Perfect Pearls

Hi everyone!

Design Team Coordinator, Melissa, here and it has been a long time! After a recent, cross-country move, I am now ready to tackle all the responsibilities I had to give a rest to. It's good to be back! I'm really excited to share with you Design Team member Kate Vickers' tutorial this month. We've got a lovely tub of Perfect Pearls in our August ESCAPE kit. Some come... let's learn a little bit more about this wonderful medium from our talented Kate.

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Hmmm.... so this month's Kit, The Escape Kit, came with a little container of Bubblegum Pink Perfect Pearls. Some of you may be looking for ideas on how to use it. It's a wonderful product and there are some really great ways to use it. Here are two ways that I used it in my layouts this month.

Glue Resist with Perfect Pearls

You will need:

• White Cardstock
• Perfect Pearls Powder
• Water
• Tiny spray bottle
• Any type of craft glue

• Mix about 1/4 of a tsp of your Perfect Pearls with about 1 tsp of water in a small spray bottle. I used a leftover bottle from another type of mist. Shake like crazy! You can add a few drops of ink from a re-inker like the ones from Ranger or Stampin' Up, but this is not necessary. Perfect Pearls has a binding solution mixed into it, so you don't need to add anything else. If you do the same thing with PearlEx Powder, you need to add a binding agent like Gum Arabic or even just some plain old liquid glue. Set this aside for now.
• Grab a piece of cardstock, any colour you like, but I found that white worked best with this colour. Draw a design on your cardstock with your glue. I created a bunch of swirls and circles randomly on my paper. Let it dry completely. If you're the impatient type, I recommend using a quick dry craft glue like Helmar 450.
• Once your glue design is dry, spray your paper liberally with your Perfect Pearls Mist. Let it set for a minute or so.
• Pat the excess mist off of the paper and the raised glue design carefully with a paper towel.

Here is my finished product.

You can get a good look of the design in this close up.

And... another way to use Perfect Pearls is with the mask found in your kit. Here's what I did with it.

• Put the mask on top of a sheet of cardstock and secure it in place with washi tape or any other low tack tape.
• Carefully dab the exposed areas with a sponge and some ink. I chose a pink archival ink. Versamark works well for this.
• Once you have the entire area covered, add Perfect Pearls powder on top of the inked areas. It will stick to the ink. Dust off the excess with the brush provided in the kit.

Here is the finished product using this technique. You will also notice that I have a punchinella pattern at the bottom of the layout. This was also done using the same Perfect Pearls. I used a Christie Tomlinson stamp with Versamark watermark ink, stamped it onto the cardstock and brushed the Perfect Pearls on top using the same method as above. Now, I'm not in love with this layout, I think that I could have done better by using a more neutral background paper instead of the one I chose. The yellow is overwhelming the pink a bit. However, I do love these techniques and I hope that you will give them a try! Happy Crafting!

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Visit Kates' blog here: Scrapsation

See Kates' and the rest of the design teams August gallery here.