Love Shot

Originally posted on December 15, 2018.

Just gonna say straight up that everything about EXO's Love Shot comeback killed me. The song, the styling, the music video, the choreo... I was perfectly happy to watch the music video over and over again while planning this design.

The day has finally come.... SM has bested me with an exo logo 😭 There were just too many little facets of the diamond logo to try to paint, so I had to scale it back to a vector drawing instead 💎

I don't remember a ton about the design process for this set to be honest, but looking back on it I'm still really happy with how streamlined the colour scheme is. Red, white, and black seems to be a good combo for a well-balanced design.

Aside from the thumb nail, I think the first nail I decided on was the "L of hearts" on the pinky. I think Jongdae held that card up in one of the teasers so I was thinking about it even before the whole MV was released. Love that it can stand for both "Love Shot" and "EXO-L"! (201217 edit: I cannot BELIEVE that it's been two years since this design came out and I JUST noticed that the L of Hearts card has 9 hearts for OT9 😭)

The target on the ring finger was originally inspired by the posters for the album, but I tweaked it a bit and added the heart in just to reinforce the whole "love shot" theme.

I chose to recreate Xiumin's eyes when he's wearing the black mask because it popped up a few times in the video and had something to do with the storyline, and also because black base matched well with the logo on the thumb.

Now, I promise this is a PG blog, but I had to include the "gochu blast shot" point choreo in this design, I just had to (please forgive me) 😂 If you're not sure what I'm talking about I would encourage you to check out EXO's v-live broadcast from December 13th.

While I do love that nail, every time I put things like realistic hands and eyes into my design plans I expect my friend Joanne to be like “you sure you want to paint that?” And every single time she just goes with it and lets me spend hours trying to shade with nail polish. I guess it's for the best though, since those nails usually turn out pretty cool.

The background for that nail is inspired by the red backgrounds from some of the members' teaser photos!

Below you can see the transition from sketch to nail art!
I couldn't get a close enough shot of any of the members' hands doing this move to be able to see the shading well enough, so instead I used a picture of my own hand for reference. 🤷‍♀️

You can find the tutorial for this design on my youtube channel below! If you decide to recreate this design for yourself, please remember to tag your pics with #looknyanails so I can see all of your pretty recreations!

Enjoy!

Products Used:
CND - Cream Puff
CND - Vinylux Topcoat
Essie - Cocktail Bling
Essie - Grow Stronger Base Coat
Essie - Licorice
Essie - Master Plan
Essie - Mink Muffs
Essie - Mixtaupe
Essie - Parka Perfect
Joe - Plaster
Londontown - Londoner Love
Maybelline - Moka Chic
OPI - My Vampire is Buff
Sally Hansen - Eel Skin
Sally Hansen - In Nude-tral

xo,
Becca