It seems a decade or so ago store executives decided that all decor from Halloween to Christmas needed to be covered generously in glitter. Now I love shimmer as much as the next woman, but I hate finding glitter on the floor, on my cloths, or on my face. So I decided to do a little experiment and find the best way to keep glitter where its supposed to be. I tried hairspray, spray adhesive, and brush on acrylic paint.
My first tries were hairspray and spray adhesive. I rigged up this little box so the ornaments could dry. The left two are spray adhesive and the rest are hairspray.
I wasn’t too happy with this method as there was some clumping of the product, and it was difficult to tell if I was actually getting the product everywhere. Plus some of the product would get on the hangers. Taking them off is an option, but that is adding more steps to something that should be done fairly quickly. In addition, I’ve read hairspray tends to yellow over time, which could be a problem if you want to keep these ornaments for a long time.
My next try was brush on clear acrylic. It was a lot easier to hold the crown and brush on the acrylic to make sure the product was distributed evenly. When it dried it looked even, although I did feel like some of the glimmer is gone. I held the ornament in my hand with no glitter fall off, very important!
So overall I would go with the brush on acrylic, as it offered the best coverage, least mess, and looked the best. I can see sprays being attractive if you have a lot of ornaments to do or a particularly large piece of decor. Notice I still have a lot of glitter on my desktop from the Christmas hoop dupe. Glitter really is the STDs of crafting.
The Dupery 