★ 2025 wrapped ★ the most colorful year yet & new year resolutions <3

hello and welcome to my 2025 wrapped !!

let’s start with a mixtape of this year’s faves <3

what this year meant for me

I don’t even know where to start, but I’ll have to say that at the beginning of the year I had so many art plans and diff art-related things I wanted to do…. so many that I ended up doing only half of what I had in mind, haha. But before I get to the artsy part, I just wanna say that this year really caught me by surprise (in a good way) from a personal life point of view.

As you know from my first post of 2025, I started the year pretty low, with some kind of winter blues.. but when march hit, it just got better and better <333 I got to reach some personal milestones that maybe aren’t that big in general, but mean a lot to me. First of all, I finally got my bachelor’s diploma, which I was supposed to do in 2023 but due to some health issues, I didn’t & ended up delaying it until I finally said “it’s time” this year. So I travelled to Cluj, took the final exam, nailed it & then had such a heartfelt conversation with my favorite uni teacher… she told me I should never let go of illustration and that she thinks i’m going places with it, oooh, she was a sweetheart !! Also got to reunite with my uni besties and went to a kitsch party like old times xx

On the same note with the education side of things, I also lowkey prepared for two masters, because I’m not sure which one I wanna pursue yet so I just prepared for both and we’ll see :-)) I also got my diploma to become a licensed librarian (??) which was such a random side quest, considering I only ever did art-related things. I loved the challenge tho & I love books and kids, so I might as well start a side life where i’m a school librarian or something, lol.

On the traveling side, I have to say this year was full of mini trips, city breaks, concerts!!!!! and I finally went to the beach after 8 years?? that’s truly insane for me since I love water and everything related to swimming, but I kinda hate the whole roasting-like-a-chicken-in-the-sun part (also the sticky sand is not pretty), so that’s why I kinda stayed away from it all this time. But hey, I swam like a mermaid, sunburned my nose because i’m incompetent, had big laughs, danced & did karaoke nights with my friends on the beach at night, truly a blast xx

I also got to explore Bucharest more, which is kinda wildly late, considering i’ve been living here officially for 2 years now??? lol. I also got to spend a lot of time in my hometown in spring & loved !! every !! second !! of !! it !! as I rarely see my fam & friends that much at a time <3

So basically 2025 was lowkey amazing in terms of personal life & I think that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t get to do all of the art projects I had in mind. But hey, I learned that it’s truly ok to take breaks, enjoy life and have a more balanced work-life schedule, so I really don’t have anything bad to say about this year, truly <3

this year’s art: the most colorful one so far

Now let’s get into the artsy side of life!!!

This year has been such a colorful one, I call it ‘an abundance of oranges and pinks’ <3

I focused mainly on vertical one-piece illustrations & mostly wanted to expand my style in a way I hadn’t really done before. Until this year, my compositions were more focused on portraying snapshots of rooms with pretty whimsical objects or half-body characters, but this year I wanted to try more full-body characters, as well as experimenting with new styles of decorative objects - from different types of lamps to more cheeky accessories. Can’t say I managed to explore these goals as much as I wanted but I think i did good x

In the second half of the year I also tried to introduce more colors that I hadn’t used that much in the past (a bit of blue, lol) & also tried some darker and more pictorial color palettes, which I do enjoy, but I still think the core of my art is the clashing, vivid colors that sometimes take your eyes out :-))

Overall I’m pretty pleased with what I created this year, especially with the ‘two girls at the metro’ artwork, which was also very loved on insta for some reason (it’s the relatableness of being confused with your bestie at Piața Unirii station, I just know it). Another fave would be the ‘backyard movie night’, which is a composition I had in mind since 2024 & loved seeing it finally come to life.

