Schleifchen und Pünktchen (again)

Lately, I have been going through a couple of my old blog posts, looking at the design I posted back then. I didn't change my polish/nail art as often back then and I still feel like I accomplished some great designs. But I realise that quite a bit has changed since then. My nails are way longer, I actually try to take care of my cuticles, but most of all, after one and a half year of nail art, I feel like I can do better with my paint brushes.

I had been eyeing one of my old designs for a while now: Schleifchen und Pünktchen. I really liked it and, actually surprisingly, it's currently in the top10 most viewed posts. I felt like wearing something cute again and had a couple of matching polishes on my desk: so here is a retry on this particular design. I didn't change much!

The only significant polish I changed is the white shimmery base. Instead of essence diamonds and pearls, I used W7 Polar Bear. I just had it on my desk and it's an untried, so this was decided. The other polishes are the same: p2 elegant for the tip, Manhattan 51K and Catrice Sweets of my Sweets for the ribbons. The black I used for the dots is essence black is back.

Since I wore W7 Polar Bear for the first time, I didn't know how it would behave. It's actually quite sheer. What you see here are three coats and it could have used a fourth on some nails. Luckily, it's not only sheer, but thin as well, so three coats didn't  make my nails look thick.

After painting my tips with p2 elegant, I dotted the edges with Manhattan 51K to start the lacey part. All of the lace was done with this dotting tool. One of the advantages of longer nails is certainly the increased space to paint on. I couldn't have done the lace part like this last year. It'd have covered up 1/3 of my nail.

Last time, I drew the light pink parts of the bow first and later outlined it with the darker pink. I did it the other way around this time, because it's easier to control the size of the bows that way. It worked fine - maybe due to increased brush control. The final step was adding my black dots to the tip. Well... I didn't get much better at this.

My final thoughts about this... I like the black dots in my first manicure way better. They're much more delicate. But I like the pink details better here. That's partly because of the space I had at hand this time. And even though I wasn't sure about it at first, I like Polar Bear better as the base color.

I still feel like I'm neglecting one of my favorite polishes. p2 elegant is a beautiful color and I really think I'm going to do a swatch post for this polish (even though it's discontinued). I haven't worn it since the first dots and bows mani! That's certainly the downside of being a nail polish collector...

Which one do you like better? First of second version?