Elina Koutsouradi Glimmer Mists

Glimmer mist 101

 General Instructions:

• It is water soluble so don’t worry about messing your hands or clothes, it does come off!!
• I always spray once outside my scrap area, in order to be sure my spray nozzle isn’t jammed and won’t make blots or stains to my layout.
• When spraying from a close range you get the drops and blots effect.
• When spraying from further away you get a lighter and evenly spread effect.
• In case you want a smooth effect of your paper coloring with mists, you can gently dab your misting with tissue paper in order for it  to look as if it was water-colored with a sparkle!
• If you are in a hurry, of course you can dry your misting faster with your heat gun! Make sure to apply some heat on the back of the paper too to prevent warping.

Glimmer mist and masks:

1. Place your mask on the desired spot and spray on top of it starting always with the lighter color first and keep layering with different colors until you are satisfied with the result.
   
   
2. Pick up your mask with some tweezers (you don’t want to misplace it and ruin your result)
   
3. For a second masking just flip your mask and place it down to your paper and use it as a stamp! Gently tap with your fingers so that the excess mist on the mask transfers to the paper and there you have a darker shade of your pattern!
   
   

Alternative masks:

• Though I have used the Tattered angels masks, you can use anything with the same result. Here is another example where I have used some laced patterned paper as my mask. The trick is to apply some repositionable glue just to keep it in place!
  
  
• Other masks you can use are die cuts, scraps of paper, coins, leaves, anything you can imagine that you can afterwards whipe with some wet tissue paper.

Glimmer mist and stamping:

• How about inking your stamps with some glimmer?? Start by misting from a fair distance with some light colors and then start adding up layers of colors for a rainbow effect.
• I usually tap my stamp first so that the excess liquid comes off from the stamp and then I stamp like with any other ink! Of course the technique works best with stamps with large images rather than detailed ones.

Glimmer mist coloring:

• How about using your glimmer mists as watercolors. Mist on your color palette and dab a brush to the color and start painting exactly as you would do with any other paint. It dries up fast and gives a fantastic shimmer to your designs. You can paint your background paper, your image stamp, your flowers, anything porous.

Don’t have glimmer mists? Why don’t you make some of your own?

• For a similar effect you could blend some mica powders or perfect pearls or shimmerz with water in a spraying bottle!
• You could really dilute your acrylic paints in a spraying bottle (lots of water and shaking needed) and get the spraying effect though without the shimmer. Just get creative!