Gentian's Photographic Misadventures

[Gentian]

After allowing them to dry overnight, it was time to try my hand at the designs themselves. The 3 designs I'd selected were Twilight's cutie mark (of course), the Equestrian Seal, and Princess Celestia's cutie mark. I almost did Sunset Shimmer's instead, but as I've already done something for her, and poor, wonderful, Princess Celestia doesn't get nearly enough love, I did one of hers instead.

These were not as easy as I'd hoped, but not in the ways I was anticipating. Even though I'd bought the finest brushes available, they were still far too broad, and were quite unsuitable for the level of detail required. Eventually I hit on the idea of using a sewing needle, but thought the hard steel might damage the base layer, and substituted toothpicks, which you can see there by the water. They were not easy to work with as make-shift brushes, and were still too blunt for the really fine work, for which I ended up having to whittle the points as fine as a needle with my pocket knife, but we made do.