January 29, 2014

As Seen On T.V., But Better

crayolaj74 Hair, Makeup and Beauty DIY Glitter Tattoos, humor 10 Comments

I loathe television. Except for the occasional weekly episode of Big Bang Theory, I am anti-TV. Why? Because of the ridiculous, noisy commercials. I know the biggest commercial day of the year on television is this weekend, and I will exclude Super Bowl commercials from this, but television advertising is absolutely the root of all evil.

Every single time I attempt to watch something on T.V., I wind up getting so frustrated by the commercial breaks that I storm out of the room and do something else. It’s not as if I don’t know it’s coming, but every break in the flow of what I’m watching makes me a little madder, until I just can’t take any more.

Tigger, on the other hand, seems to be more interested in the commercials than the actual programming. Maybe I’m wrong, but when she starts singing jingles and giving me sales-pitches from the back seat of the MiniVanWithAPlan, I can’t help but wonder. As I told you before, she has every Pillow Pet known to man. She also has the Happy Napper, a Cuddle-Uppet, and now a Seat Pet. I know you’re wondering why we would buy her all of this stuff if I’m so violently opposed to their main form of advertising, but I assure you, I did not buy her any of them. And if the child had everything she ever wanted from a T.V. commercial, there wouldn’t be room for any of us in this house.

Do you guys remember the glitter tattoos? Razzle, or Dazzle, or Blingy-bling…whatever they called it…came with exactly 12 stencils, for only three easy payments of $blahblahblah, and they looked great for exactly one hour, but hung around for several more days after that. Oh, how Tigger wanted that. She begged, pleaded, batted her eyelashes, cried, and carried on for weeks until I finally convinced her I wasn’t buying it.

I did, however, create my own method of doing glitter tattoos on the cheap. Tigger was thrilled, and I even did them at the salon for a while, until the hype died down and something else had taken over. I decided to share that with you today, in case you’ve ever wanted a glitter tattoo but just never felt like forking up the three easy payments. With my method, the tattoo looks great for a couple of days, or until the first bath, and then hangs around for a while after that, but is lots cheaper than any kit and you can have as many stencils as you’re willing to cut.

Materials:

Contact Paper
X-Acto Knife, or stencil punch, Cricut, etc.
Extra-Fine Craft Glitter
Skin Adhesive
A Few Cheap Makeup Brushes
Rubbing Alcohol
Stencils Of Different Shapes (optional)

I love to draw, so I drew a lot of my own designs onto the contact paper and cut them out with an X-Acto knife and a cutting mat. This is pretty labor intensive, but I enjoy doing it and I wanted some original designs. I’m sure there is tons of software out there that can be used for designing things like this, and all kinds of gadgets for cutting stencils, but I did things the old-fashioned way, because that’s just how I roll.

I also used some stencils I had leftover from a fabric dyeing kit and traced them onto the contact paper for some of the designs. Your cuts don’t have to be perfect to have a great finished product, either. After your design is all cut out, you have a stencil that can be used for glitter tats.

To apply, clean the area to be tattooed with alcohol to remove oil, peel off the back of your contact paper stencil and place it on the skin, sticky side down. Try to avoid any wrinkles or air bubbles in your contact paper, especially on the edges of your design. For small designs, go ahead and apply the skin adhesive on all of the exposed skin within the stencil. For larger ones, I would glue a little, glitter a little so your glue won’t dry too much to hold the glitter. Spread the adhesive, then dip your smaller brush (like an eyeshadow brush) into the glitter. The brush will pick up what you need pretty easily. Dab the glitter onto the glue-covered skin liberally. You can use different colors as you go, mix colors, or choose what color goes where. After you have the whole thing glittered, and it will be messy, use your big powder brush to clean off all of the excess glitter. Peel away your stencil, and check out what you just did! Cool, huh?

I found the skin adhesive at Hobby Lobby, along with the glitter, and my little brush set . The glue costs $5 , and I think I got the brushes for around $6.  The contact paper was around $3 at the big W, and I’ve probably only used half the roll in the past two years making stencils. I can do as many glitter tattoos as I want for around $15 . Hey, so can you!

Let me know if anyone tries this and how it turns out. We had so much fun with this at home and at the salon, and I was like a rock star to some of our young female clientele for a while. So thanks to Razzle-Dazzledy-Do…or whatever it was called…for the great idea! Maybe commercials aren’t the root of all evil after all.