👉 This Simple Trick Makes Your Cards Look Expensive!

Want a shimmer technique that's virtually mess free and uses supplies you already have? Let me show you how. Let's get crafting. I wanted to see if I could make old techniques new again using more common products that we all have in our stash. So I am looking to achieve the look of the faux mother of pearl technique using different products. I'm using Recollections 65 pound weight white cardstock and ivory, and this is just folk art metallic acrylic paint in pearl white. I didn't have any cling film but if you did that would work too. This is literally a grocery bag that I cut up into pieces to use. I dipped the plastic into the metallic paint. I haven't added anything to it and I'm just turning my card this way and that way trying to achieve different splotchiness. And then we're going to see what we can do from it from here and whether or not it's going to live up to the hype of the older technique. This won't take long to dry because it is such a thin coat but I wanted you to see that it does achieve a soft pearly shine with my light and with natural light from my window. Moving on to another product that many of us have in our stash, this is Liquid Pearls. It is a dimensional pearlescent paint and it is the color platinum pearl. Now I am using another piece of my trash bag or my grocery bag and I'm just going to squeeze some out onto a craft sheet. Now this craft sheet is the replacement sheet from the Tim Holtz glass mat. I'm going to do the same thing that I did with the acrylic paint and I just wadded up that little piece of plastic bag and dumped it into the pearl paint and I'm just going to give it a good once over and we'll let this dry and see what we can get out of this one as well. I felt like it needed a little bit more. A little goes a long way here so you don't have to go crazy with it but just get down enough so that you can actually see it. It does dry more pearlescent than the gray look that you see here on film but you see there's still a pearly shine. Now I'm going to test both of those products against the original product. This is by Tsukineko. It is an ink and it is frost white. Now if you've seen this technique in the past, this is the product that they all used but I wanted to see if something else could stack up or even surpass that product. Since this is an ink you do have to shake it up. It's got a little metal ball in there to help you. I really do love this product but most people might not have this in their stash and might want to achieve a similar look. This is an ink product so it does need to be shaken up. It has a little metal ball inside to help with that and then I'm just going to pop a little bit onto my craft sheet and I didn't quite get there but I'm not going to let that go to waste. I'm going to use a clean piece of plastic, wipe this off, and then I'm going to do the exact same thing. Now just be sure that whatever product you use you leave some white space. You want the shimmer to shine and peek through parts, not the whole thing. Now let's dress up our cardstock a little bit more and this is the metallic paint and I'm going to use some Distress Oxides. I'm going to use Salvage Patina and Mermaid Lagoon along with a blending brush or two. What happens if you don't have Distress Oxide? Well use what you've got. You could certainly use Distress Inks, Catherine Pooler inks, whatever you've got give it a shot. I am putting down my Salvage Patina in sort of a random fashion. I really want there to be a mottled soft color. What if you didn't have inks? Could you use other colored cardstock? Of course you can and I'm going to show you some that I did on black because the black really makes this shimmery technique, no matter what product you have, super shiny. So I'm going to show you some cards at the end of this video but I just want you to see that there's all kinds of things that you can do and all kinds of different products that you can use, probably that you already have in your stash, to create beautiful shimmery cards and get the look of the faux Mother of Pearl technique. For the sake of your sanity you did notice that I bumped the speed up on these videos. Ink blending is ink blending. It does not have to be perfect. This one is Liquid Pearls and I'm using Spiced Marmalade and Picked Raspberry Distress Oxides. Once again use what you've got and give it a shot. For my Tsukineko ink I used Wilted Violet and Seedless Preserves. After I've got my ink on my panels I'm going to take a microfiber cloth and simply buff it off. The metallic paint, the dimensional pearlescent paint from Liquid Pearls, as well as the ink, all serve as a resist to the Distress Oxides. They're sitting on top of. So by taking your Microsoft cloth and just buffing it out it will remove any remaining ink. Now this particular panel speaks to my heart. I don't know why but I absolutely love this one. I love the colors that I chose and just how beautiful that Liquid Pearls shows up against those colors. Now this last one this is a Tsukineko ink that is from the original faux Mother of Pearl technique as I mentioned earlier and I'm just buffing the ink off of the top of that just like I did with all the other panels and it's stunning as well. My first three finished cards are using the acrylic metallic paint and all I've done is taken that blue panel and die cut it with the Nested Wavy Rectangles and added a stamped floral that I have hand colored. I've loved these panels so much I made multiples. This one I went ahead and used the Altenew Daisybed 3D Embossing Folder, added a die cut sentiment, and that beautiful butterfly. Don't forget you can use this technique on colored card stock. I've used my Nested Wavy Rectangles again, that stamped magnolia that I didn't really add a lot of color to, and a metallic die cut sentiment. Moving on to our cards with Liquid Pearls. I love this card. I added a big chunky sentiment along with that beautiful magnolia and left the card background plain. For this one I decided to die cut my background and let those beautiful leaves shine and I just used an embossed panel of colored card stock behind it. This is using the simple plain white background with the Tsukineko ink like it was originally intended. I used the ink on black card stock as well and as you can see it shimmers and shines. As we check out the last card made with the ink tell me in the comments below which of these three products do you have or something similar and which are you going to try this technique with. But don't go just yet because I've saved up a couple of videos I think you're going to love. Until next time, I'll see you real soon.