October Potions - Halloween Challenge #2: Watermarble

Since we joined the Halloween challenge that has posting dates on Mondays and Fridays, my Thursday posts are now moved to Friday temporarily. Today's challenge is watermarbling!

I've only done dry watermarbling before, so to stick to the spirit of the challenge, I attempted a normal watermarble. IT WAS SO DIFFICULT. Omg, how do people do this??

Anyway, here are my results! You get two for the price of one!

[Base: Revlon Lilychrome
Pale green: Essence Viva La Green
Mid-green: Kleancolor Leaves Jingle
Black: Ulta3 Black Satin]

What is going on here?? Unfortunately, I didn't have any mid to dark greens that didn't have glitter in them. :(  I do so love my glitter. So you can see a scattering of green glitter, which looks a little weird. But I guess part of Halloween is about looking a little weird.

On my ring finger, I actually did a double watermarble just to see how that would be like. Basically, I stuck my nail in for one coat, and when it had dried, I did another round. All in all...strange. I picked a green theme for a witchy look.

[Base: Revlon Lilychrome
Yellow/orange: Revlon Orange Fizz
Purple: Revlon Grape Fizz]

On my other hand, I wanted a more mystical, ethereal look, so I used colours which were a lot lighter and I used jelly polish. I did a double watermarble for my pinky finger here too, but that didn't quite work out as well.

For both watermarbling, I used a silver base coat so that the manis looked almost a little chrome.

It took me many attempts to swirl out some patterns on the water (I don't recall it being this hard when I did dry watermarbling!) and I'm still far from being at ease with this manicure method. But I think I could impart some tips so that you can learn from my painful lessons:

1. It doesn't really matter if your nail polish is of great quality or not...what you need is a thin nail polish if it's a creme. Anything that is thick or is a one coater will dry fast on the water, which will make your life so hard.

2. Jelly nail polish actually spread a lot easier on water than creme. So you can use jelly, just make sure to pick darker colours - so that they'll be more visible - and be ready to make more rings.

3. If you're having trouble where the nail polish dries on the water surface too quickly and doesn't spread out on the water, very gently shake the cup. It has to be so gentle that the water surface is rippling like that scene out of Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs are still far away, not when they're pretty close. :P  The slight vibration will help break up the nail polish a little and it will spread out. Keep up the vibration if necessary!

4. Tape around your nails seriously. I found the whole process to be quite mess free because of the tape. Clean up was easy.

5. I know people use toothpicks or other sharp points to swirl and make the patterns on the water, or even to gather up bits of polish so that the water surface is debris-free. I use the lead of a mechanic pencil. I click it a few times so that the lead is a little longer than usual, and when I'm done swirling, I just break off the lead which has bits of nail polish stuck to it. That's easier than having to clean off the tip of a toothpick every time I'm done swirling one pattern.

And that's it! I'm not great at this so I've no more tips. Hope that helps! :)