China Glaze Ombres Sets

At Sally Beauty Supply the other day, I found the coolest looking sets for DIY ombre nails.  There were three color palettes to choose from, but naturally I had to pick up all three.  The boxes come with instructions on how to achieve the look, and it looked so easy.  It was, but then again it wasn't.  There are definitely some tricks to getting it to look like the photos, but I think I came pretty close.  The pink set came out the best.  What do you think?

The purple one kept losing color on the tip while I was dabbing trying to blend.  For some reason it wasn't sticking.  Also, if you aren't wiggling it up and down along the nail, it gives it a really textured look from the sponge instead of the smooth blended look in the photos.  If I were doing this on my nails, I'd probably do two coats of color.

It's really hard to see the gradation of the greens, because the two middle colors of green are too similar to see much of a difference at all.  

Here are all of the single swatches of color.  The first color of each I did two swatches so that I could show the ombre on the first and then still have each of the single colors next to it. The pink is really pale and doesn't show well on the nail wheel, and the green is a pure white.  But there's a blank nail in between each color set to keep them separate. The darkest green color is also weirdly matte instead of glossy like all the other colors.  I think the greens are my least favorite set, but the middle two colors are pretty on their own.

The directions show to dab it directly on the nail and wipe the color off the skin afterwards, but I'd recommend either putting cuticle oil around the skin or even using masking tape to make clean up much easier.
 

The pinks came out better because by then I learned to do thin strips of color and not use so much of the lightest when I sponged it out.   I think I'll do this as a video some time coming up if my nails grow out enough.  They've broken off almost every finger now.  Oddly, the middle finger on my right hand is the only left still unbroken!