Gilding Techniques: Spiking Gel and Body Glitter
Make your own glitter pastes easily, safely and inexpensively!

Use hair spiking gel (also called sculpting gel) for your base.

Make Glitter Paste

See  http://www.hennapage.com/henna/how/gilding/ to decide what hair gel to purchase.  Its especially important to get a thick, non-runny hair gel for your glitter mix, because glitter will separate out of a runny gel, and be impossible to use.  Hair gels come in several colors, though they dry nearly transparent. Get hair spiking gel in a color that will compliment your glitter.

Get superfine body glitter to make your glitter paste. Chunky glitters will clog your cone tip. Use cosmetic quality glitter, not craft glitter.


Add 1 part glitter to 8 parts hair gel. (That proportion is very approximate!  Please experiment and decide for yourself what's going to work best for YOU!)  Add a small amount of lumiere powder if you want the paste to be slightly opaque.  Stir these together.

Glitter Paste

Put that into a carrot bag.

Glitter mix

When its time to use the glitter paste, squeeze some from the carrot bag into a mylar cone. Apply the glitter paste with the mylar cone, just as you would apply henna.

glitter work

Apply your glitter pastes bythemselves, with henna paste, or on a finished henna design.

The pattern above is by Dipti Desai, and is in her books,
 "Mehandi: Volume I" and "Mehandi: Volume II"
published by TapDancing Lizard
Dipti Desai 1 Dipti Desai 2

There are commercially available glitter products you can use with your henna.  Look in a costume or theatrical supply shop for "waterproof glitter" or in a shop with a wide range of cosmetics.   Some come in bottles ready to apply as you would henna paste.  Others come with a built in brush.  Most of these products are tenacious, beautiful, and easy to use. Look for a product that has a list of ingredients and read them!  Some products have very strange smells, and others will burn the skin.  Products from reputable cosmetic companies are the safest!

Ready Made Glitter Mixes

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