Empowering Women nail art contest: Winner announced!

Hello!!

As you may know, I recently held my very first nail art contest; the theme was 'Empowering Women' and the purpose of it was to raise awareness for Inspire Me 2 Aspire's International Women's Day chat event, and to encourage strong, creative women to become mentors for the project. The contest brought in both beautiful nail art and women willing to mentor teen girls, so on both accounts it was a huge success!

This contest was very graciously sponsored by Llarowe; as everyone knows, Llarowe specializes in hard-to-find nail polishes and gorgeous indie brands. The prize they donated was a $50 gift card for the winner.

The contest judge, Jenny Ellis of Inspire Me 2 Aspire, has chosen the winner, and is debating her two honorable mentions. However, before I announce the winner, I want to show you the beautiful entries we received. I'll present them here in the order we received them.

First up is this entry by MesiaszCiszy:

Next up is Misha of Enigmatic Rambles, with a manicure that represents the different stages of womanhood:

The next entry was submitted by Norma Maria:

Here is what she had to say about her entry: Hello, here is my entry to the nail art contest. My main idea was to demonstrate how women can support and empower each other and how some women might feel isolated (looking at one nail) but looking at the bigger picture (all the nails) there are other women around them, with open arms, ready to go together and support each other. I am aware that my design looks rather simplistic but I wanted to take part of the contest to raise awareness of empowering women and people overall, being a mentor for a teenager myself (unfortunately for another charity), I know how rewarding the job is and how much it helps people in need. Mentoring online sounds very interesting and definitely has big future because of the accessibility. I hope more people will join IM2A mentoring in the future.

Next up was Diana Van Nisselroy: 

Here is her description of what inspired her: Inspired by a song from Delta Goodrem - Be Strong

"And when you're like a single flower, Whose colors have turned to shades of grey, Well hang on, Be strong"

From thumb to pinkie the flower turns in to shades of grey but from pinkie to thumb the flower gets his colors back :)

I find her songs/ lyrics especially this one beautiful and inspirational when you feel down for some reason it will gives you power to be strong and hang on and don’t give up. And Delta is a beautiful empowering woman who overcome Hodgkin's Lymphoman cancer at the age of 18. Be strong is inspired by that period of her life. She was strong did not give up and now is a beautiful strong adult woman with an amazing music career. And she got strength and inspiration from her bad period in life.

Next to enter was Gin Shivers of Baroque Fool: 

Here is her description of her manicure: This is my Empowering women nail look. It has a simple base and over it OPI Spotted black that represents that a strong women can always get what she wants no matter how hard is it to attain. Over it I added some Essence flakies that give the impression of fire wich represents the passion that makes this woman an inspiration to others. And on top there are some studs becouse a strong modern woman must be though.

The next entry was from Brush Me Blush:

This is what she had to say about her entry: It is a surreal design I call "creation of the universe".
This design was inspired by the saying: you guide the stars, the stars don't guide you. It's supposed to show that even seemingly the most insignificant actions may be the most important to someone.


And last but not least, the final entry was from Amber:

Here's what she had to say about it: Contest entry: For my mani, I channeled Cleopatra, who I see as a strong independent woman also known for her shrewd political moves and beauty. She was known to create her own makeup even, so I though she was perfect because… I'm really into polish and making my nails pretty! At the same time, she showed that women don't have to ditzy if they are pretty (she showed that you can have it all and still be taken seriously), you can be strong and smart, maybe even enough to rule a country!

From Wiki: Cleopatra originally ruled jointly with her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, and later with her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, whom she married as per Egyptian custom, but eventually she became sole ruler. Cleopatra is portrayed as a great beauty, and her successive conquests of the world's most powerful men are taken as proof of her aesthetic and sexual appeal.


And the winner is...:

I'm very glad I didn't have to choose, because I'm not sure I could have! Jenny chose her winner based on how well she thought it represented the theme of empowering women, in line with Inspire Me 2 Aspire's mission statement. Her choice, and the winner of the $50 Llarowe gift certificate is...

Diana Van Nisselroy!

I love that Diana won because she was so worried that her manicure didn't fit with the theme, but it completely did. It's a beautiful visual representation of how a woman can bloom through life's difficulties and obstacles to become even more beautiful than before. :)

Please join me in congratulating Diana, and come back tomorrow to see which two manicures were chosen for honorable mentions!

Thanks to everyone that entered, thanks to Llarowe for sponsoring, and thanks to you for reading!

Xoxox,
M.