Tutorial: Make Your Own Glimmer Mist
September 21, 2009
It's no secret that I love and adore spray ink of any kind. But, my first love was Glimmer Mist by Tattered Angels.
I remember when I first discovered Glimmer Mist. My friend Cheryl and I were headed to a weekend crop in New Jersey. We decided to take full advantage of the rental car and visit some local scrap stores in Jersey. One of them had a large display of it.
I was intrigued.
I bought a few bottles and put them in my crop bag.
Well, I could NOT stop spraying all weekend long! I was a Glimmer Mist maniac! It was totally addictive. You could add the slightest hint of color and shine to absolutely anything. The darker colors gave everything a wicked painted look that I loved.
In many ways, I mark that crop as the beginning of my obsession with paint. I had used paint before, but that's where it really became an integral part of my layouts.
During the crop, I bought several more bottles, along with some Glimmer Screens (stencils).
Whenever I have extolled the virtues of Glimmer Mist, I've heard complaints: the nozzle clogs, the colors aren't intense enough, my paper buckles, etc. All of this is true. There are some things you can do to help, though...
- To keep the nozzle from clogging, don't shake the bottle upside down. Use a side to side motion. That works for me.
- The darker colors are more intense than the lighter ones (duh), but you can also spray in layers (drying with a heat gun in between).
- To flatten your paper, use a household iron on the cotton setting. Or spray the other side with water. It should even out the tension of wet vs. dry.
But, now I've discovered an even better way to solve many of these problems! (With a few added bonuses!) You can make your own Glimmer Mist quite easily and inexpensively. This is a technique that Tim Holtz shared with us at Ranger U.
Supplies Needed:
- Mini Mister (or other spray bottle)
- Distress Ink Re-Inker
- Perfect Pearls (This is important because Perfect Pearls have a binder in them so the sparkle stays and doesn't rub off. If you use another powdered pigment product, you will have to add some sort of binder to it - gum arabic, hairspray, etc.)
- Water
- Popsicle Stick
It's so simple to do:
1. Put a scoop (or two) of Perfect Pearls into the empty Mini Mister.
You can use a popsicle stick to scoop. It's really just a pinch of Perfect Pearls. You can see the amount I've put into the Mister in the photo above. Hardly anything.The more Perfect Pearls you put in, the more shiny your spray will be. And you can use gold, silver, copper, green, blue, whatever color of Perfect Pearls you'd like. It will color your mist a bit, which is fun.
(You'll notice that my Mini Mister is slightly blue. The last color of mist I had in it was blue. But, it's completely clean, which is important.)
2. Put several drops of re-inker into your Mini Mister.
You can use as much or as little as you want. I like to use one dropper full.3. Add water.
Be careful not to fill it up to the top because you will need to shake it up (to mix the Perfect Pearls, which settle at the bottom).4. Shake that mist and you're ready to spray! Here's what the mist looks like:
I sprayed quite close to the paper (that's why you see the large spray of color with the small dots surrounding it). If you spray from farther away, you'll get a finer mist.
I like to make my own custom colors and keep a page in my notebook for jotting down combinations I particularly like. One of my favorites is a kind of clear glimmer spray, made by mixing several scoops of Perfect Pearls and water - no reinker.
Here are a few layouts I've done recently with homemade Glimmer Mist:
Have fun misting!