Make Your Own Christmas Baubles Using Luminarte Primary Elements Polished Pigments / Tipnique Tuesday

As I have some Luminarte Primary Elements Polished Pigments to give away in my post below this, I thought this Tuesday I would share one of the MANY ways to use Luminarte Primary Elements Polished Pigments as my Tuesday Tip or Technique. As they are intensely pigmented powders made with mica and built in binders they are perfect to paint or use on non porous surfaces such as glass to make home made Christmas Baubles. This is also a great project to let kids help with. I originally learnt how to do this from the Luminarte website many years ago but it's no longer there that I can see but I think I can remember this one easily enough myself anyway.

            Materials

• Clear empty glass baubles of choice. I got mine at Spotlight and some from the cheap shops.
• Luminarte Primary Elements Polished Pigments or other coloured mica powder of choice such as Pearl-ex powders, Schmincke etc
• Luminarte Simple Solution number 2 for fabric, glass and leather or other acrylic medium of choice such as Liquitex brand, Dimensional Magic etc
• Baking sheet to protect your work surface
• Disposable polystyrene cups that can hold your baubles while they dry.
• Small spoon or Popsicle sticks to add powder to your bauble. Gloves if you don't want bright shimmery coloured fingers LOL.

            How Too
(1) Remove the metal cap from the bauble by gently lifting the tabs that hold them on the glass bauble.
(2) Place 1-2 teaspoons (depending on size of bauble-you can add more if need be) of Simple Solution into the bauble.
(3) Gently rock and roll bauble to coat the entire insides of the bauble with the solution.  Take Simple Solution lid off and allow excess drips to fall back into the bottle.
(4) Put gloves on. Place a small amount of 1-2 colours of Luminarte Primary Elements Polished Pigments into the bauble that has been coated inside with the solution and immediately place thumb on end and shake the powder around. Add some more powder if needed. to completely coat the inner bauble with powdered pigment.
(5) Place bauble up side down in polystyrene cup and allow it to dry completely. Reattach the metal cap and TADA you have home made baubles that are YUMMO.

You can further embellish the baubles any way you like. With some of mine I added Pipedreamink Opals Embossing enamels at the top and let it drip down the sides. THIS part is not child friendly so do this yourself.  I did this by applying Versamark ink directly on the glass and dip this then into Opals, sat it in my polystyrene cup and melted it with my heat gun. You can add more Opals Embossing Enamel powders by repeatingly adding more Versamark ink and Opals and remelting them till you get your desired effect. Be careful not to burn yourself as the glass can stay hot for a while so allow each layer to cool before doing another. As a final touch I glued beaded ribbon trim around the top before adding the cap back on or hung decorated Christmas themed glass tiles off side, punched metallic card stock with Christmas punches and stuck them on and added highlights on the Opals and embellishments with Kindiglitz.

There are a few other projects on my desk that I have used Polished Pigments on that I shall add here as I get them completed. In the image below I used an A4 sheet of black card stock, painted over the surface with PVA glue and sprinkled on Opals Embossing enamels and Polished pigments in similar colour ranges to each other and then heated it while it was still wet with my heat gun to make a lovely shimmery bg to use.

Then I used the bg to make a card and an ATC

The next two cards also have Polished Pigments on them. On the first card I used the Liminarte Primary Elements Polished Pigments as a paint to colour around the main image on my textured seamless Cuttlebug bg (oh there you go another technique to share with you at a later date!!). Fairy image is one designed by the ubber talented Zeborah Loray for After Midnight Art Stamps. 

And on this one the Polished Pigments are on the gauze around my Krafty Lady  mould and also painted on the scarf around the head. Krafty Lady moulds and Pipedreamink Opals Embossing Enamels are Autralian products but are available in the US from After Midnight Art Stamps.

This is just a taster of what you can do with the Polished Pigments but I hope its enough to get you inspired to have a go at entering my give away so you can own and play with some yourself :o)
hugs
Annette In Oz