The Good, the Bad, and the...wait, it's just the Bad and the Okay

Like I said in my last post, I'm going to be alternating my current manicure with what I've done between when I started this hobby and when I started this post, until I've posted everything I've done. (Since I started in December, and it's mostly been once a week, there's not a huge backlog. :)
So, today's post is about what's on my nails right now. I redid my nails last Sunday, which is my "normal" day for a manicure, but on Wednesday, a large (like 3mm wide) chunk of the end of my thumnail flaked up, of course taking the polish with it. This flaking problem of mine is why I'm taking biotin and using Sally Hansen's Miracle Cure as a base coat regularly, but even Miracle Cure can't work miracles in just a month. I've had less flaking, but it's certainly not stopped yet.
Regardless, I didn't think highly of my ability to touch up the base coat and glitter I had on at the time without it looking spastic, so I decided that I'd made a clean spot, and now I'd have to do the whole thing! ^_^ (Yes, I'm a geek, I did mention the non-girly part earlier, right? Expect reference to sci-fi movies and shows on a regular basis.)
As you can guess, based on the title, my Wednesday evening did not go to plan...

I started off the evening attempting a red and gold version of a tutorial by IHaveACupcake titled Funky Red Carpet. However, I discovered to my regret that what I thought was gold (just bought it last week and hadn't used it yet) is not nearly opaque enough for this technique. It's too bad, too, because my red went on sooo smoothly in just one coat!
But I'd already had a bad enough day (I stayed home from work due to an overwhelming anxiety attack) and I had an upcoming committee meeting today that I wanted to have a nice manicure for, so I did something I seldom do - stripped the whole thing and started over. Here's what I ended up with:

I started with the same two colors I'd tried to put together originally: an old nail polish I pulled out of my box that I haven't used in ages, Revlon Limited Edition - Wrap Yourself in Rubies, and one of the new polishes I bought last week, Pure Ice - Gold Mist. Since my first vision refused to come out on my nails (and now I know I still need some gold polish!) I picked something else, and decided to do a sponge gradient. So I grabbed my other Pure Ice - Best Friend, and pulled another old polish out of my box that I thought went well as a bridge between the Revlon and the Gold Mist. The label says à la mode by Orly, but there's no color name anywhere (there may have been a sticker label once upon a time that is now missing, I don't know.) You can see from the lid on that one that 1) I've had it forever, and 2) I let my daughter paint her own nails...she's 7. :)

Sponging from base to tip was done in the order in the picture, from left to right: Best Friend, Gold Mist, Orly, and then Rubies. Then I added some rhinestones on my accent nails, and declared myself done.

I'm not terribly happy with the result, but it's not bad. I've got some nasty bubbling on a few of the nails, though, which annoys the heck out of me. Also, the accent nails are slightly different on my two nails - I had intended to leave them with the base color, Best Friend. I did mention I'd had a crappy day, right? So I'm not paying enough attention to what I'm doing, really...I sponged on Gold Mist on one accent nail before I noticed. Well, fudge. To salvage it, I put on a straight coat of Gold Mist and decided to leave the accent nails *that* color instead. Then I noticed because I'd sponged it on part-way, it now had a gradient color shade that looked nice. So I did the same on the other hand to match. Then I started the sponging with the Orly...you see where this is going? I managed to skip the accent nail on my right hand. When I realized I'd already sponged my ring finger on my left hand? *sigh* So I decided to sponge it all the way down. And then, because one finger is slightly gold tinted and the other is a light rose-gold? I did a slight color rearrangement on the rhinestones I had planned. You can see the red-yellow-red rhinestones on the left hand? It's yellow-red-yellow on the other hand. :) That screw-up turned out to be my favorite part of the entire manicure. 

And of course, I don't notice until after I took that picture that the teardrop "red" on my right hand is more of a purple. It looks red by itself! It doesn't look purple like that until I hold them next to each other. :::sigh:::