TUTORIAL: Shading With Luster Dust

So when I was working on my owl set last week, I was trying really hard to work with a certain palette.  It was all kinds shabby chic...and there's a fine line between shabby chic and just plain pastel.

It wasn't as easy as I thought.... so once I had my colors mixed and my cookies decorated...they still didn't look right.  The pastel was just PASTEL and the other colors were much too bright to be shabby.  But I still liked the palette. I needed to do something to fix that.

So I brushed off the cobwebs...and out came the dusts...

Luster and petal dusts I mean of course.

I haven't used them in so long.  In fact the only one I really use consistently are the gold or silver ones...and those are for painting...but I have this whole stash of petal and luster dusts that I swear have never even been opened.

But I had a plan for them today.

My Post Cookie Con Hand Painting Attempt

Also known as, my week trying to be as cool as Arty.

Well, I'm back from Cookie Con, and still not even kind of caught up on all the excitement.  I'm reeling.  It was AWESOME....with a capital AWE.

I'll do a Cookie Con recap later this week (or next), but for now I wanted to talk about something particular.

So Arty McGoo was there teaching in our little troupe that weekend.  And she did her all famous hand painting.  Really, if you enjoy damp dark places and have decided to live under a rock, and don't know who I'm talking about.... CLICK HERE.

Anyway, she did her demo on hand painting and somewhere during her presentation I said (aloud...why did I say it aloud?) "I think I can do that".

Then after Liz and I chatted, and she told me how fast and easy it was to paint on cookies.  I'm all for fast and easy....

And I came home.....and had a deadline to meet...and thought....quick and easy....ok... let's do this!

And after a WEEK this is what I came up with