NEW 31DC: Merge or Melt

Merge or Melt is another great prompt that is wide open to interpretation. Put simply, it is anything that causes your colors to merge, or melt together. Awesome! I thought I had this one in the bag!

I started with a beautiful grey gradient: base of Revlon Speed Dry Spirit (white), and then sponged on the gradient with Sinful Colors Cool Grey, NYC Sidewalkers and Sinful Colors Ardois. I loved this gradient so much that I promptly effed it up completely-

- with this mess! I tried to do a black, white and clear watermarble, so that my shades of grey would show through. Don't do this! I had moderate success using clear polish (Gelous) to watermarble with during my Christmas challenge, so I thought this would be easy peasy! I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Black on Black and Wet N Wild Clear, for the record. I gave up on the clear after three disastrous attempts on my index finger, and did a straight black and white watermarble. Which was . . . okay. I'm not incredibly proud of it, but every failure is a stepping stone to success, right? 

Does it look better at an angle? . . . not really. I did, however, learn three valuable lessons during this particular prompt. 

1. Don't get cocky! I've only attempted to watermarble twice, and they were both fairly successful, so I thought this one would be no problem. 

2. Quit while you're ahead. That gradient was simple, but I loved it. I did consider just leaving it, but as I did a plain gradient for the Color Opposites prompt, I felt I needed to jazz it up.

3. Don't watermarble with black polish. Just don't! I taped off my nails, I oiled up my cuticles with balm, and I still spent 45 minutes cleaning up. And my cuticles still look a mess. So I think I'll just avoid black from now one! (And red too, most likely.)

Check out the rest of the lovely challengers in the links below- hopefully they were more successful than I was today!