Shimmer paint resist.

 Last night  I dug out my old shimmer paints and  did a lot of experimenting with the shimmer paint resist technique.
For this technique I used Stampin' up shimmer paint along with a sponge dauber to ink up the stamp.

The ink/paint is quite runny so only a little paint on the dauber is needed. The best way to apply the paint to the dauber is to shake the bottle well,  remove the lid and collect the paint from inside the lid with the dauber.
There is usually enough paint in the lid to coat the stamp a few times before the dauber needs to be  reloaded .

I gently dabbed the stamp with the dauber until the stamp was coated with a  THIN layer of paint,  (making sure not to dab to hard and end up with too much paint in the grooves of  the stamp).


I stamped the image onto glossy card stock  and repeated this until the card was covered.










After allowing the paint to dry completely, I used a sponge brayer to apply
Early Espresso ink over the shimmer paint until the background was an intense dark brown.

Using soft  toilet tissue I rubbed over the entire piece of card to remove the ink sitting on top of the shimmer paint and to polish up the card.   (tip: kitchen roll can be a little too rough for buffing, soft toilet tissue is much better for this)




The next thing I want to mention is the card stock.

The photo above shows three  different types of card. The first is Stampin' up glossy card,the second is Fuji photographic paper and the third is HP photographic paper. They all look pretty good right? ..... But wait an hour and you'll find that the S.U glossy card stock  has changedcolour.  It looks like it has faded or developed a grey film over it, (this also happens to Woodware's glossy card stock) which is great if you like that sort of thing, but I personally prefer the richer colours.

The HP photo paper turned a beautiful mahogany colour when I applied the Early Espresso ink.  But unfortunately  the HP photo paper went tacky  after applying the brown ink.  It was still tacky a few hours later making it difficult to buff  as the tissue stuck  to it.
 It took a  very long time to dry off enough to buff and buffing was more difficult due to the tackiness and some tissue fibres stuck to the paper, so  I had to buff off the tissue too. This is not an ideal paper for this technique.

The Fuji photo paper didn't change colour , it dried quite quickly and it didn't go tacky, making it perfect for this technique. Fuji majke lots of different types of photo paper so I . am including a photo of the packs of paper I use.

Going back to the S.U glossy card, all is not lost when the colour fades. Patience is the key with this paper.
Allow the paper to dry thoroughly
 ( about  two hours) before adding a second coat of ink.
 I added a a heavy coat of Early Espresso ink  with a sponge brayer to half the heat embossed image below.  It seems  a second, heavy coat of ink applied over the first  brings back the richness of the colour.

My  tip is,.... if you're going to use S.U or Woodware's glossy card stock for this technique, don't assemble your project  until the first application of ink has completely dried  and changed colour.   So you can add the second coat ink to bring back the richness of the colour. This way you won't be disappointed when your work changes colour and you can't do anything to rectify it once your project is assembled.

On this card,  I decided to reverse the process.  I inked the photo paper BEFORE stamping with shimmer paint.
I have to say looking at both methods  there is not  a huge amount of difference between the two techniques when using dark brown inks.  If anything stamping the image last is slightly  clearer and crisper.

 When I  started experimenting with different colours,  I found the shimmer paint became stained when using the first technique.
 Stamping the image after inking the card might be a better option when using colours other than brown.

My experiments did'nt stop here.   I had seen a video on the new copper shimmer paint. I haven't bought this paint yet, but wanted to try the above technique with copper  shimmer paint. 
So  I mixed  a little white shimmer paint with a few drops of Cajun Craze ink.                                                        The result was quite pleasing. However,  when I applied ink over the stamped images  the moisture from the ink reactivated the ink in the paint and it mixed with the ink on the brayer  and in turn spread over the card. which left the stamped images somewhat blotchy and  more orange than copper.

Mixing ink with paint to change the colour works well, but I really don't recommend brayering over it.