Then & now: Floral stripe nails

Fun fact: a lot of things that I photograph end up not being posted; I get weird and nitpicky and end up not posting at all out of frustration/exasperation/older photos getting buried under new content. I recently uncovered a couple photos of a nail art look I did last year that didn't go up probably for one of the above-mentioned reasons:

Essie St. Lucia Lilac / Orly Luxe / Orly Ancient Jade / L'Oreal Colour Riche Violet Vixen
I love the florals-on-stripes look and decided to try it for myself, even though I don't have much practice painting either. Stripes came out a bit uneven, using gold to define the rose petals looked a little confusing against the gold stripes, etc. etc.

Here's the look again a year later with my steadier hand, (hopefully) better technique, and better assortment of nail art brushes:

China Glaze Lotus Begin / Orly Luxe / Orly Ancient Jade / Clinique Grape Ice / Zoya Ciara
I swapped out the more muted lilac of Essie St. Lucia Lilac with the punchier China Glaze Lotus Begin, and used Clinique Grape Ice as the base colour for the roses and Zoya Ciara to define. A little better but not by leaps and bounds since I practice roses never .__.

Anyway, the whole thing has kind of inspired me to try recreating some of the old nail art from 2 years ago to show how I've improved, and by extension, how anybody else can get better too :>

Have you ever tried to recreate or improve on your old makeup/nail looks?