Purple Aqua and White Water Marble

Water marbling and I are not friends. I got very frustrated trying to do a water marble for an upcoming post and I decided I needed better polishes. So I broke my no buy and got some polishes from local to me brand Bettina Cosmetics because I had read once on PAA that they marbled really well. Read on after the break to see more!

Bettina is a Puerto Rican cosmetics brand that has been around for decades but they've really put out some nice nail polish collections in the past few years. The great thing is that these are easy to find and they are affordable (around $2.50, they vary by location). As you can see from the picture above, they allowed a mediocre water marbler to create a stunning design! I'm really thrilled with how well they work. They spread instantly and stay vibrant.

Bettina offers a lot of different finshes, from cremes to mattes, shimmers, and jellies (no holos or glitters so far). The cremes work the best for marbling, the shimmers are gorgeous and they do spread in the water but they are very light and tend to get muddy looking.

Here's a closer look at my base color, a purple shimmer called Butterfly, this is 3 coats with topcoat (I used Bettina High Gloss). I really wanted to use Butterfly in the marble but it took a lot of trial and error to get it to work. I found that I had to have a combo of creme and shimmer, with most of the drops being cremes. I think this might be a general issue when marbling with shimmers since I've read and heard on tons of YouTube tutorials that they can be tricky and that it's best to stick to cremes when starting to marble. Hopefully with practice I'll be able to get it to work.

Here's a closer look at my water marble. I fairy dusted it because I'm still having issues with water bubbles when I remove my fingers from the water and one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust fixes it. I don't know why but it's just magic over water marbles. In hindsight, I should have done this using the decal method and avoided the bubbles. The colors I used for the marble are Clouds (off white), Aqua (blue), Secret Garden (dark purple), Butterfly, and Daydream (lilac/lavender).

As a fun little experiment I tired several colors and posted them to IG. As you can see, the cremes work well. The shimmers on the right side of the pic sorta work.

What do you guys think? Should I continue to practice my water marbles?

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