How To Paint A Glitter Wall

January 22, 2016

Into every life a little glitter must fall - isn't that the way the saying goes? Some lives like a little more glitter than others. Enter BabyShine - bless her heart, she was simply born into it, surrounded by her glitter-crazy mama and three super fun, super glittery, super wild-and-crazy older sisters. We wanted an accent wall in her bedroom, and what better than glitter to accent, well, just about anything?

After spending hours upon hours researching the most cost effective route, we were down to three options:

Disney paint from Lowe's. (Not sparkly enough.)
Plain pain with shimmer packets. (Not chunky enough - we're going for BIG, chunky, chunky glitter.)
Glitter wallpaper. (Most of the sources were in London - EXACTLY the look I wanted, but at a cost of more than $500 it was way out of budget.

I searched on YouTube and found this ah.maze.ing. girl that used Mod Podge and glitter to make a sparkly lampshade. Perfection! Only on a much teenier tinier scale. We're talking an entire wall here, people.

That meant marching my butt to every craft store in town to snag up their glitter inventory. One. Bottle. At. A. Time. Hopefully, you'll have better luck getting all of your glitter in one place!

Alright, are you ready? If you're looking to glitter-ify anything bigger than a lampshade, here's what you'll need.

Willing, silly, or annoyed-9-year-old-going-on-19-year-old help. Or a whole lot of patience if you're doing it yourself.
Five (Yes, 5) bottles of 32 ounce Mod Podge Gloss. I found mine at A.C. Moore but I'm pretty sure every craft store in the land has this liquid fun.
Three hundred twenty (Yes, 320) ounces of glitter. (Translation from DaddyShine: *too many bottles*)
Large foam brushes.
Painter's tape for sealing the baseboards, adjoining non-glitter walls, and ceiling.
Putty knife {the husband gave me a plastic one... not sure if that was purposeful for the project, or protection for all involved}.
Those same tiny helpers from number 1 to pluck glitter drippage from the carpet upon completion.
Old tupperware containers found floating around the house. Don't plan on using those again. Cause that glitter ain't comin out.
And lotttttts of time. Took us about 10 hours total, spread out over 5 days. {You know, working 10 hours straight with an actual life happening around you is kind of impossible. Plus, I wanted to give a good few hours between coats and BabyShine's nap and bedtime because I'm paranoid with fumes and babies and things like that}. So 10 hours, plus or minus a few hours depending on your self-proclaimed anxiety ranking.

Have all of those things? Great. You're ready to "accent" the heck out of your wall.

Step 1: Dump the glitter into your tupperware. And the Mod Podge. Stir. It will look like this. {Think hearty oatmeal with milk stirred in. And diamonds. So think glamorous oatmeal.} Glitter

Your glitter to Mod Podge ratio? A lot of glitter to a little Mod Podge, technically speaking. Thicker is better. Think of it this way: the thicker the glitter in your coats, the less coats you will need to do all together.

Step 2: Apply. Try not to have anyone paint their sister. Or themselves. Save the glitter for the walls, peeps. {I'm still getting surprise sightings during diaper changes of chunky glitter stuck to various butt cheeks. I'm not complaining. Just warning. Because who doesn't love a shiny hiney?}

Tay

In the end, it took us about 7 coats of glitter to get the level of chunkage that I wanted. Tip? Apply it to the wall with a putty knife to begin with and chunk it on. Otherwise you'll have to do 7 coats like I did. I used the putty knife on the 7th coat. Shoulda used it on the 1st. I went for a chunky look, so the overall thickness of the Mod-glitter application was a good 1/4" thick. (Did I mention we wanted a chunky look?)

Step 3: Go get some coffee while the wall is drying. Chug it fast 'cause it doesn't take long to dry. Then repeat. Again. And again. Coffee. Mod. Coffee. Mod. When it's dry, and you've reached the glittery perfection you're looking for, it will be thick and not come off when touched. Or licked, in the case of my feral children.

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Let dry. Completely. Then stand back and look at your sparkly bit of heaven on earth. Did you try it? Let me know! (And if you're starting with a lampshade before you progress to painting the entire house, that's okay too! Baby steps. You'll be doing that wall soon, don't worry.)