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Caught in Crystal

Who would have thought that floor polish could bring a bit of sparkle to your life!!!  But it certainly does with the Caught in Crystal technique.

When I first heard of Caught in Crystal I assumed the floor polish crystalised when it hardened.  This isn’t the case, it acts more as an adhesive that dries clear and can be sloshed around to soak up the tissue.  The sparkle you add yourself.  This can be ultra-fine glitter, pearlex, or anything that sparkles!

So let’s get going.  The basics you will need for Caught in Crystal are;

A bottle of Johnsons Klear floor polish

Acetate

Masking tape

Tissue

Ultra-fine glitter, pearlex or other sparkle

Alcohol inks or similar

An old catalogue

Now I’m not saying this is the way you do Caught in Crystal, it’s just the way I do it, and as you will see I’m a bit gung ho and sloppy when I’m having fun crafting – you can be a lot less so and achieve a good result!

I use an old Craft Creations catalogue for all my messy stuff – sometimes I see things I missed before as I splatter the pages!

Take your acetate, and attach it to your catalogue with masking tape.  This is to prevent the polish seeping underneath the acetate, so make sure you cover each edge to create that seal.

Now pour some floor polish on the acetate and spread it around with a brush.

Take your ultrafine glitter or alternative sparkle, and  sprinkle it onto the polish – I find doing this from high up scatters the glitter more evenly.  You can put some pearlex on a brush, and just tap the brush gently, or blow it onto the polish too.

Take a piece of tissue paper and screw it up in a ball.  Open it up again and place it on your acetate.  Tap it gently in the middle, and gradually press down all over to soak in the polish.  Working from the middle out helps get rid of air bubbles.  It is better to tap than to smooth as smoothing pushes the glitter to the edge.  

Now you can add some colour to your tissue.  Here I have put a spot of alcohol ink on my brush, and gently dabbed it onto the tissue as I didn’t want the colours to be too dark.  The Wild Plum colour reacts with the polish to make a beautiful cerise pink.

I like to build up several layers of tissue, splodging floor polish inbetween each layer, but you can do what you like – the less layers you do, the more opaque your finished piece will be.  Lots of layers can give you a mulberry paper look on the reverse, which is as nice to use as the sparkly front!

I tend to leave my pieces overnight to dry naturally, you can however heat them gently with your heat gun if you are sure your acetate can take it!  Once dry you can cut it away from your catalogue sheet, and stamp images on the shiny surface.

This is the back and front of a Caught in Crystal piece I sprayed with Adirondack Color Wash after I had built up the layers of tissue.  As you can see, adding the colour after several layers of tissue leaves some interesting white patterns where the colour hasn’t quite reached the bottom layer.

Here I splodged alcohol inks on the acetate before starting.  I also used Kleenex tissue, which gave a denser background to the Caught in Crystal .

Packing tissue gives a great pattern with uneven and some big creases.  Kleenex type tissue gives a denser background, with more creases that are more the same size.

This is how the Caught in Crystal piece above turned out when dry.  Unfortunately my photography skills are not showing off the sparkle!