Im-Perfect Pearls

I always tend to push aside products that I don't completely understand or don't give me the results I expect. I know what I want to accomplish when I pull out a product so when on repeated occasions I just can't get it to work, it's get put away. When products get "put away", they've gone to jail. They get locked away, forgotten about, and second chances are rare.

I speak of my love/hate relationship with Ranger's Perfect Pearls.

But for a new challenge, I pulled them out again. I decided to give them another try for the challenge over at Snarky Stampers. The second challenge is U is for Unused. Or perhaps, in my case underutilized and forgotten.

Here's a quick card I did just to say I gave it a go:

Perfectly Dark:  I discovered once again that I seem to be completely handicapped at using Perfect Pearls in it's dry form. I've done the technique over and over but never get satisfying results. It looks great at first, then it rubs off. I try to mist it with water over the top to seal it in but it still rubs off. I've used Versamark and then switched to Perfect Medium. It doesn't do what I want it to: I want it to stick and not rub off if someone rubs their fingers over it! So rather than totally give up, I used my Perfect Pearls in mist form which seems to work SO much better for me.

Because Perfect Pearls shows up on dark colored papers, I used black cardstock for my background. I mixed up some mists using Turquoise PP, Interference Green PP, and Copper PP. (You can watch this video to see how I made my mists! The reinker color didn't matter on my card as it wouldn't show up on the black cardstock anyway; only the PP color shows.) Being too lazy to go down a couple flights of stairs to get my stencils, I did the "lazy man" technique. I laid down stickers onto the cardstock before I spritzed. I just took some of the stickiness out of the sticker by sticking it to my shirt a couple times so it wouldn't tear up my cardstock when I peeled it off.

After I sprayed the cardstock, I dried it with a heat tool as I used A LOT of spray. Then, I peeled off the stickers and voila: instant shimmer background that I LOVE.

So Perfect Pearls will only be used in mist form by me as it gives me the irremovable shimmer that I want without all the fuss.

--Wy