Wow, what a week! On Thursday it was announced that I've been selected as a finalist for Best Blog at the Asian Media Awards! I still haven't quite got my head around it yet, given that these awards were created for South Asians, by South Asians as a way of celebrating the achievements of South Asians in the media industry. What makes it even more exciting, is that allegedly, there are some billboards scattered around Manchester promoting the awards - I'm gonna have to hunt them down and get a selfie!

When it comes to the media, South Asians are totally under-represented, and when we are blessed with a few minutes air time, we're often woefully misrepresented too. So these awards go some way towards showing off the hugely diverse range of talents we have as a group of people - it's not fair to shove us all into a single box and expect us to deal with it.

For that reason, these awards are kind of a big deal, so to be turning up to the awards night in Manchester as a finalist, is truly something special to me. It's doubly special because the entire reason I started out the blog in the first place was due to a bit of a gap in the blogging scene at the time, whereby there weren't many South Asians out there. Eight years on then, and to receive recognition in this way is truly humbling, and really makes all the hard hours, days, weeks, months I've toiled away all the more worth it.

So to celebrate, I just knew I had to create something special, and I thought I'd return to UV, as last time I felt it was pretty good, but I also had this niggling feeling at the back of my mind that I could have done it better. To take it up a notch, and to go with the South Asian theme, I thought I'd attempt some UV Henna!

Of course, my freehand henna skills are almost up there with my right-hand writing skills (I'm a leftie obvs), so I had to cheat a little bit and use some Henna stencils. Of course, the stencils are no match for a genuinely talented henna artist, but a henna artist I most certainly am not, so I just have to make do! After applying the UV henna design though, I looked in the mirror and thought: "Fuck it." - let's take it up two notches from last year, and go for some splatters!

To achieve this, I simply whipped out a toothbrush - which I'll have to remember not to use on my actual teeth - dabbed it in some water, drizzled on some UV paint and just started spraying it all over my face - easy!

UV paints, if you fancy giving it a go are readily available, you can usually buy them from an independent, local fancy dress shop. In my case, I purchased mine from Duty Free in Manchester Arndale at 3 for £5 - or, you can even buy it online from the likes of Amazon and eBay. Just make sure it's UV Makeup Paint, not actual paint, because that could turn out to be a disaster.