Water Marbling Manicure FAIL!

I was quite excited when Violet LeBeaux decided to do a nail-growing pledge and I decided to jump in on the fun!  I figured the perfect way to start would be a manicure and I'd been dying to try water marbling, so I went to give it a go.  I used the above colors as I wanted to go for sort of a fire-y look that would be nice for fall.  I was out of white nail polish (EEK), so I used the base coat, then two coats of the neon yellow since it was the lightest of the bunch.

After MANY tries of the dropping and mixing I finally got it to  marble okay, got super excited, and dipped a falsie glued to a nail tool into the bowl for a test run.  This is what I got:

I was STOKED!

Looks awesome, huh?  Unfortunately, that is where the awesomeness ends.  :(

Try after try, I couldn't make it work again.  I tried it with a few other falsies, too, but to no avail.  This is how my other ones turned out:

Yeah, I gave up after those two and went another route, which I will post soon.

No matter how many times I tried, this just kept failing except for the one anomaly up there.  When I'd drop the colors in the water, they wouldn't expand like they do in the various youtube videos, and it was every brand I used, not just one or two.  Once in a blue moon, they would expand, but usually not very much, and when I'd go to swirl, it would all come out in one, nasty, odd clump instead of swirling together.  I never could come even close to the falsie picture...My thumb looks okay int he above picture, but what you can't tell is that there was a massive clump of wadded-up, gloppy nail polish on the end.

By the time I finished, I had the above mess (times about 3, as I threw away 2 other hand fulls), and no longer had any nail polish remover left.

So, FAIL.  Any tips on how to make this work?

At any rate, these are my starting pictures of my nail-growing-out endeavor.  They chip incredibly easily and one already has, so I'll be filing that one down a little, but here goes nothing, and thanks to Violet for the inspiration.

<3 The Wookie Wifey...Who will soon post a not-fail, cute mani!  :)