As many of you have probably already heard, Luminarte is almost at the end of its final manufacturing run of their wonderful Polished Pigments. It's sad to see that this product will eventually disappear from the shelves of your LSS. But I thought that seeing as many of you have probably been stocking up on those precious little pots of colour that you might enjoy a little eye candy. This set of ATC's was published in Volume 14 No 9 of Cardmaking, Stamping and Papercraft and they were all created using Polished Pigments as the background. Aren't the colours intense? I love how Polished Pigments pop!! Geisha Lantern Noh Drama You can read more about how to create this background and how these ATCs came together in these earlier posts . Edited 12/06/09: Great News! Luminarte has announced that they will continue manufacturing their wonderful range of products thanks to the overwhelming support they have received since announcing they would close....

Day 6 and we've reached the halfway mark. So I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the cards I've made so far: But of course, you're here to see today's card! You've already seen a sneak peak of it at the top of this post and if you guessed it's called Reflections , then you'd be right! This name couldn't have been more apt as I had all sorts of difficulties photographing it because of the reflections off the acetate. But anyway, here it is: I used the Cuttlebug and holly embossing folder to create the background for this one. To get the beautiful shimmery colour on the leaves (which the camera hasn't picked up), I swiped them with a Versamark Watermark inkpad and then dusted on Polished Pigments. There are other mica powders you could use (Pearl Ex, Perfect Pearls, etc) - I just happened to have a couple of nice greens in the Polished Pigments so I used those. I stamped Mon Arbre with black StazOn ink and traced over the image with Uniball......

You might recall I was experimenting with polished pigment backgrounds earlier this year. Here's an image to refresh your memory. At the time I remember saying that they were really rather hideous but I promised I would eventually use these backgrounds and here's what I did with them. Wow! ..... orchid and lime green! The image is from Rachel Greig's Darkroom Door collection and the word "tulip" is stamped with metal alphabet stamps on metal shim. I added a layer of black gloss card sprayed with gold webbing spray to make it more substantial and added a lime green layer for the card base. The next piece had really great texture and I wanted to show it off instead of covering it up with an image..... the solution, a transparency! This one is from Stylish Images. I layered it on card stock which matched the gold polished pigments so that the gold blended off the background and onto the card. The flourish at the top is a rub on and it finishes off the card nicely. Th......

This array of oriental embellishments works really well with the Polished Pigments backgrounds I created earlier. They will make a great set of Asian themed ATCs. A finished ATC. The Asian face is a Krafty Lady Art Mould AM1002....

OK, so these aren't the greatest colour combinations, but I'm sure that they can be made into something - they are, after all, backgrounds! But have a look at the great texture you get when you apply heat to the paint! This is such an easy technique: mix powder and solution; apply with cotton bud; heat to bubble; and then go "Wow!"...

Over the last few days I've had fun playing with a background technique using Luminarte's Polished Pigments and Solution No. 2. I love these pigments - the colours just pop when the solution is added to the powder. A quick stir and they are ready to be applied to the painting surface. A word of caution though - don't use your best paintbrushes for this technique and wash them immediately after you've finished. My first samples were painted on with an old brush which gave me more control over the application. But, I like my paintbrushes and found this was a bit hard on them so I decided to try cotton buds (Q tips) for the second sheet - not bad but it's not easy painting with them as the tip doesn't flatten out against the cardstock like a brush does. I will try applying the paint using a sponge later on to see what kind of effect that has. The two samples on the left were done on matt card (one applied thinly and one more heavily) and the one on the right is o......