I love snowflakes. I used to try and find a few snowflake cookie cutter every year, but I have not found any new ones for a few years.
This year I was thrilled to find large wooden and wonderful ones at The Container Store. I knew they would bring me the same snowflake cookie decorating joy and I would not have to feed them to the squirrels at the end of the season. I purchased two sets and Wendy purchased three. That gave us enough for a lot of fun.
I love working with glitter. I prefer to work with Art System Glitter or Martha Stewart glitter. She has a lovely array of colors and types. I have regular and tinsel glitter. The tinsel glitter is a long, thin shape, as opposed to the usual hexigon. It has a very particular look - great for snowy effect.
Wendy had never done glitter projects. This gave me the idea that others might benefit from a glittering tutorial. Here's our process:
Pick your item to be glittered and decide if it needs and interesting colored background. Ellie and I painted ours white. I had not even considered other colors. However, I was very inspired by the base coats that Laura, Caroline and Wendy put on their snowflakes. It made me rethink my process.
I loved the tye dye effect on Laura's snowflake. Its subtle beauty does not show up very well here.
This was my favorite snowflake by Caroline. I love her unconstrained use of color.
It is important to prepare your area for effective use. I put down several layers of newspaper (with a preference for the "weekend magazine" type inserts since they are not too large and they feature a nice folded crease - great for pouring the glitter back into the bottles.) This protects your surface from glue and glitter. It also allows you to discard paper as it gathers too much glue or you need to change you color of glitter. The top layer is the waxed paper (cooking parchment works well, too.) I put a crease it in before laying it out. This is the nicest surface to work on. There are no images or boxes of distracting text, allowing you to focus on your designs.
We also set out all of the glitters we are going to use, as well as at least two bowls of water for cleaning the glue off of the brushes. Cupcake papers are a nice container for the glue. Sometimes we also pull out the rhinestones.
Apply the glue in a generous way. Ellie is painting on glue for a large area that will get one color of glitter. You can use the glue in a bottle or a small brush to apply more delicate lines of glitter. Stickles are a lovely way to apply fine lines of glitter without the glittery mess.
(image from gingerblue.com)
Next, you pour on the glitter. Don't worry about using too much. You will pour the unused glitter back into the bottle.
It is important to me to keep each of my glitter colors pure, so I switch to new paper/waxpaper with each glitter color change.
You don't have to wait for one color to dry before applying the next color, you just have to be careful to not put your fingers in the wet glue areas.
This snowflake features the oh-so-cool ombre technique. Martha Stewart has a great tutorial on how to do it. I begin with cupcake liners. I applied glue to the center and used white glitter. Then I mixed 1 TBL of white glitter and 1 tea. of purple glitter in a cupcake paper liner. I then applied glue and glitter to the next section. I repeated the process, adding 1 TBL while glitter and 2.5 tea. purple glitter, mixed and glued. I continued until I was using just purple glitter. I will add rhinestones to it soon. It is a fun and impressive technique.
Ellie's lovely creations -
This is an assortment made by both us us -
I also came across this great idea when I was looking for something else. I love the idea. It is from Jen Stewart, posted over at 2Peas in a Bucket.
Here's a nice site that has another glitter storage idea, complete with free label downloads and information about German Glass Glitter (very nice stuff, but not really little kid-friendly.)
Just Something Made blog also has a very nice tutorial on making amazing paper snowflakes here.
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