Hi Goddesses
Today is a very exciting day. Today is the first of a regular feature called Friday Friends, where I feature another blogger. This started as a way to "give back", and pimp my friends a little, but I also realised there's a lot of bloggers out there who we read every day but know NOTHING about.
I'm starting today with Bee of Bee Polished. She is one of my very best nail friends and I love her dearly. She's also just passed the boards and starts her new job as a nail technician at a spa this week, so I thought this might just put the cherry on her week :)
I met Bee through one of the many Facebook groups on nail polish, she always had an answer for every question I had, and she's a great swapper. And then we became friends too :) Aaaaah .....
Over to Bee -
My name is Bee.
My blog is at: www.beepolished.blogspot.com
My Facebook is at: www.facebook.com/beepolished
My tumblr is at: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/
My Pinterest is at: http://pinterest.com/
My Instagram is: BeeJustice
And my Twitter is: Bee_Polished
Whew. That’s a lot of links!
I’m from Ohio, USA.
What can we expect to see on your blog / How would you describe your style / your blog’s style
I try to keep my blog as polished as possible. Hence the title. Lol…I want it to represent me and that means it’s (usually) classy, fun, and well presented. I like to draw from colors and patterns for inspiration and I often choose abstract ways of representing things, rather than going for the obvious. I like subtlety over ostentatious.
Why did you decide to start the blog –
I’ve been interested in nail art since I was about 11. It was the only really girly thing I got into growing up and I’m not really sure why. I got a stamping machine for my 13th birthday and I had all the original Cover Girl crackles. In fact I still have some nail art stickers I got for free with a glow in the dark Maybelline polish I bought when I was 15.
When I started getting seriously into tennis in high school I took a break from the art and it wasn’t until 2011 that I got really back into it. I was perusing the internet and found Melissa, at The Daily Nail’s blog. She had stamps! It brought me back to when I first started and had so much fun with my stamping machine! So I rounded up the polishes I had (17, mostly pink!) and from there it was all downhill! I originally began to journal my art with a blog so that my family could see them online and also so that I would be able to see myself improving.
How many followers do you have / how many visitors do you get a day / if you have an established blog, how have you “built” your following:
I have 346 GFC followers, 22 Bloglovin’ followers and at least one email follower. I get around 500-1000 hits per day, sometimes more like in the case of the day I was featured on HelloGiggles! I built my blog mostly just by sharing it as much as I could.
What do you do in the real world, and how do you fit blogging in with your lifestyle?
As of June 2, I will be a designer at a nail salon. So I feel like my blog will fit in nicely with that! Lol..but mostly I try to just not let my blog pressure me. I started this for fun and if it becomes something that isn’t fun anymore I would definitely stop doing it. It’s a creative outlet for me and I want to keep that unchanged as much as I can. I do get overwhelmed sometimes when I set myself up for too many challenges at once!! But I try to just blog when I’m feeling like it and I get a few days a week to do that so it’s not too much of a challenge for me.
What is the favourite post you have done -
I have two favorite posts! And narrowing it to two was ridiculously hard!! The first is the My Neighbor Totoro nail art I did in August of 2011. It’s my favorite because it was the first time I really attempted to do any kind of a character on my nails and I was so proud of how well Totoro came out!

The second is my Stripe Attack post from November of 2011. It was a little outside my box and it was kind of ambitious!! I felt like it came out so well despite the combination of strange colors, leopard print and glitter!! Could have been SUCH a hot mess!

What is your most popular ever post ?
No surprise here! My most popular post is the “I Want Candy” post I did which was featured on HelloGiggles.com. It was done during clinic hours at school and it was mostly just a mani borne out of sheer and utter boredom. I first did a caviar mani on my desk mate, Pauline, and then decided to do a more sparse look on my own nails. It lasted three days.

Which blogger do you most admire / who do you follow / who are your go to bloggers
I still live for Melissa’s blog at The Daily Nail. I think she’s so incredibly talented and even though I know I’ll never be at her level she gives me something to aspire to. I also love Sam at the Nailasaurus. Even though most of what Sam does is stamping, it’s always very polished, classy and the color combo’s she comes up with are amazing. I also really love Marina at Forever The Ugly Duckling. Mostly because she mixes things up, loves animals, and is vegan so we have a lot in common!
When blog posts go wrong – pls share a blog post of your own that you are ashamed of / wish you could redo / didn’t turn out how you wanted it to.
Well this happens to me all the time!! Lol, especially in the beginning there were so many times I wanted something to look a certain way and it just didn’t come out! I had to learn my limits! Here’s a classic example:

