Better Late than Never, I Hope

As so often happens, I have gotten shamefully behind on acknowledging and passing along awards and tags. It's not that I don't appreciate them; it's that I'm so very easily distracted by new nail polish and posting about that instead. Then the further I get behind, the more daunting it is to try and catch up, which is why today I'm only going to do the ones I was awarded between the last time I caught up and the end of 2011.

Thanks to these bloggers who have tagged/awarded me:
Oooh, Shinies!
Une Ruxi à Paris
Bee Polished
Someone, Somewhere, Blogging
Greeneyespinknails
Glazed Talons
Fashion Footing
Polish & Pigments
Nails and Stuff
xxDeadlyLaughterxx

The badges:

As Time Passes By



Best Blog



Blogger Luxury



Inspiration Award



One Lovely Blog



Versatile Blogger



Nail Art Friendly Blog



Glitter Badge




Most of these come with instructions, but since I've already told you plenty of random things about myself and answered various sets of tag questions, I'm just going to follow the instructions that aren't like the ones I've done before.

As Time Passes By calls for posting old and new photos of one's nails. One of the earliest nail polish photos I could find on my hard drive is this from January of 2010, a month or so after I'd decided to start painting my nails again after a long break. (The polish is Milani Key Lime Shine.)



This was back before I adopted "the gap" method of applying polish (it looked weird to me, like people were intentionally making their manicures look like they had grown out—until I tried it, I didn't really understand how unnoticeable the gap is in person and how much neater it looks). I'd just paint right up to my cuticles and even right on them a lot of the time. I hadn't started cleaning up with a brush, either, so I'd just scrape off most of the excess polish with my other nails (or sometimes an orangewood stick if I was feeling fancy). I'm actually surprised my cuticles don't look worse here, what with all that scraping going on.

The first nail photo I ever posted here was this one, taken in April of 2010:



My application sure improved in those three months. I'm not sure what happened to my nail length; my guess would be a broken nail and no patience for patching it, but sometimes I just nubbinize for a change of pace.

You saw my latest mani photos in yesterday's post, but here's a recent shot I didn't share (Sephora by OPI Opening Night, before it got glittered up for the Spoiled comparison).



It's not perfection, though I am getting better at the photo taking part, learning more about the settings on my camera (and cropping the shots better after they're out of the camera).

The Glitter Badge comes with the direction to "post picture of your favorite glitter". My favorite glitter? I about had a mental breakdown getting down to only five favorites to include in my Top 20 for 2011. No way I'm going to be able to pick just one. Not gonna do it.

Since trying to pass along all of these is going to get me stuck again, I am just going to award the One Lovely Blog badge to some blogs I enjoy that perhaps you haven't seen yet. Ladies I'm linking, feel free to make up your own rules about how to proceed. Maybe you've already got the One Lovely Blog and would rather grab a different badge from above. Maybe you have seven random things about yourself you'd like to share. Maybe you want to pass the award along to only one other blog or to dozens. I obviously don't follow instructions, so I can't tell you what to do!

Sites I am awarding the One Lovely Blog badge:

Paint that Nail does a lot of fun nail art.

Obssessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite has a great sense of humor that comes through in her posts, which are full of pictures that let me see just what the polishes she's swatched look like.

Susy in Color has impeccable application and does great swatches.

Glassflecked routinely causes me to add things to my wish list based on her posts.

Drinkcitra takes beautiful photos, her Essie bottles arranged into a heart is one of my recent favorites.