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Hello!
This month, the Digit-al Dozen is recreating our first mani posts, and I have to admit, I've been both looking forward to and dreading this theme...
I love looking at manis and doing a second version or another take, but my first manis make me wince in pain. I started blogging in April of 2012, nearly six and a half years ago, back when nail blogging was fairly new--and Konad was pretty much the only stamping game out there. It's safe to say that even now it's obvious I'm not a professional nail tech nor a professional photographer--but looking back then, it looked like I was doing nail art and taking pictures while in a full body cast!
But, I took a deep breath and I went back, and pulled out my very first few full manis to recreate. Today I'm going to start with the one that will change the least in the recreation, because it was actually not too bad in terms of design:
Oh, yeah, that makes me wince--but it's actually the best of the retro pics I'm going to be dredging up this week. The hand position is horrible, the photography is overexposed, and I apparently hadn't heard of topcoat. But, all the nails are in focus, and compared to my other pictures at this time, my cuticles don't look too bad--I think I must have been wearing this for a day and the polish on my cuticles had worn off, hehehehe. And, while the stamping is novice and a bit messy, the positioning isn't bad considering those were the days before clear stampers. Long before.
So, what would I do differently? When I did the original mani, I was going for a sophisticated color combo, but I went a little too dark with the base coat, and a little too bland for the stamping polish (of course, back then we didn't have many choices for stamping polish!), so the whole thing ended up muddy. And, because the stamping polish was a big bland, the purple rhinestones didn't add to the look, they just seemed off.
To brighten things up for my recreation, I started with a lighter basecoat, with Zoya McKenna. I kept the same image, from Bundle Monster BM-201, which I stamped with Hit The Bottle Polish Auberginie, which contrasted beautifully! I dropped the accent nail down all the way to the cuticle, and let the other tips come down a bit lower for more impact. Then I used half-pearls rather than rhinestones to complement the color of the stamping polish rather than compete with it:
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| Bundle Monster BM-201 over Zoya McKenna |
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| Bundle Monster BM-201 over Zoya McKenna |
So what do you think? Do you like this brighter version? Or should I have stuck with a darker approach?
I'll be back tomorrow with a bad, bad first mani, and my attempt to make it better. In the meantime, check out the other ladies' recreations, linked below.
M. xoxo
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