Caught in Crystal

The recipe for the latest Artful Times blog challenge (sponsored by Oyster Stamps) is to make something using acetate.  I use acetate quite a bit, but usually to "float" things like butterflies over an image, so it took a fair bit of thinking before I remembered the "caught in crystal" technique.

 

I love the "caught in crystal" technique and have done ever since I saw it in Craft Stamper some years ago. (Sheena Douglass has a tutorial on YouTube here) If you haven't come across it before, a clear-drying medium is spread onto acetate and clear colour and inclusions (e.g. glitter) are added to the medium, then tissue paper is spread over the back of it and the whole shebang is left to dry.  I like to use clear floor polish (Pledge Multi-surface wax - used to be known as Klear) and I keep the pacakaging from the likes of Nestabilities as they have a nice rim which stops the fluid from going everywhere you don't want it to go.

For this piece, I used red and pink drawing inks (the gold backing card makes it look orange).  I also sprayed the acetate with some gold Spray and Sparkle. I attached the acetate to some gold card with the floor polish (it takes a while to dry, but works pretty well and is transparent once dry) and then decorated it with one of my favourite paper flowers and wings moulded from friendly plastic. 

I added the heart, cut out of velvet paper which I'd coloured with my Spectrum Noir pens, and some gold glitter peel-offs to just finish off the topper.  The card was originally white - some Tea Dye DI sorted that out as it was just too stark.

And there you have it.  Hope you enjoyed your visit- you'll be welcome back anytime!