Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Painting with Glimmer Mist

Have you ever been working on a layout and just couldn’t come up with the right color embellishment. Here is an option you can try the next time you want a butterfly, flower or other shape in a custom color for your layout.

I was working on a layout using a sweet picture of my nephew. I wanted pretty blue butterflies that would go with my background paper. I had recently picked up a set of Hero Arts clear stamps that included a nice butterfly and decided to paint one for the layout.



Here is a list of the supplies I used to make my butterflies:

White cardstock
Color Box pigment ink black
Hero Arts Antique Engravings stamp set (CL383)
Stampendous Detail Black Embossing Powder
Embossing heat tool
Glimmer Mist Lavender Fields
Glimmer Mist Pearl
Glimmer Mist Tiger Lilly
Glimmer Mist Pink Bubblegum
Glimmer Mist Sea Mist
Artists Pallet with small wells
Small paint brush



To get started I stamped a butterfly on white cardstock and before my ink dried I sprinkled it with black detail embossing powder. After tapping away the excess powder, I heated it with my embossing tool. I stamped and embossed several butterflies so I’d have a few to experiment with as I painted them. By embossing the butterfly image it was easier to paint the different sections of the butterfly and keep the different colors separate.

I choose the paint the butterflies with Glimmer Mist for a couple of reasons. First Glimmer Mist is a water based product so it is easy to mix colors together and clean up is easy too. It also has a pretty metallic sparkle when it dries. It doesn’t take a lot of Glimmer Mist to paint a stamped design. So I shook my bottles to mix up the sparkle, and then sprayed a small amount into a small round plastic artist’s pallet. The pallet has several shallow wells so I could have all my colors ready to use and a few spots for mixing them as well. To achieve the blue on my butterfly I mixed the colors Lavender Fields with Pearl. This created a lighter blue, almost a periwinkle. When you begin to paint there is one trick you need to follow. Each time you dip your brush into a color, give the Glimmer Mist a brief stir before lifting your brush from the well. This will keep the sparkle mixed in your color and prevent all the metallic particles from settling to the bottom of the pallet well. Experiment with colors and if you don’t achieve the color you want by mixing the colors in your pallet, you can also try painting your butterfly in layers. Just let your first color completely dry before trying to paint the next color on top of it. Here is a close up of my completed butterfly. Hope you have fun!



8 comments:

  1. Oh - cool idea. Your butterfly and layout are beautiful. Thanks.

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  2. wow, totally cool. thanks for this tutorial.

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  3. wow, Dolores, what an awesome idea! your butterflies (and layout) are so beautiful - thank you for the tutorial!

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  4. Holy Smokes ! this is totally awesome! thank you so much for sharing this technique ...can't wait to go play with this!

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  5. Those butterflies turned out so well. I love playing around like that.

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  6. SUCH a cool tutorial Delores! I will definitely be trying this one!

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  7. Great idea and what an adorable layout!

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