Wednesday, October 01, 2014

NYAN Turns Two!



Hey guys! I'm really excited today because it's the second anniversary of the blog! I can't believe I've been doing this for two years already; it seems like just yesterday that I was making my very first post!

I don't think I really made a long post about the 1 year anniversary of the blog last year so I'm going to take this opportunity to take a quick look back over some of (what I think are) the highlights of the past two years!



First Post

Oh wow, I was so proud of this design when I first did it because it took me forever and I did it with a Kabob skewer since I didn't have any dotting tools. I kind of laugh a little looking back at it now because... well just look at that photo! Such an awkward hand position, some type of filter on it and no clean up around the edges... Even ignoring the design itself I think I've definitely improved my photo quality over the years!




First #Nail Art Feature

I know I just said a few paragraphs up that it seems like I started blogging just yesterday, but now that I'm looking back it all seems so long ago! I can't really remember any stand-out events in the 8 months between my first post and my first post to be featured in the Nail Art Tag on tumblr. This was honestly one of the most exciting things ever, I completely freaked out when I saw that my exo wolf nails had been featured. I was (and still am!) so grateful that someone thought my work was good enough to feature. This design's still in my top 5 most popular posts, grabbing the #3 spot for amount of notes on my tumblr! 



First Thousand Followers

I know that blogging is more about enjoying what you're posting than it is about the numbers, but I was honestly so grateful to hit 1k followers just before the blog turned one. I honestly never thought that that many people would be interested in my work and it meant so much to me that people would take the time to check out my blog and click that little follow button. 






Giveaways

Shortly after my first year anniversary I held my first giveaway and I've held two more since then. While it's not really directly related to my nails, I like being able to do things like this as a thank you and as a way to give back to my followers because honestly, all of the feedback you've all given me in the form of comments, messages and tags encourages me so much!



Tumblr Radar


A few days before Christmas last year I was surprised to find that one of my designs had been featured on the Tumblr Radar! You can't even imagine how confused I was when the notes on that post and my follower count started to spike so suddenly. I was honestly sitting there like "who could have possibly reblogged my post for this many people to see it." The post - Happy (Holly)days, in case you're wondering - got over 3.5k notes and remains my most popular post.




Guest Posts

I did my first guest post in March for BeautyOfficials.com which was pretty exciting. It's cool being entrusted to make a design for someone and it's flattering having someone reach out to you like that in the first place. Not to mention I really liked the design I ended up making for this - the little elephants are so cute!


Product Reviews


I also started do product reviews for Born Pretty Store this year! This is probably one of my favourite things to happen this year because let's be honest, who doesn't like free nail stuff? And it's fun to do the reviews as well!








Social Media

The blog finally took the plunge into other social media platforms this year! After only being active here and on tumblr for the past year and a half, I finally decided it was time for the blog to expand. In addition to Blogger and Tumblr you can now also find me on Instagram (@nyanails), Pinterest, Facebook, and Nailpolis.








Mani Swap


One of my favourite milestones has been doing my first mani swap with Robin! I've admired her work for a while so having her accept my offer to do a swap was really exciting! And it went super well; her recreation was amazing and I loved recreating her design as well! 
Just wanted to give another little shout-out to Robin; seeing your anniversary post (congrats again by the way!) encouraged me to make one of my own, so thank you!




.com

I almost posted this without mentioning the fact that within the past year I bought the rights to my domain name notyouraveragenails.com! It's nice to know that if I ever start making business cards I can put something more professional than a tumblr URL on it haha.

And that, my friends, is a small summary of some of the stand-out events of the past 2 years with NYAN! If you've been around since the beginning, thank you so much for sticking with me, you don't know how much that means to me! If you've come along a little later, I'm really grateful to you as well! Seriously, having people like you view, like, reblog and comment on my work really encourages me to keep at it so I honestly can't say thank you enough! ♥
(And kudos to you if you actually read this far into the post!)

xo,
Becca

2 comments:

  1. AAAAAH CONGRATULATIONS BECCA! I honestly had no idea your blog was this "old" already but it's really great that you've been doing this for two years - I hope you'll keep doing it for two hundred and two years to come. I loved reading this post!! The little elephant design you made is one of my favourites from you actually, I was so jealous when I saw it because they looked perfect :) Thanks for the shout-out too! The mani swap was really fun indeed :)

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    1. Thanks Robin!!! :D
      I know, I can't believe I've been doing this for so long either; time just seems to fly by!

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