Gradiating Green

I decided to play around with gradients this week, and while it wasn't a rousing success, I think I came close. I wanted something light and bright, so I chose China Glaze "L8TR G8TR", a holographic green and OPI's "MegaWatt?", a shimmery sheer yellow for my colors. Unable to remember which way to go with them, I did every other nail light to dark, and vice versa on the remainder. For future reference, light to dark works best (index and ring finger above).

To do the graduation, I started with one color over the whole nail (base coat first, of course). I'll use the light to dark as my example, so MegaWatt? over the whole nail. I did two coats since it is sheer, which made it opaque but very light. Then I did one coat of L8TR G8TR over 3/4 of the nail, leaving the bottom 1/4 yellow. Over that, I did one more coat of the green covering 2/3 of the previous coat, and finally a coat of yellow over the very top 1/3. Then two coats of top coat to seal (I used Avon's base & top coats). I think this would work really well with just a sheer-ish color...something lightly pigmented. One coat over the whole nail, with successive shorter coats up to the tip. Or a dark base color, with a lighter color for the gradient coats (maybe even a sparkle or snow color?). I might have to try that one of these days. With this particular experiment, I just wanted to get a feel for the flow, which worked out nicely.

And even the ones that didn't "turn out" properly still don't look all that bad - it just looks "mottled", and shimmers differently depending on which polish catches the light in any given moment.

Anyone else playing around with gradients? How did you fare with it? Any tips?