Digit-al Dozen News, and a Second Liebster!

Nothing to Disclose

Hello again lovelies! I have two important things I wanted to talk to you about!

FIRST: THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN CONQUERS THE WEB

Many people have asked me what the Digit-al Dozen is all about, now that I've been invited to join this illustrious group. Until now, I've at most been able to list the members for you. However, we're now working on a very exciting project: establishing a real digital presence for the group! This means that there is a central place to catch round-up posts of the month's challenge, as well as tons of original content-- how to's, tips and tricks, and much more! Please click the banner below to visit our website and follow us, we'd love to have you along. :)

SECOND: LIEBSTER AWARD #2

Lovely Victoria has nominated me for a second Liebster Award! Am I lucky, or what? Per my last Liebster post, I don't really know of any up-and-coming blogs, so I could use your help-- if you know of any, let me know in the comments! Here is a link to her lovely nail blog:

In the meantime, here are her questions for me, plus (another) 11 random facts about me! I think you guys will know me better than I know myself, by the end of this. ;)

Questions:

1. Who or what drowned you in nail blogging? I received a book from my family for Christmas one year when I was very young, it had a bunch of nail art designs to be done with a toothpick. I've been more or less hooked ever since.

2. If you had to choose between neon or pastel to be used for the whole year, what will you choose? Neon. I'm not much one for pastels. I'm about the jewel tones, and then secondarily about the neons.

3. What's your most used nail art technique? Freehand painting; it's the one thing I'm remotely good at! Taping and water marbling and everything else just make me want to throw things about. ;)

4. What was the very first nail polish you bought? I cannot remember, it's been WAY too long! But the first indie polish I ever bought was Gilded Oak by Contrary Polish. I think it was an excellent decision.

5. If you were prohibited to buy more nail polishes and only have one last chance to buy one bottle of nail polish (I know it's hard but yes, just one!), what would it be? I actually don't have any lemmings right now-- isn't that funny? I'm not really hurting for any one polish. It'd probably be an Elevation Polish, though, because I love everything Lulu does.

6. Big city with tall buildings and high-tech life, or small village with farms and green forest? (And both of them have same nail art stores and internet connection LOL) This is really tough for me. Probably the big city, though, because that's what I came from (Montréal). I love smaller towns and nature, though. I love visiting Penticton, British Columbia, which is a city you can walk across in 45 minutes. It's in the middle of wine country, and it's so hot and beautiful.

7. What's your I-can't-resist-even-when-I'm-full food or snack? Chocolate. Preferably mint chocolate.

8. If you had a time machine to travel to the past and future, what year would you like to be in? I wouldn't travel at all. Too much physics involved. I have a healthy fear of mucking around with the world.

9. A movie or series? Neither! I have an overactive empathy reaction, so I respond to movies and TV shows as though they were really happening. As I type this, I'm sitting in the living room with my headphones on, listening to Ellie Goulding really loudly so as to drown out my partner watching the Breaking Bad finale. I just can't do it!

10. If you could have one superpower, what would you choose? The ability to heal.

11. If you're an ice cream, what kind of ice cream are you? Sorbet! Coconut sorbet.

Random Facts:

1. I have freckles, but they only show up when I've been in a lot of sunlight. I miss them during the winter.

2. I'm mama to a cat named Jacob, who you've seen sometimes on the blog or on Instagram. My favourite thing he does is to purr when I nibble his toes.

3. I'm a serial monogamist. I can't be single to save my life.

4. My favourite artistic medium is soft pastels. I cannot paint to save my life, either.

5. I have a major flirtation with kpop girl groups; my favourite right now is D-Unit. I know how to read hangul (well, extremely slowly and poorly) and I've often considered teaching English in Korea.

6. I have a small but noticeable white scar on my ribcage and I have no idea how it got there. In general, I have a lot of scars.

7. I can listen to the same song over and over without getting sick of it. I get songs stuck in my head, but only for a short while, and sometimes the weirdest ones stick around the longest (like Christmas carols).

8. I'm afraid of conflict. I'll sometimes post my opinion to a Facebook conversation thread and then never visit the thread again, in case someone decided to rip me a new one for it. Heh.

9. I am profoundly silly but most people don't see it. Only my partner and my closest friends get to see the true depth of it.

10. I'm the oldest of two siblings; my brother is 2.5 years my junior.

11. I moved out of house when I was 19, which is pretty young, but a lot older than my mother, who was 16 when she moved out! (Runs in the family, I guess!)

As always, thanks so much for reading and keeping my company on this crazy journey! I really appreciate each and every one of you. You brighten my world more than you know.

xo,

J.

Liebster Award

Nothing to Disclose

Hello lovelies!

