Wednesday, May 16, 2012

DIY Watercolour Tutorial: Glow in the dark galaxy nebula stickers | Go to post ➜

Hello! ♥

So I occasionally do things completely unrelated to jewelry, and last night I made a bunch a glow-in-the-dark nebula stickers. Had the foresight to snap pictures while I was doing it, so here's the tutorial to make your own DIY galaxy stickers! :D (I used stickers, but I guess you can use this to paint cards and other things as well.)

 

Materials needed:

If you don't already have these, they are available at any stationery/craft store. If you live in Singapore, I bought them all from Popular for under SGD$10 altogether.

-Sheet of plain white labels

-Watercolours and brush (I used one of those cheap kiddy trays where you add water to cakes of paint) 

-Toothpicks

-Silver paint marker (optional)

-Glue

-Glow-in-the-dark glitter 

Difficulty/Time taken:

-Easy, 1 hour

Basically the watercolours do all the work for you, so artistic talent isn't really needed. It's really fun and even kids can do it, and there's a list of tips and modifications at the end of this post on how to make things easier :) 

  

Start with a plain sheet of white labels - any size will do, really. These are 1 1/4" circles

Lay down a quick wash of diluted black paint - work quickly because it dries fast! Don't flood the labels with too much paint, because excess water will make them curl and peel off the backing sheet. And don't worry about leaving small gaps or messy strokes - watercolours are very forgiving :)

If you like, you can then put on another layer of dark blue paint - shown here on alternate rows

Working quickly, drop a bit of light blue paint onto the stickers - make sure your paint is quite watery or the next step won't work!

Drop a bit of pink paint onto the stickers, overlapping the blue paint a little. Since the paints are both wet they will blend together on their own, no need for you to do much work :D

Closeup!You can see that the two colours will start bleeding together :) Note that watercolours are more vibrant when wet, so when they dry the colours will be less vivid.

Do the same for the rest of the stickers and let dry.

To make the stars, load your brush with white paint and flick it off your finger so that it splatters over the stickers. You can use an old toothbrush as well. (If your paint comes off as fat blobs, it's too thick. If it flicks off properly but there's barely any white showing, it's too thin!) If you're not sure, practise on a scrap paper first :)

Use a toothpick to create bigger stars and comets - Snip the tip off, a blunter tip will give bigger stars. Drag the toothpick to create shooting stars!

Use a silver paint marker to add metallic accents if you want to.

Let all the paint dry, then use glue to draw a line across each sticker.

Sprinkle on the glow-in-the-dark glitter.

All done! :D Let the glue dry and brush off excess glitter and you have your own set of pretty nebula stickers!

Tips/Modifications:
-I used pink and blue for the nebula cloud because that's the most common colour, but you can use other colours like orange or green too :)
-For astrology geeks or cool horoscope gifts, you can paint on the stars in the shape of actual constellations.
-Instead of splattering paint, use a white paint marker for less mess and drying time.
-Instead of glow-in-the-dark glitter,  which usually comes in tubes and is a bit messy because you need to apply glue and then the glitter goes everywhere - Use glitter glue that comes in tubes. I've seen regular silver and gold glitter as well as the coloured glitter or "pearly" ones that look really great, and glitter glue is also a lot easier for kids to handle.

One last snapshot! Used a sticker on one of the packages I'm sending out today - brown paper, twine, handstamped glassine bag sealed with a nebula sticker and a bit of scrap ribbon. I have an unhealthy obsession with wrapping things. Anyway, I hope the tutorial made sense :)


♥Jasmyn

Labels: DIY, galaxy, glow in the dark, nebula, packaging, stickers, tutorial

5:01 AM