I’ve been playing with some of my oldest supplies–A huge bottle of Judikins Diamond Glaze (a dimensional adhesive similar to Tim Holtz’s Glossy Accents) and Dr. PH Martins Hydrus watercolors.

As well as a few items not quite as old– Tim Holtz’s Fragments, and some embossed rose paper from the Paper Source.

Why, you ask? Because I have way too much Diamond Glaze, and I’d like to use it up within my lifetime. (When I first discovered Diamond Glaze, I bought the big 8 oz. bottle because I was sure I would be using it a lot. And then I bought myself the 16 oz. refill bottle at a stamp convention. Because I was still convinced I was going to be using it all.the.time. I’m still working on emptying the original 8 oz. bottle. Fifteen years later.)

This is a fun little technique that you can use with any dimensional adhesive. I used Diamond Glaze. For, you know, reasons.

Take about a tablespoon of dimensional adhesive and add one to three drops of Doc Martin’s Hydrus watercolors. One drop will give you very translucent colors. Three drops, as I used here will give you very deep, almost opaque color. You can mix them in a small disposable cup. If you’re covering a large area in one color, you can pour the colored adhesive on your surface and use a toothpick to spread it out evenly. Or, you can do what I did, and use a toothpick like a teensy tiny brush and use it to color smaller areas.

This mini book was made with the back side of the embossed rose paper, so the lines of the roses acted as basin edges to hold the dimensional adhesive in place. Leave yourself a lot of time between colors, so the glue dries. Diamond Glaze takes quite awhile to dry when it’s applied this heavily. The cool thing about Diamond Glaze is that it’s pretty flexible when dry, so I was able to fold the paper to make the cover for this little book. It’s got 10 half sheets of graph paper folded inside to make 20 pages. Thin baker’s twine was used to sew the pages to the cover, with a long tail left on to add beads to make a built in book mark.

I had a little of the blue dyed glue leftover when I finished the cover, so I dug out some Tim Holtz fragment charms, and spread the rest of the glue on one side. I quickly added some tinsel glitter, spread it around and let it dry overnight. Once it had dried, I added another layer of clear glue over top of the glitter, to make sure the glitter wouldn’t go anywhere.

I love playing with dimensional adhesive. Do you have any craft supplies hanging around at your house that you’ve been neglecting? Play with them! Show me what you make!