halloween themed artworks

This fall I entered spooky girl szn mood (as I do every year around Halloween) & dabbled into a more fantasy-fairytale vibe, which was very fun and whimsy ! I’m keeping this energy for 2026 too x

one page comics

And because I mentioned the things I didn’t get to this year, here’s one of them: I wanted to make a lot of short comics (the silly, unserious kind), but I only managed to do one, ahaha. But one is better than none I guess & I love this one so much <3 The idea came to me very randomly, when the hour changed and it was suddenly dark at 4pm ?? even my cat was confused!!

end of the year surprise: the Girlhood Fairytales 2026 Calendar

One of my fav projects I worked on, the 2026 Calendar!! I won’t shut up about it anytime soon btw :-)

I think February & August are my faves bc they perfectly convey what my art was all about in the past two years: a mix of whimsical scenes mixed with girlhood, cheeky elements, friendship and fun !!

art style, topics & some 2025 conclusions

When I think about my art this year, I truly feel like I finally have a pretty good sense of my visual style. At the same time, I’m very aware that I still have a long way to go & that I’ll still change many things along the way - there’s so much more to learn when it comes to composition structure, character anatomy, color combinations (which sometimes still give me a hard time). So even tho I don’t think my style is 100% polished yet (not by a long shot), I do think that I have a somewhat recognizable personal approach & that genuinely makes me so happy, to finally be like ‘hey, this feels very me” <3

Another interesting thing I noticed is that both my 2024 and 2025 artworks kind of blend into this ‘girlhood fairytales’ bubble. They share similar colors, subjects, characters and an overall vibe. What’s funny to me is that I didn’t intentionally try to create a recipe or a common aesthetic between them, as you know from my illo-making-of yapping posts on this blog, I don’t really plan these things :-)) so it’s really cool to look back at all my illustrations and realize, like… damn, my art is so girlhood fairytales, haha. Call it silly, but I think it’s kind of beautiful x

As for something I realized this year: I’m not really the planning-artist type. Ofc when it comes to commissions and shop managing I’m a pro (trust me bro), but when it comes to personal projects, I tend to get a bit messy… mostly because I want to do lots of things at once & then life gets in the way, as adult life tends to do, ha. So I can say 2025 teached me to stop planning 50 things for a single month & let each project have its own moment. Basically… to be more chill, lol.

And to conclude the 2025 yapping, I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty proud of everything I did & created this year !!

2026 resolutions (and non-resolutions)

This might be the funniest part of this post, because I wrote ‘2026 resolutions’ so big in the title but I have so little to say about it, ahahaha, clickbait :p

jk (lowkey), but I honestly didn’t make any resolutions lists or vision boards for this year, I feel like I’m in a place where I just wanna create for the beauty of it, to have fun and just create, create, create <3

One thing that does come to my mind is that I want to experiment more with traditional illustration. I’d love to try mixed media collages and generally get back to what I loved in high school, which was pencil and liner drawing… I used to spend weeks on A3-sized graphic illustrations, go on 8B pencil runs at 9pm or erase the same line five times in a row & I kind of miss the messiness of it all. I would also really love to get back into keeping sketchbooks, I feel like I got a bit lazy with them & I miss going out into the city and freely sketching whatever I see <3

Another thing that has been sitting on my mental goal list for… honestly, idk how many years now (I think it’s even in my 2024 wrapped blog post) is getting more into animation !! I keep putting it off because it always seems easier to work on an insane-amount-of-details artwork that takes me 10 hours, instead of watching an 8-minute Procreate Dreams tutorial and learn smth new for a change ?? make it make sense x

But hey, maybe this year will finally be the lucky one for that !

One thing’s for sure though: I will not get into painting, because I truly think I’m hopeless in that department. I had so many failed attempts this year, the love-hate relationship is actually romantic atp :-))

Oh, and of course, in 2026 there will be more blog posts, I can promise you that. The drawing & yapping combo isn’t going anywhere and since it was kinda weak this year, I have to make up for it in 2026 x

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Hope you enjoyed 2025 as much as I did x

See you next year, xox <3