Weeks of Wonder: Make Stamping Shine

The golden light of autumn makes these shorter days feel more precious somehow. I love the challenge of bringing that same shining quality to art projects, too. Today’s technique gives you another option for adding beautiful sparkle to your projects using My Acrylix stamps and glitz glitter gel.

This wreath captures the feel of an autumn afternoon quite nicely. See how the leaves, the pennants, and the letters all have a nice touch of shine to them? That effect comes from combining glitz glitter gel with re-inker to make a solution that is both rich in color and very stamp-able. Take a look at one of the ways you can use this mixture.

Start by stamping your pennant image in Desert Sand ink.

Pour some Bronze Glitz Glitter Gel on the tray from your distressing kit, or any plastic, non-porous surface. Add Cocoa re-inker until you’ve got about two parts glitter gel and one part re-inker. Once you’ve got it mixed, spread the mixture in a thin layer so you don’t pick up too much with your stamp.

Ink your stamp by setting it in the mixture and tapping it up and down a few times to ensure it gets even coverage. Then press firmly onto your project. You’ll want to test your mixture out on scratch paper first to make sure you have the right ratio of glitter gel to re-inker, and to make sure you’ve spread it thinly enough.

This technique lends itself to a lot of experimentation to find out just how much coverage you like, or what degree of glitter will look best. For example, in this card stamping the mixture in second generation achieves a much softer version of the same look.

The glitter gel perfectly accents the harvest colors on this card. You can see that both the flowers and the background stamp were inked in the mixture. Try a variety of stamp designs and see how the touch of glitter makes even your most-used stamps new again.

Have fun trying out this fun way of making your artwork shine this season. After all, nothing combats the gray skies and long nights like a little glitter!