2013 Year in Review & 2014 Goals

I can hardly believe it’s 2014 already!  I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on accomplishments achieved over the past year and goals for the coming year (for the blog and my personal life).  Below is a summary of my accomplishments and goals for Chickettes.

Accomplishments in 2013

• I set out with a goal to swatch all of the Gelish colors by the end of 2013 and accomplished that for the most part.  I swatched every color that existed prior to 2013 and the majority of the new colors that were released throughout the year.  I still have to swatch some of the Trends and a couple of hard to find colors.  You can view all of my Gelish swatches in this gallery, or check out the spreadsheet that I use to track my collection & swatches.
• My nail art was featured on several platforms including the Facebook pages of Gelish, Gelish MINI, Nail It Magazine, Orly and Couture.
• I hosted several awesome giveaways over the year including ones sponsored by Gelish MINI, Red Carpet Manicure, Wantable, Esther’s Nail Center, and LacQit.
• I started making YouTube videos.
• I learned lots of new techniques from friends in various social groups including how to do glitter gradients and use pigment powders for nail art.
• Chickettes has gained lots of new followers on various social platforms and I have loved the interaction with the fans and followers.
• My photography skills improved greatly over the year and I think I found my ideal hand poses for photographing swatches and nail art.
• And I developed a media kit to use when communicating with potential sponsors, though I haven’t shared it publicly until now.  Click here to see what it looks like.

Goals for 2014

• Finish swatching the Gelish Trends line and any new Gelish colors that come out over the course of the year.
• Branch out into new and different brands of gel polish, and hopefully develop sponsor relationships with some of these brands (let me know your favorites).
• Swatch all of the Ink and Shellac polishes that are in my current collection.
• Make more YouTube videos and improve upon my video editing skills.  I’d like to make my videos a little more streamlined and professional.
• Create an intro video for my YouTube channel.
• Continue learning new nail art techniques.

I would love to hear from you about the types of things that you’d like to see, or see more of in the coming months too so please leave comments with your ideas!

Favorite Nail Art of 2013

As I was looking back over my swatches and nail art pictures from the past year, these were some of my favorites.  They are in order from oldest to newest so you can see the progression of my photography skills and hand poses.  Each has a link back to the original post if you’d like to read about how they were done.

Happy New Year everyone!