31DC: Water marble

Dun dun DUN!  It is the dreaded water marble challenge!  Coincidentally, today is my four-month anniversary of starting this blog and I just hit 450 views!  I know that for many bloggers that is small potatoes, but I'm pretty surprised that I kept going this long and that anyone cares to see what I'm up to!  Thank you (yes YOU, right now reading this) for stopping by!
So onto the water marble horror.  Because galaxy nails were so amazing, I had the cocky idea that this would be much easier than I thought too.  I can hear you laughing now.
I watched tutorials and thought I was prepared.  This is what happened.

 

*1 coat Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Hardener
*1 coat Zoya Ginessa on thumb as base
*Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Green With Envy (2 coats on all but thumb)
*Color Club Revvolution
*Color Club Wild At Heart
*1 coat Seche Vite

This is what was sorta usable out of all of my fingers.  One thumb.  Even that is a little funky.  I was going to skip this challenge, or swap it with tomorrow's, but I went for it.  It was pretty disastrous.  I wanted to use some Halloweeny colors, and thought that the super-opaque holos would be good.

I tried dripping the colors in different orders.  I tried dragging the polish differently.  The one positive was that my taping made for almost no clean up for my whole hand.  I kind of wish that I had photographed all the botched nails.  I want to be honest about polish adventures here, and I think that it helps when you are starting out to know that others have made messes too.  I want to know that I'm not the only one who makes a sloppy mess!  But, I also let my pride take over and kept a little dignity...

So I used the same polish and did a funky French with the marble as my accent.  I used 2 coats of Green With Envy and taped off the ends for Wild At Heart.  I actually like this combo for Halloween and may need to do it again before the month's over.

 

 

It's kind of hard to see the charcoal holo of Revvolution in the water marble.  The purple of Wild At Heart is more dominant.  I think next time I might just use creams, because Green With Envy tended to stay put and was a strong color.  My polish just dried so fast on the water that it was already a film when I finished dropping colors.  I couldn't really drag it and it all pulled down with my finger.

What have you found works with water marbles?  Are there some polishes that you find work better than others?  How do you keep it from drying before you're ready?  I think I'd like to try again, but I'd love some advice to help improve my technique!