Hi Goddesses
Are you sitting comfortably? Good, let’s resume our journey, and revisit the car crash which was the start of my nail blogging career.
I’m not a particularly arrogant person, but I am confident, and many times I’ve said “that looks easy, I can do that” and tried it, and realised I was wrong. Ergo – nail blogging. I really did think you could slap it on, click click click and then tap tap tap and ta dah! Blogger! But it doesn’t work that way, does it.
So let’s have a laugh and look at some of my earliest posts.
Firstly, some observations –
They are quite high-handed in tone. I think I wanted to be a scientific blogger who talked about opacity and precise shades. It would take me a long time to realise that my voice was my best asset
They all started with this bollocks about “if I can’t photograph it accurately, I won’t post it”. I took that stick out of my ass shortly after
They are messy. As Momma would say, Clean Up in Aisle 9 !! There is mess all outside the lines! Argh (and yes, I used to leave the house like this, not consider it wrong, and then condemn the people who dared to challenge me about it)
There is no top coat. How did I not know top coat was the best invention of all time?
Oh and the date stamp. The lovely, always awkwardly placed date stamp. I thought it added historical something. Really it was just a giant pain in the ass.
So let’s looks at some photos – lol, some of them aren't even in focus !!
Looking back, they’re really quite painful. What makes me laugh in hindsight is that I expected to get followers when my nails looked like that. In my defence though, I don’t think it even OCCURRED to me that there were women out there with literally pixel-perfect nails.
So, not only is the polishing bad, but so is the positioning, the shit in the background, the lack of cropping, the bad bad lighting (the one thing I’ve probably still not totally resolved) and oh … I just want to move along, and quickly!
Initially, I think Colette from Simple Little Pleasures was my biggest influence. I loved her swatch posts with the poses in the various types of lighting, and I think more than anything I wanted to show a polish how it really looked (how annoying is it when you buy a polish online and it turns out looking nothing like the photo).
I’ll also share a post with you from August last year, because word for word it captures how I felt at the time –
Then I discovered PAA on Facebook and my life changed. Suddenly I had all these women who I could discuss nail polish openly with, and who I could ask, “how did you DO that?” Through them I also found more great blogs.
My next stride forward was probably October 2011. I had the week off and I just spent most of it swatching the entire Muppets Collection. This was the first time I posted regularly, and posted something “on trend” and with great labels – and it worked. As did the Giveaway. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, because I will cover this off in another post.
And then we had the Christmas Challenge. Ah, damn you nativity scene! I mention this for 2 reasons, well, maybe 3. One, if you want to improve, you really have to commit, and nothing forces you to improve like the discipline of a nail art challenge. Secondly, this was where I really learnt that my readers like me for my writing as much as my nails – they like my snark, my humour and the way – number 3 – I mock myself. And let’s face it, sometimes there is no other apology for my nails than to mock myself.
So who influences me now? Well, lots of different people actually, and not even the same people who were in my Top 10 of 2011. Possibly one of the biggest influences has been Lauren from Dizzy Nails – it’s certainly what’s inspired both the layout of the blog and the unapologetic overabundance of photos.
Anyway, enough rambling for today - tomorrow is all about how to build your blog. Girls, we're gonna Pimp It!!
Anyway, enough rambling for today - tomorrow is all about how to build your blog. Girls, we're gonna Pimp It!!
