Dabbling with Sharpie Markers

I've resisted getting into Sharpie marker mani's; I find that I have enough nail art supplies (polishes, plates, stamping polishes, numerous varieties of studs and rhinestones, striping tape, vinyls, stickers, loose glitter and flocking powder, nail art brushes, hole punches, stencils, foil, dotters...did I forget any?) spread out in my space and didn't want to add yet another component to them. But then I seen some on sale and thought why not?  So I watched a few YouTube or IG mini tutorials and went for it.  This is what I came up with. Oh, and be forewarned, this post is probably a lot of what you shouldn't do relating to Sharpie marker mani's!

Started with a base of two coats each of Pahlish Bespoke Mauna Loa II and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, top coated with Girly Bits What A Rush QD TC.

I had scribbled on the bottom of a glass cup a bit, then added a spray or so of rubbing alcohol, then using a brush, put some of the ink on my nail.

After that colour had dried, did it with a couple more colours until I got a design that I was happy with.

Top coated it with Girly Bits What A Rush QD TC, then stamped with an image from UberChic 6-02 using Funky Fingers Dark Knight. But as you can see, the vibrant inks faded to a very faint hue.

When I top coated the stamping, the inks blobbed and went even more yellow.  This wasn't the bright, vibrant Sharpie marker colours I had seen in videos, so went and watched a few more to see hopefully see what I was doing wrong.

I seen or read on a couple blog posts about applying the Sharpie marker directly to the nail, then using some alcohol on a brush to disburse it, so tried this method instead.  I did get them to look a little bit more vibrant. I had also read that the inks shouldn't be top coated until really dry so waited about an hour to topcoat them, but it still faded them a bit, not as bad as a couple pix above, but still not the vibrant look I was looking for.

I guess I'll have to work on this method a bit more.  I did get some tips from the Digit-al Dozen gals who have successfully done this method, but from what they said, you have to use pretty vibrant markers and "some" fading is normal unless top coated with proper gel topcoat.  I am not getting into another product, so I'll have to live with whatever I have already.  But I'm somewhat disappointed that only the more vibrant colours work well with this method because I bought the Sharpie pack with the lighter pastel colours thinking they would be cool, but by the sounds of it, and from what limited experience I have, they will pretty much wash out.  I think they might be OK for direct marker on holo/glitter which I've seen too, but I like the disbursed look with the alcohol.  

Thanks for looking!