A beauty therapist has been left blushing after being crowned Bridport News' Beauty Therapist of the Year.

Evergreen Nails and Beauty, on Alexandra Road, has been declared the ‘best of Bridport’ according to the readers of the Bridport News.

Tess Good, the face behind Evergreen, said she was overjoyed with the award.

She said: “It feels amazing. I am so excited to have won this award, a real confidence boost for me as a small business owner. Thank you to all my lovely clients who went out of their way to vote for me. It means a lot.”

Winning the award came just over a year since Tess went full-time after spending the pandemic “itching” to get started.

She said: “I wanted to start a side hustle so I trained in nail related treatment and I started doing that on the side from my kitchen in September 2020. That went really well so I decided to go full time in May last year and I guess that’s when it really started to take off.

"Over the summer we renovated my garage and turned that into a mini salon and we moved into that in October: I didn’t expect it to take off so quickly.”

Tess won the award after making a shortlist and then receiving the most public votes from the readers of the Bridport News.

She put her success down to people wanting “me-time” after the pandemic.

Tess said: “It was a really hard year for everybody and I think a lot of people wanted to treat themselves after it all. It’s been really nice to have so many lovely clients come in and help the business grow: it’s been quite a scary business over the past couple of years to be self-employed and I definitely wasn’t expecting to be able to go full time as quickly as I did.

“Everyone deserves a bit of me time so, whether that’s getting your nails done or sitting and reading a book, I always feel like we need to take time to look after ourselves and set aside time just to do something that we enjoy.”