Friday 18 May 2012

Five on Friday #4 (Blog Loving!)

The other day I had a sweet comment from Ang over at Mad For Paper to say she was naming me for a Liebster Blog Award as she liked it here at Just-Jimjams.  Thanks Ang!

I'd never heard of the award, so I Googled ... and came up with over 2 million hits, but no real origin because pretty well ALL the posts I checked were from recipients like me, puzzling over the origin, but accepting it gratefully and passing it forward to five of their favourite blogs!  A sort of blog chain-letter I suppose.  In fact doing the maths ... if one person awarded it on January 1st to five others, who took a month to award it to five others, who took a month to award it to five others ... then we'd have a mind boggling 244,140,625 recipients by the end of the year (and many billions more if people were quicker to re-award the award).

Liebster Blog Award - all 244 million of them

Now chain-letters that appear in my in-box get deleted immediately, but this is more about spreading the love and telling smaller bloggers (with fewer than 200 followers) that someone, somewhere, not only reads their blog but likes it enough to recommend it to their own readers.  I'm very, very happy to be on Ang's List of Five (and one of the 244 million + bloggers to receive the award in 2012 too), so I put on my thinking cap and tried to come up with five blogs I'd like to recommend further:

Alexa over at Trimming The Sails because her blog is calm and serene, thoughtful and inspiring; she has a wonderful way with words, photos, paper and pixels and, having been lucky enough to meet her at a retreat last year, I know that the humour and sunny smile that shines through in her blog posts is there in real life!

Ann, a mad scientist from Coventry, whose musings are always interesting and filled with lots and lots of scrappy goodness.  She's got 3 kids (like me), wears glasses (like me), gave a class at Pink Booby 5 (like me), has taught at the, now defunct, Exhall crop (like me) and is a very hard-working Primary School teacher (unlike me, but that's another story).

Lisa from Recklinghausen Musings, is a fellow Master Forger from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog.  I am in awe of the quantity of quality items that Lisa makes.  She takes part in frequent LOAD challenges, makes huge numbers of Christmas cards, helps run a challenge blog of her own and is always enthusiastic and supportive.  All this means that I completely forgive her predilection for pink!
 
I love all the things that Lizzie made, especially her wonderful hand bound books.  She's another blogger I have had the privilege of meeting in real life at the aforementioned retreat (which Lizzie organised)!

And last alphabetically, but by no means least,  there is Tracie of Doodledays who scraps and journals beautifully about her large and complicated extended family.  You can't pigeon-hole Tracie's "style" because she is always coming up with new ways to showcase her photos with clever hand-cutting, doodling and page design; she's a constant source of scrappy inspiration.

Liebster Award

That just leaves me one more thing to do according to the Liebster Blog Award rules:
1. Thank the person who gave the award √
2. Link back to their blog √
3. Post the award onto your own blog √
4. Choose 5 new recipients with fewer than 200 followers √
5. Let each of them know about the award

P.S. There's still time to enter my {Inter-}National Scrapbooking Day Challenge here ... the odds of winning a random prize are still good ;o}

P.P.S. Just found a Liebster post from December 19th 2010 but the recipient couldn't remember where she got it from, so I guess there are now a gazillion recipients out there :o}

12 comments:

alexa said...

Oh my goodness, Jemma, I am honoured and thank you! :) Such a nice word, Liebster! I will duly note the requirements, and post next week. Now, off to explore a couple of the lovely blogs on your list whose names are not familiar to me!

Sue Althouse said...

Congrats on the award! I am amazed and impressed by the research and math you did!

Lisa said...

Hey, thanks so much for the award! How lovely of you to think of me. We'll pass on the pink thing shall we ;-)

Looking at the list, it certainly sounds like I'm in extremely good company (I'm only familiar with Alexa so I will be popping over to the others as soon as I can catch my breath!).

I'm not at all surprised you were selected. Even though I'm sure it feels like I am a bad blog friend who doesn't drop by as often as I should, every time I AM here I always love what you see. I really like the way you see things. I love to appreciate the difference - even if it's for our love (or not) of a certain colour! he he!

Sian said...

Congratulations on a well deserved award! (and trust you to get stuck in and research it lol)

Lizzie said...

Gosh, thanks! This is a bit different, isn't it? I haven't heard of "Liebster Blog" awards before either.
Maybe the German name is a clue, but it still doesn't help much, as it just means "favourite blog"...
Still, I'm honoured to be one of your "chosen few" and will pass it on myself as soon as I can.

Many thanks (blushing...). I really like reading your blog too! (though I don't suppose I can pass the award back again...)
XX

furrypig said...

congrats on the award and some great bloggers that you have passed it on to. Doodledays is a new blog to me so thanks as I am now a follower! xxx

Tracie said...

Thank you so much Jemma! I am in very esteemed company indeed there with your chosen few and feel very honoured!! x

Alison said...

you have actually reminded me that I received this award some time ago and totally forgot to mention it on my blog..OOPS! Must go try rectify that
Alison xx

Unknown said...

I loved the explanation about Liebster. I got one too and thought the Liebster BEST photo was great - the maths appealed to me greatly!

Unknown said...

I reached your blog via a Comment you made on coventryann's Blog prompt #18.
I have been doing the Blog prompts which originated at docrafts.com from the Forum, as part of their Creativity Club. It's been interesting blogging about such esoteric topics and has led to new links with other crafting bloggers.

Missus Wookie said...

Thanks for the research - got the Liebster award and didn't do anything with it... just too busy at the mo' and wondered vaguely where did it come from?

If you have a mac you can use comic life to make comics on a desktop rather than through a phone/camera. Bet there are windows versions too.s

CoventryAnn said...

Big thanks Jemma, and it's funny how much we seem to have in common!! Are you sure you weren't a teacher in a previous life?!