Beach Themed Gradient

I had a couple purposes for this mani...first of all, I'm in absolute love with the gradients I've seen from The Nailasaurus' new method of doing sponge gradients....the oh so faint and subtle gradient line is simply amazing!  So I thought I'd try my hand at it.  Unfortunately, while my end result was a gradient, my attempts did fail in that the gradient didn't flow or blend into one another; my colour lines are still too obvious.  THEN I reread the tutorial and seen where I went wrong, so I'll definitely have to try it again.  The second purpose of the mani was my contribution for this weeks Adventure in Stamping FB challenge, to do a mani with a plate that ends in 5.  This is what I came up with.

Started with a base of Sally Hansen Instadri in yellow.  It probably has a number, but I couldn't find a name.  I really liked how bright this colour is and it had great coverage in two coats; but I had bought it to use as a stamping polish and only used it in a pinch as I was away for the weekend and only had a limited number of polishes with me.  Unfortunately, the brush on these polishes really turn me off from using them for any nail polishing, just stamping. 

Then did my sponge gradient using the SH yellow, FingerPaints Original Orange and OPI Red My Fortune Cookie. As far as sponged gradients, I guess this is OK, but was a fail if it as my intention was for it to look like The Nailasaurus' gradual gradient.

Stamped using SdP 15 using Konad black special polish.

Top coated with SV.

Hope you had a fantastic weekend and thanks for looking!