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Dec 19, 2012

Diamond Dust & Acrylic Tutorial

This tutorial explains how Diamond Dust can be used to give your acrylic embellishments some fabulous texture.  In addition to the Diamond Dust you can add a bit more visual interest to your embellishments with either acrylic paints or alcohol inks.

So let's get started first with the acrylic snowflake found on my "Christmas 2012" page.
Step 1: Outline the border of your snowflake with a white Sharpie Paint pen.  This will help your snowflake to stand out more.

NOTE: The color you use to outline your acrylic embellishment also depends on your project.  Just make sure you use a permanent marker such as Sharpie--these markers are meant for non-pourous surfaces & will not smear on your acrylic
Step 2: Apply adhesive to your snowflake.  This adhesive can be any as long as it dries clear.  This part is important because you want to keep the transparency of your acrylic snowflake.

Apply Diamond Dust.
Step 3:  At this point you can leave your snowflake as is or add even more texture.  It all depends on your project.  For my page, I wanted the snowflake to stand out a bit more.  So with a small paint brush I spread a bit of white & silver acrylic paint on top of the Diamond Dust.  Let it dry & you're done!

NOTE: The acrylic paint you use can be any color depending on your project--keep in mind that paint goes on opaque & will remove the transparency of your project.  This is why for my snowflake I 'dabbed' the paint on instead of brushing it on--therefore still keeping the transparency of my snowflake to a certain degree

How you adhere your snowflake to your project is also based on your preference.  You can adhere your embellishment with the Diamond Dust side facing up or down--again, this is based on what you feel works best for your project.

On my "Christmas 2012" page--I adhered my snowflakes with the Diamond Dust side facing down.  I wanted the outline of the snowflakes to stand out more--so adhering them this way worked best for my page.
On my "Family" page, I did Steps 1 & 2 on the acrylic title--only difference is that I added color to the Diamond Dust with alcohol inks on this one instead of acrylic paint.  Just dab alcohol inks with the applicator directly onto your Diamond Dust.  This technique adds a more subtle color to the Diamond Dust.  Unlike acrylic paint, alcohol inks gives color to the Diamond Dust while still maintaining it's transparency.

As you can see--for my "Family" page I adhered my title with the Diamond Dust side facing up--again, I felt that this suited my page best.

Hope you all found this tutorial helpful!

1 comment:

Sandi McLean said...

Thanks for sharing all of your tips. I use Diamond Dust often and haven't thought of a couple of your ideas :) I like to paint and put the Diamond Dust on top of that. Gives all the glitter and hides the imperfections!