Shining Stones Backgrounds

I have recently had a go at making shining stones backgrounds, a technique explained by Trish Bee at trishbee.co.uk (see blog entry for Jan 1st). These involved inking a piece of glossy paper (I used a roller), spritzing with water, adding 'mica paint' (made by mixing Perfect Pearls with water etc), spritzing again and drying with a heat gun. These were my first attempts (they are much better in the flesh as the photos don't show the wonderful shimmer):

Today I made some more and found that the paper is really important for achieving a good result. I also used Twinkling H2Os as I have a wider range of colours. They were so easy to use as I just added water then splattered them on.

This one was done on Tesco finest glossy photo paper (I had piece in my scrap box and thought it was the same as I had used before - however it wasn't!). The ink didn't blend very well and when I spritzed it nothing really happened (with the other paper speckles instantly appeared):

So I went back to using my Poundland glossy photo paper (I also love this paper to use with alcohol inks) and am much happier with the results.

Here I used more water so the ink/H2Os puddled more.

Mr Picassohead

I have discovered a great fun site through Next Generation Stampers (one of the Yahoo groups I belong to).
It is http://www.mrpicassohead.com/ You can design your own Mr Picassohead. Here's mine: