Glittered background

 

I saw this technique on Jennifer McGuire’s blog and since I’ve loads of glitter sitting on the shelves I thought why not give it a try. Now let me tell you, playing with glitter is like a kid playing with mud. Its fun but it leads to a LOT of mess! So be prepared for it.

Jennifer used a double-sided adhesive sheet but I didn’t have it so I used just my regular double-sided tape. The adhesive sheet does make the process easy but using the tape wasn’t too hard and it did produce the desired result. So I’m happy not having to buy yet another thing.

I took photos along the way to show you each step. What you’ll need:

• Double sided adhesive sheet or tape
• Background Die or an electronic die cutting machine
• glitter in colors of your choice

Cut a white cardstock 4” X 5.25” in size. Cover it with double sided adhesive tape (or sheet).

Once you’re done, your cardstock would look like this. Do NOT remove the liner of the double sided tape – this is what helps you in die-cutting a background.

I used my Zing to cut a background on the side of the cardstock that has the liner. So when I put it on the cutting mat, the liner side was facing up. You do not need a deep cut; it should just cut through the liner. If you look at the photo below, you can see the cuts made by Zing. The background is from birdscards.com.

Decide which parts of your design will be what color. Start with the darkest color. Remove the liner from places where you want the darkest color. In my case, it was pink. Pour glitter over the exposed areas. Don’t worry if it falls into areas of other colors. We can wipe that later. Once I covered all the areas for pink, I burnished the glitter. I did that by using my bone folder and rubbing it across the whole design. Then clear away the glitter from the liner areas. Jennifer suggests using a baby wipe but that didn’t work for me. I used a painting brush – one with soft bristles. That worked really well as you can see below. Now remove the liner for areas that need to be covered with the next color. In my case it was orange. Follow the above process with the orange glitter.

The last color I used was white glitter. Don’t worry if the glitter falls over the areas with orange and pink glitter. You can wipe that off using the painting brush. Once yo’ve burnished the glitter (again you don’t need to worry that it would stick to other areas – it doesn’t), use your brush to wipe off excess from all areas. You can see below that I forgot to remove the liner for one of the pink colors. No worries. At the end, I just removed that and poured a little pink glitter over it, burnished it and wiped off the excess.

I did al this over a copy paper, so that I could pour the excess glitter back into the container and I didn’t have too much of a mess on my work surface. After covering all areas, this is how it looks.

Isn’t it awesome! To finish my card, I die cut a circle in the finished panel. Cut out the sentiment using Zing. Adhered the sentiment to white cardstock. Added the finished panel on top of the white cardstock using foam tape. Adhered all this to a black base using glue.