the 31 Days Challenge Day 31 - Recreate someone else's

Hard to believe... today is the last day of January and the last day of the New 31 Days Challenge. Amazing how time flies when you're having fun! 

So today i'm suppose to recreate someone else's mani from earlier in the challenge. I knew this is the mani I want to try and recreate from the moment it was published! Unfortunately, my recreation attempt ended as a complete fail...

I wanted to try the reverse stamping technique ever since I saw it on Laurie's Day 17 entry in the challenge. I really loved the idea, the technique and the end result of Laurie's. However, I was aiming really high... Laurie is the QUEEN of gradient and stamping. What was I thinking??? LOL

So my idea was to gradient with black and gold and then stamp this really cute beer pint and then reverse the stamp and make it look like my nails are shaking their glasses. When I actually started this mani I learnt that gold and black don't gradient well at all. They just don't mix well. I don't know if it's because of the different finishes or just because I don't know how to mix them, but I tried this gradient 4 times before the one you currently see, which was the closest to "decent"...  But by the time I got this gradient, it was so late that I was in a hurry to finish my mani and go to bed so I didn't let the polish dry enough before stamping, which resulted in wrinkles in the polish layers... 

Also, the reverse part was in fact much harder to achieve then I expected, and as you can see, it turned completely off. *sigh* did I tell you it was fail? Well at least my pinky, index and thumb wear A-England - Beauty Never Fails, which never really fails to look gorgeously beautiful.

I will most definitely give this technique another try! But for now, make sure you check the other entries for the last day of the challenge. I am sure no one else failed this bad...