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.

Shabby Chic Owls

Sometime in April my mom decided to host a baby shower for one of our long time family friend's daughter.  Her daughter grew up with my sister Amy.  So of course our families became friends.  Well, she was decorating the nursery with owls, so mom asked me if I would make owls for the shower....she asked me back in early March.  It's as if she knew I wouldn't get to them once baby John arrived.....like she knows me or something...moms...weird right??

Well yeah, I didn't get to them.  Totally coincidental...had nothing to do with the baby arriving...my mother isn't always right....

But I had already cut and baked the cookies.

Since I don't sell my cookies, no one eats them.  So I kept the owls in a ziplock in a freezer till about.... well... 2 days ago... when I decided I would finally get these owls done.  They had been haunting me...begging to be decorated.