MY 1 YEAR BLOGIVERSARY!

December 28th. This is an awesome day for 2 reasons:

1) My husband and I got married at the courthouse 2 years ago on this day! (We have 2 wedding anniversaries, a courthouse and a ceremony)

2) 1 year ago I started my bliggity blog! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Take a short journey to the past with me? (pssst there's a surprise at the end!)
That introduction post is probably the lamest thing on this planet LOL And my "first post", in December 2011, reviewing 3 Revlon pretties was even more lame.

That's the most appealing picture in that entire post. You probably don't even want to look at the other pictures, they're just gross lol. This entire nail blogging journey has been a learning experience for photographic, hand shots, hand and cuticle health and polishing. Oh, and  also at this point my goal for my nails (despite having long nail beds) was to cut the crap out of them to look as short as I possibly could LOL

Jump to a month later, January 2012, I decided to share some of my stamping with you guys:

Not a bad combo haha, still trying to get shots and hand positions down. My sister had bought me a Konad stamping kit back in 2009 so I had played around with stamping for awhile. It only took me until the END of 2011 to discover that you could use REAL nail polish, not just the Konad special polishes, and it worked 100x better than the expensive special made ones. And I was STILL chopping the hell out of my poor nails.

And in February 2012, I purchased my first full set of nail polish - The Zoya True Collection.

This is when I truly fell in love with Zoya polishes. My sister was insane enough to introduce me to Zoya in November 2011. And I think at the point of this post I had probably over 20 Zoyas haha. WHAT?! Nails past my skin!? I don't believe it! I think I finally realized I was a total idiot haha

In March of 2012 , I took a leap into the world of PR and reviews. I got approved to review and swatch polishes for Zoya's Beach & Surf Collection:

When those polishes showed up at my front door, I can't even tell you how excited and special I felt. I worked my little butt off to make these swatches look as perfect as I could, not wanting to disappoint Zoya or what little amount of readers I had at the time.

You can also tell what a long way the skin on my hands had came at this point. I know a lot of you know I was born with severe Eczema. My hands and feet are the TWO spots that did not fade as I got older and are still problems for me. I can tell you this though, ever since I started this journey - my hands are the nicest they've looked my entire 23 years of life. Sure, I have my flare up days - but those are just a few days out of months of having almost "normal" looking  hands.

In April of 2012 I took a HUGE leap into nail art!

In April, I decided to adventure more into nail art, improving skills here and there. This is when nail art really started to hit my blog. This is also when I was posting more about Indies. I would say I started buying and becoming more interested in Indie polish in March 2012, but they made their way to my blog in April.

Those are mostly the biggest steps I took for my blog. The rest is the Lace & Lacquers you mostly know today. It's fun to look at the past and realize how far you have came! My nail art has come a long way and so have my photos of swatches.  Eczema was one thing holding back this dream I had to blog about nail polish for awhile, and I have overcame that obstacle! I'm not going to bore you by going over my entire year haaha, if you want to see that you can see my archive in the sidebar :]

I'm not one who sets goals very often or go after dreams. The only goal I've ever made for myself was to graduate college. And even after that it was kinda like... *shrugs* greattttttttttttttt haha. I think nail blogging was truly the only dream I've ever gone after and decently tried to go after. It still amazes me that I have been contacted by companies and Indie brands to review polishes. It flatters me to no end that someone enjoys MY work. And I think I owe a lot to Zoya, if they didn't give me a chance in March - I never would of changed my style of swatching or photographing if it wasn't for them letting me swatch their Beach and Surf Collection.

So, I guess I'll get sappy here. If you want to do something - DO IT. Don't let your mind or other people hold you back. Just keep trying. If you don't like how your work (in this case my blog) looks or is presented - DO SOMETHING about it to make your own dream go far. It's your dream - not someone else's - so why not try to reach it at it's fullest?! This is why you see me change things here and there... I'm not settling for what I have ALREADY done with my dream, I'm trying to achieve my idea of my dream's perfection.

So, I owe a lot to my readers, too! You guys support me by reading my blog (aka letting me know I'm not doing a crap ass job), chatting with me on Facebook, stalking me on Instagram. THANK YOU. This is a small token of my appreciation:

Prize is (1) Orly Cosmic FX French Manicure Set [ Orly Space Cadet, Liquid Vinyl, Top 2 Bottom, 2 rows of round french guides, 2 rows of pointed french guides and instruction booklet]

December 28th 2012 - January 13th, 2013 12:00 AM EST
- US and Canada only
- 18+ or parents' permission only
- Winner has 48 hours from when email is sent to contact me or else a new winner will be chosen
- Entries by the winner will be confirmed for accuracy
- Duplicate entries, made by duplicate accounts will be deleted
- Cheating is not acceptable
- I am not liable if you do not respond to my email before the time specified in the email
- I am not liable if the package is lost/stolen/damaged
- Any customs fees are your responsibility
- All items in this giveaway are brand new, never used and purchased by Lace & Lacquers
- This giveaway is not sponsored
a Rafflecopter giveaway I hope you'll stick around for another year with me :] My last year of blogging has been an amazing changes, I can't wait to see what this next year brings for Lace & Lacquers!