Cosmo Blog Awards 2011

The pièce de résistance of the entertainment for me were the photo booths, kindly provided by photobooth.co.uk, which were available all night for us to snap pictures to keep as a memory of our evening. It provided endless fun and the attendant was hilarious, I took these pictures with the gorgeous Vivianna, Milly, LaaLaa, Amy, Zoe, Sarah, Sabrina and Corrie who are all beauty bloggers from the new and established categories.

Pre-awards us bloggers reached a consensus that we were all super nervous to be attending alone, the venue has a limited capacity and this meant no +1s, eek! Vivianna, Milly, LaaLaa, Amy, Sarah, Corrie and myself met half an hour before the ceremony at the Alphabet bar to calm our nerves without arriving alone, it was lovely to see the gorgeous outfits before anyone else (my black number with the red belt was a cheeky Warehouse last-minute sale buy which can be found here!). We spent the evening mingling with others and one another, taking dozens of pictures as we enjoyed the splendour; I wish I could include them all but the above are some of my favourites.

The winners were announced at 7.30PM – the prizes a free pair of Stylist Pick shoes and a stunning Ros Shiers print on canvas. You can view the whole list of winners and highly commended’s here, but the winner from my category of ‘New Beauty Blog’ was the gracious Vivianna (pictured), with Adrienne from TheSundayGirl receiving Highly Commended; when announced we cheered and clapped graciously (with a few ungracious whoops and screeches…guilty, perhaps). To my surprise, many bloggers left once the announcements were made; for me, LaaLaa and Amy the night was young and we partied with the remaining bloggers, StylistPick and MissGuided until carriages at 9PM. 

To my absolute happiness and surprise all attendees were handed a brimming goodie bag at the end of the evening – if you spot anything you’d like swatches or reviews of please leave a comment. The gorgeous bag was adorned with Cosmopolitan magazine covers both old and new, though to my surprise we didn’t receive a complimentary magazine or anything Cosmo related at all! Regardless, I am over the moon with the products from companies which supported the goodie bag and can’t wait to try them all out, I was jumping for joy when I spotted the MoroccanOil so watch out for a review. The evening was beyond my wildest dreams, when I started this blog I never expected to achieve such great things from a hobby which roots deeply in my heart. Your support has been phenomenal, I wish I could thank each and every one of you individually but I can’t so this will have to do! I’d like to make a special thank you to Cosmopolitan for making the evening so special for all of the shortlisters, to be involved once has been a true honour! If you have any questions about the Blog Awards or just want to chat about it, you can tweet me on twitter here or drop me an email.

Holly Arabella