Dragon skin gradient

Last year Sveta Sanders on Instagram did an amazing dragon skin gradient using crackle polish.  It was the first the I saw crackle polish look amazing and I knew back then that i had to attempt her design.  Then last month when it was Digital Dozen Nail Heroes week, Laurie over at Dressed up Digits tried her hand at the design and reminded me that I hadn't yet done it.

So then the search began through my helmers to actually find a bottle of crackle polish.  It turns out I actually don't own much of it.  I have a few bottle of China Glaze metallic crackles, but they don't crackle the right sort of way, they are more shatter than crackle.  The only bottle I had was a bright orange Barry M version that was a 'web' effect.  It created exactly the pattern I wanted but it did one strange thing.

I started with a white base and then applied the web effect Barry M polish.  As it dried it created a nice crackle look that was a good match to dragon skin. But then as I applied my metallic gradient over the top i noticed that the crackle polish just kept shrinking and shrinking, and the gaps between each scale became larger and larger.  It didn't matter how much I then tried to add more gradient on top to fill in the gaps that were starting to show bare nail through, cause it just kept shrinking up.  In the end I just left it with the huge gaps.  I didn't end up putting top coat on either as I didn't want it to shrink even more.

The used some Sally Hansen Color foils for the gradient.