I wanted this to be so much better than it was. But it just. Wasn’t. And the photography did not make this any easier to look at! I mean, did I even bother with cleanup?! Ah, the good old days!
Pick a further 3 manis of your choice from your blog
This one is from my early days when dots were a chore and anything more detailed than that was never going to happen! I loved this mani though because it was bright and fun and it came out MOSTLY how I wanted it to! It got a lot of compliments too. (please excuse the shoddy polish job and lack of clean-up. It’s from the dark days :P)
Another oldie but a goodie! These were modeled after a pair of shoes and they remain one of my favorite mani’s of all. I wish I’d had better photography skills back then. But this one is definitely one I’d love to revisit!
And finally, this gem. I’m just going to lay it out there: I’m in the middle of the Purple Crumpet Fairy Challenge. I haven’t missed a day yet and we’re nearly two weeks in. How proud am I? I get sick. Like, hella sick. Like end of days I don’t even want to live I’m so freaking sick. And, reindeer? Who came up with that!? I peruse my collection, find a stamp, throw this on in ten minutes, --it’s not even dry while I brave the cold weather in my pajamas to photograph it--throw it on my blog despite my utter dislike for it and the fact that it’s not nearly as fancy as I’d have liked. And…what in the? It’s my second most popular post of all time. It nearly won a nail art contest. Funny how those things work, no?
Finally your stash – talk about your favourite brands, colours, must have tools, your “number” etc
My stash started small: 17. Two Loreal’s, 8 CoverGirls, 5 Maybelline, one Mary K, and a Wet & Wild. Now I’m nearing 700...and counting! The biggest thing I’ve learned is that price doesn’t equal quality but neither does it make a polish better. Example: Sinful colors is cheap. There’s a reason it’s cheap. It WILL stain. It WILL chip. It WILL need several coats. ButterLONDON is expensive (to some people). There’s a reason it’s expensive. It doesn’t stain, lasts for a week with no chipping, dries to an incredible shine, and usually requires one to two coats. Then again, Barry M has become one of my favorite brands and it’s a drugstore brand. So the moral of the story is TRY NEW THINGS!!
For myself personally, I TRY to stick to vegan brands. That means most drugstore brands are no-go’s for me. I dislike OPI but will wear and use it if I like the color enough. I love ButterLONDON, Barry M, Catrice, Models Own, and A-England. My must have tools are a good striping brush (I don’t waste money on striping polishes unless they’re Models Own!), a good clean-up brush and dotting tools. None of those are costly and all will give you endless design options. I also think it’s absolutely necessary to have a matte topcoat. It doubles your polish options.
Oh and one last thing – what tip would you share with someone who is thinking about starting a blog ?
The best tip I have is to do it for yourself and don’t get discouraged. The first six months I had a blog I had three followers. One was me. One was my husband. The other was a gift from God! Lol… it doesn’t mean your art is bad or your blog is bad or that what you’re doing isn’t worthy of appreciation. It just means you’re paying your dues! If you do it for any reason other than that you love it, you won’t succeed. It IS work. Especially when your follower count starts to go up! And don’t take everyone’s criticism to heart. People will always have something negative to say. Just ignore them and know that you’re doing what you love and you’re putting out something you’re proud of. That’s all that matters.
Let’s Get Personal
What’s your earliest polish memory: I wasn’t really allowed to have polish as a child. But I remember my dad buying me a stamping machine when I was 13 for Christmas. That’s probably the first real polish memory I have that sticks out.
Fave film: Marie Antoinette. I’m obsessed with French royalty (and Russian Czars!) as a rule anyway and Sofia Coppola made that film so colorful and beautiful but still very real and emotional.
Fave type of music: I’m sort of an alt/indie/folk lover. I love Bobby Darin, Diane Birch, Dustin O’Halloran, George Harrison, Priscilla Ahn. So many. I’m definitely a music whore though. I have TONS and TONS of music and I love to listen to new things. I literally HAVE to listen to no less than three hours of music a day or I just feel terrible.
How old are you lol: What an unladylike question!! I’m 29. :P
Are you a cat or dog person: I love all animals honestly. Growing up we had fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, lizards, turtles, cats, dogs, rabbits, and I’m sure several other things! I’ve always been an animal lover and I’ve always wanted a tarantula! But…right now I have two kitties since it’s the most logical pet for me to have. They’re spoiled absolutely rotten and they’re seriously my children.
Fave book: I could never choose. I have hundreds of books and have read thousands. I was reading on a college level in the 6th grade. Books have always been an escape for me. More so perhaps than music. Some of my favorites are The Giver, The Phantom Tolbooth, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Harry Potter series, and The Diary of Anne Frank.
If you won £5million on the lottery, what would you do: Wow. That’s a tough one. But I’d probably travel a bit. Finally move! Lol…and then keep working. I’m pretty happy with my life the way it is right now so it would just be a bonus to me. I would definitely donate to some causes that I work with as well and share some with my friends!
What inspires you: Life. Art. Everything.
Share a quote that means a lot to you: “Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.” There are a lot of quotes that mean a lot to me but I like this one because it’s fitting for everyone. And it’s so true. There’s nothing more important than giving your all at life. Because there are no second chances!
Thanks Bee :) I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did - I'd love to read your comments and feedback. This series will run until at least the end of August, and will feature blogs big, old, small, new - all shapes and sizes! so keep checking back to find out more about the ladies who inspire us.
Enjoy xx :)