Old Paint -2- Shimmer Paint

A Quick Tutorial:

Hands up how many of us have old acrylic paints that don't even have an inch of paint left in them??

*Jennibellie's hand shoots into the air quicker than in a Hogwarts class that contains Hermonie* 

and I've no idea why I keep them rather than just using them up, they are usually colours I have duplicates of anyway...but as I did keep em let's do something with them =)

I recommend using the cheap acrylic's as pictured for this, as they come in their own bottles they are easy to mix, or you can use acrylic that comes in tubes and just find an extra container

1st:

Extend the amount of your under an inch of acrylic by adding a fluid medium, here I'm using a Liquidtex one found in the acrylic mediums section. This not only helps old gloopey acrylic become useable again but gives it fluidity for the shimmer to mix evenly. I added may be 4x the amount of fluid medium to the amount of paint.

2nd: 

Next alter your colour if you wish, I realised I'd kept the colours of the acrylic paint as I brought them (even if I wasn't much fussed with the colour - again for no apparent reason lol) so here's your opportunity to customise your colour, use something with high pigment like acrylic ink. I want to keep this white so I add nothing at this point.

3rd:

Shimmer time! First I added some of this Acrylic Pearl Medium because it gives extra shimmer without any colour. Now I'm not expecting everyone to have this, so in it's place you could just add some white or cream colour mica powder if you too wanted *extra* shimmerettery, without the additional colour. I also add to this paint some light baby blue mica powder to give it that gorgeous shot-through-with-blue hint that you get in a lot of white/baby pink nail polishes =)

FYI ever since I showed this little black spoon in my DIY Art Glass tutorial I've been asked where I got it ~ the truth is I've no idea, sorry folks! It came with a set of mica powders as far as I can remember, but it definitely isn't something that I've seen available individually *sad face*

4th: 

Shake it baby! When thoroughly mixed test out your paint on a scrap piece of paper until you are happy with your colour, consistency and shimmerettery standards. Enjoy producing some absolutely fabulously arty paper to play with in the future at this point too ;)

5th:

Get some scrap papers and claim your fabulous new paint with a homemade label ~ and don't forget to paint the top of your bottle so you can see at a glance what gorgeous new colours you have to choose from.

There you have it: upcycled old yucky paint into homemade shimmer paints

easy peasy lemon squeezey, enjoy =D