I interrupt our usual programming to bring you the fact that Anastasia, a long-time darling reader whose comments always make me smile, has nominated me for a Liebster award! This award is sort of a pay-it-forward way for you (and I) to discover new blogs.

The rules: 

1) Link back to the person who nominated you;

2) Put the Liebster Blog image in the sidebar of your blog;

3) Answer 11 questions made up by the person who nominated you;

4) Provide 11 random facts about yourself;

5) Nominate 5 to 11 up-and-coming blogs with fewer than 200 followers;

6) Come up with 11 questions for your nominees to answer;

7) And contact your nominees to let them know, of course!

I'll admit, I'm crap at finding new blogs. I follow mostly well-established bloggers with huge followings, and even then I have a hard time keeping up with all their posts! So, I will do numbers 1 - 4 from the rules above, and then I'll ask for your help: are there any unsung nail art heroes in your blog list? Let's get our heads together and nominate them! If we can come up with 5, I'll brainstorm and put together a list of questions for them.

In the meantime, onto my tasks!

Lovely Anastasia nominated me! Click the image above to visit her blog!

Here are Anastasia's questions for me:

1) What are your hobbies besides nail design? I like to read, though I don't do it nearly as much as I should. Lately I've been reading Shantaram; it's quite the novel!

2) What place in the world do you want to visit most of all? All of the places!! But if I had to choose only one, it would probably be Tahiti. Too bad it's so far from everything. :'(

3) What was the first blog you started following? Chalkboard Nails, because Sarah's Eye of Sauron mani was the precise thing that got me back into nail art.

4) What is your favourite holiday? I don't really have one; I'm very lax when it comes to the holidays (all of them)! I like the promise of renewal and change in New Year's, though.

5) Do you have any fears (snakes or smth like that:))) Death/dying (it comes in phases and is almost a clinical phobia), and spiders. I think snakes are pretty cute. :)

6) What is your favourite design to do on nails? I haven't yet repeated any designs, as far as I know, so I'm really not sure! My favourite type of nails to do are my complicated paintings, but it takes quite a while to do those, so they don't happen as often as I'd like.

7) Describe your typical day. This is going to be shameful, haha. Most of my days are spent puttering about the house. I'm on medical leave right now while awaiting a severance package from my employer, so I'm being paid to sit on my hands. I'm also looking into various business certificate programs, and trying to figure out what to do with my life now that I'm 'free'.

8) What is your favourite type of food? Thai and Indian (it's a tie).

9) Are you an optimist or a pessimist? I'd say that I'm more pessimistic. Which is to say, as the old joke goes, that I'm a realist. ;)

10) Do you prefer cats or dogs (or none:)? I enjoy dogs, but cats are my true love.

11) Show us a photo with the view from your window. This is a photo from the living room because I'm too lazy to go upstairs right now, haha! The view is the same, just tilted higher up. ;)

I like to sit here and read.

Here are my 11 random facts (if you follow me on Instagram, there might be some repeats):

1) My middle name is Leigh (pronounced lee). I think it means 'of the meadow', which I am not, and 'calm and poetic', which I also am not.

2) If I were rich, my house would be filled with paintings. I'm an art-junkie. I could collect art forever.

3) My favourite colours are green and purple (it's a tie) (just like my favourite foods).

4) I studied Ancient Greek and Latin in university, and remember pretty well nothing at all. My memory is nothing to write home about.

5) My arms are too short for my body. I can't reach things on shelves that I should be able to reach. This led to a friend nicknaming me J-Rex.

6) I am the opposite of a green thumb but I once found a floundering petunia plant in a store and nursed it back to health. I was very proud of myself. It was a very pretty shade of purple.

7) I can only cut food with my left hand and fork food with my left hand. My right hand is useless at either. So I end up cutting all of my food, putting down my knife, and then eating all of my food. It's awkward (much like me).

8) I was born with a bunion on my left foot that was operated on when I was 13. I have a pretty impressive scar.

9) I'm the least Scorpio-like Scorpio you'll ever meet. Pretty sure I could disabuse anybody of their belief in astrology.

10) I have one best friend where I live, one best friend where I grew up (other side of the continent), one best friend presently in the UK, and one best friend in Greece. I can be lonely at almost any time of day and find someone to talk to, which is wonderful.

11) I'm a neurotic picker. I pick at my cuticles, ingrown hairs, my skin, you name it. It's one of a number of my "obsessive tendencies" (as my doctor puts it). It's also a good barometer of how stressed or anxious I am.

Whew! That was a lot of stuff! If you made it this far, thanks for reading! And let me know if the comments if you follow any blogs we could give a bump to!!

xo,

J.