Homemade Glimmer Mist

I've been wanting to start a collection of glimmer mist but I find them too expensive. I was so tempted to buy them eventually until I read about homemade glimmer mist. Wow, there are several tutorials out there on how to make it and I was amazed as to how very simple the process is and how very cheap the ingredients are. It's so true what everybody claims, you'll end up with roughly 50 cents a bottle as opposed to the store bought $6.00 per bottle. Huge savings, most especially for a colors-nut like me!!! I read and watched several tutorials before I experimented on different ingredients and mixtures. It really didn't take long for me to come up with the mixture that I was very happy with. I happen to already have the 2 sets of Pearl-Ex powders, Assortment 2 set and Assortment 3 set by Stampin' Up, so my mixture evolved from this ingredient instead of the more popular Perfect Pearls. The only thing with Pearl-Ex is that you have to use a binder like glue, hair spray or Gum Arabic as opposed to Perfect Pearls which already has a built-in binder called resin. I used hair spray which worked perfectly fine. For the liquid, I preferred alcohol instead of water as it dries so fast, no need to use the heat gun.

My ingredients:

1. Alcohol
2. Acrylic paint
3. Hair spray
4. Pearl-Ex powder

I used 4 oz spray bottle instead of the skinny Mini Mister bottles. I never measure so I don't have the exact measurements listed. I always started with about a quarter of the bottle amount of alcohol, 5 to 10 dips of acrylic paint with a stick or skewer (or measure by drops), hair spray which is about 10% of the amount of the alcohol, and 1 to 2 scoops (I used the tip of the stick) of the Pearl-Ex powder. Just make the adjustments as necessary to achieve the color that you like.I suggest just buying the basic colors instead of buying all the various shades. It's so easy to come up with the different shades. Be sure to get the brown and black to be used for blending the colors For example, for the color old rose-I mixed the pink color with a tiny bit of black, for dark yellow-mix some orange color with yellow, rust color-orange with a bit of brown, lilac-more pink with blue, lavender-more blue with pink, light teal green-green with a bit of blue, teal blue-blue with a bit of green, olive green-green with yellow and a bit of black, etc. You may also want to use white color to lighten your color mixture.

I initially bought a bunch of spary bottles and I realized I preferred the bottles with just a regular cap as the spray bottles get clogged. So for the second batch of bottles, I only bought the bottles with regular caps. I simply changed the cap with the spritzer only when I'm using the glimmer mist. I immediately put back the regular cap and wash the spritzer immediately after each use. For the bottles that I already had, I removed the straw of the spritzer and used the spritzer like it were just a cap. This way, I don't have to worry about clogging.

Another BIG TIP: As you'll see in the photos below, I made improvised boxes where I put my items to be sprayed to avoid any mess on my table. I suggest putting a piece of board slightly slanted on the side of the box to enable you to spray your items with the bottle in the upright position. It is so much more efficient to spray with the bottle upright instead of the bottle in a downward position.

Not only will you save a lot of money, you'll have lots of fun formulating your own colors. Enjoy!