the code for 10% off:

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