Polish Party: Recreate Your First Nail Design - Red and Black Hearts

Hello all,

The end of the month brings around a Polish Party design.  July's theme is a good one - Recreate your first nail design.  I have been painting my nails since I was quite young and I remember painting my nails alternatively with lilac and a dark purple and I'm sure I must have painted the odd stripe or dot here or there, but I reckon we'll just go for the first one blogged about!  This works out as an especially good theme for me as my blog turned two at the beginning of the month, so it was nice to look back and see how I launched Pinkglow's Pretty Polish.

Red and black Valentine's hearts

I almost don't want to show you the original as it would be something I wouldn't dream of including on my blog now, but it does show progression...

The first obvious improvement you can see is the quality of the photographs I add.  On the day I first posted to my blog I added for different designs (This one was the first nail design I posted on Instagram) and they hadn't been painted specifically for blogging purposes, so I had only taken phone camera photos to keep track of what I had done.

The second major improvement is my clean up.  I seem to have made a right mess here (although I still think I manage to make a bit of a mess with black... is that just me?) and I wouldn't be posting this now without having sorted that beforehand.  Having said this I think my nail painting technique has improved overall anyway and my post painting clean up tends to be minimal these days.

Here you can look at the two side by side - Much better now right?

You can see that I decided to mix things up a little bit this time round.  Originally I went with a glittery red and plain black, but have gone for the other way around this time.  I used Models Own Thunder and Lightning for my black base and Red Lustre from the HyperGel collection for the red.  This is mainly because I LOVE this Thunder and Lightning polish and had my eye on it for a while, but since caving a few months ago and buying it, I haven't actually had chance to wear it!  I could have used the same colours as the original as they are still part of my collection.

To make the red hearts stand out more this time round I added them first in Models Own Snow White and then went over them with red.  They are made by adding a dot of polish and dragging it down to make a tear drop shape, then repeating the same steps again with another dot connecting the joins at the base to create the point of the heart.

The last notable improvement, I think, has been the quality of my posts.  I think this is only natural as you progress with a blog though.  Where do you think my main improvements have been?  Don't forget to take a look at the other girls' recreations below.

Thanks for stopping by
Aimée x

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