Saturday, January 02, 2016

Year in Manicures: 2015

Happy New Year everyone!
Before we say goodbye to 2015 for good I wanted to take some time to look back at some of my favourite designs from the past year!


Let It Snow
(January 7th, 2015)

My very first design of 2015! I really loved how simple and elegant this design looked with the matte white and gold. I remember the snowflake charms being a bit of a pain (metal alloy charms are my nemesis) but the final look was worth the aggravation. They even made it into a Buzzfeed article (without anyone asking to use my photos but y'know...).








Gudetama
(February 4th, 2015)

What a cute, lazy egg. This remains one of my cutest designs of the year (in my opinion) and I still can't get over how great that background gradient turned out! I've noticed that people seem to appreciate it when I do designs with cute characters in them, so that's something you may be seeing more of in the new year!









NAFW2015: Favourite Designer
(March 9th, 2015)

Day one of Fashion Week! NAFW was without a doubt one of my absolute favourite events of the year; it was a big challenge to put out new designs every day but I'm still completely satisfied with all of the content I came up with for it. This design in particular took forever because I had to hand place all of those caviar beads. Even though the end result looks awesome, I don't think I'll be placing caviar beads again any time soon lol.







NAFW2015: Fall 2015 Dress
(March 14th, 2015)

This design inspired by an outfit by Diane von Furstenberg was definitely my absolute favourite design from NAFW. It my not have recieved as much attention as some of the other designs I did for the challenge, but I honestly adore it, I don't even know why. Maybe it's because I spent forever trying to figure out the best way to make that red snakeskin look realistic, lol!








Call Me Baby
(April 2nd, 2015)

In typical NYAN style, some of my exo designs have made it onto my favourites list again this year! In terms of kpop designs I really liked this one in particular because of how streamlined it felt. I managed to concentrate on one specific element of the mv for the entire design which I think made a huge difference in how put together the design looked. I was also pretty happy with this design because I think it was the first time where if you googled the song title and artist (i.e. exo call me baby) my design would pop up in the results! Awesome!




Every Rose Has It's Thorns
(April 11th, 2015)

I did a lot of floral designs this year, but I thought this one was a bit different from the others because the background was matte while the roses were not. Floral patterns + studs are also a weakness of mine so that's probably another reason why this design appealed to me. The final reason (which kind of ties into my first reason) is that the base I used is one of my favourite matte polishes, Doll Face by Ciaté







Seaside
(June 20th, 2015)

Gradients, water spotting, studs, and negative space: what's not to love?? This design combined so many different techniques and accessories that all came together to make a really classy, summery set of nails.











PINee
(June 29th, 2015)

Speaking of summery nails, these pineapple nails were probably the brightest, most summery nails I did this year. The 15 second tutorial I made for this design on IG was featured over the summer and I think this was probably one of my most-recreated designs (with credit!!). Not that I'm surprised because let's be real, who wouldn't want a cool sunglasses-wearing pineapple on their nails??








Shine Like Stars
(September 30th, 2015)

I feel like I say this about every technique but I really love galaxy nails. These particular galaxy nails were inspired by a super cute necklace I got at an arts festival and I really adore how they came out. I love how intricate I was able to get with the stars and I think the gold outline just pulls the whole design together beautifully!









Looking Sharp
(November 24th, 2015)

Hedgehogs! This design was actually the last one to make this list. I had the other 11 designs picked out and was sitting around trying to decide if I wanted my last design to be another intricate one, or one that was cute, or sparkly... so many choices! I finally asked a friend for help and after declaring that cute was the way to go, she decided that these hedgehogs won out over my Easter bunnies (thanks for the help Ashley!)







Warm Wishes 2015
(December 14th, 2015)

I knew as soon as I saw that Tim Hortons released their #WarmWishes cups again this year that I had to do a design for them! They're just so adorable and wintery and I loved how perfect these nails were for the holidays! Painting all of those little tiny squares may have been time consuming, but man was it worth it!
This design made it into a Buzzfeed article as well (again without permission, but hey, at least it's credited. Shoutout to one of my lovely followers who let me know I'd been featured!)





Sing For You
(December 19th, 2015)

And for the last design on my list I have, wait for it, another exo design! This one honestly probably won't make much sense if you haven't seen the music video for Sing For You, but I spent so much time and energy on the whale and the astronaut that there was no way this design wasn't being included as one of my favourites of the year. Even though I (obviously) do a lot of painting, this design was a huge challenge for me and I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to make it look realistic; I'm so pleased with the end result though!





And that rounds out my picks for favourite designs of 2015!
Did your favourites make the list? Were there any that you would have included that I didn't? I'd love to know!

Also because I posted it on insta, I figured I'd share my NYE face behind the nails here as well!



Thank you guys so much for such an awesome 2015; all of your comments and support on the blog's different platforms have been so encouraging and even though I say it all the time, every single comment means so much to me! So thank you for taking time out of your busy day-to-day to spend some time on me and my nails!
Best wishes for everyone to have a happy and healthy 2016!

xo,
Becca.

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