Hero Arts Wise Men Collage - with Sparkle!!

Well, I am sure it happens sooner or later to every stamper. That brightly shining moment from which there is no turning back. That's right; I just discovered GLITTER. I started off small, adding a tiny little star to my Celtic Christmas cards with a Stardust clear glitter pen. Then my Nativity card had LOTS of Stardust glitter pen to show the rays of starlight falling on the scene. But now. . . I've moved on to the hard stuff, the real deal. . . loose glitter and glue.


The base is green SU cardstock - I am afraid I don't know the name of the color. Celery maybe? I hate it that they don't put the labels on the cardstock packages anymore. I embossed it with the original Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder. I wanted to bring out the raised areas - normally I'd hit it with a VersaMark Dazzle pad, but I was afraid any stray glitter would stick to it like crazy! I also wanted a little more yellow color in the green, so I hit the raised areas with Y000 which warmed up the green just enough! A flourished red ribbon and a narrow satin ribbon with a triple loop bow (thank you Bow-Easy!) and Krylon gold leafing pen around the edge finished it off.



I love collage stamping - I do a lot with the emboss-resist technique. When I saw this series of collage stamps by Hero Arts, I couldn't resist - look at all the assemblage work they had done for me! I colored it with Copics and added white dots to accent the flourishes, then used a Tombow glue pen and added Stampendous red glitter and Art Institute gold glitter. I have to say, there are big differences in glitter - that Art Institute stuff is amazing! I also used a dark blue Sakura Stardust pen in the wise men postoid and in the snowflake backgound. I trimmed it out with a deckle scissors, ran a red Copic marker around the cut edges and mounted it on pop dots.


Here is the back of the card. I got this neat personalized unmounted stamp on eBay! This seller is in Malaysia, the prices are wonderful and I was pleased with the transaction. They are by Loongchai74 and you can see all the options here. He sent me proofs of the artwork before he made the stamps, and did not charge extra for custom artwork. I also got a wonderful circular address stamp for my envelope flaps. Just wanted to share in case any of y'all are looking for this kind of thing - it makes me really happy every time I see my new stamp, only now I want to order another that includes my blog address!

So, I need to know. What kind of glitter do you like best? Are there better glue pens than the Tombow? I had a hard time keeping a smooth flow of glue - I kept having to tap it and scribble to get it flowing again. I'd like to find a glue pen that flowed really smoothly. Please leave a comment and let me know!

I also have glitter EVERYWHERE. The cats are sparkling, and how it got in MY hair I do not know! Hmmmm. I think I feel some STICKLES coming on! :-) Leave a comment if you have any glitter management tips for me, LOL!