Use Glitter to Make a Psychedelic Painting

Have any of you wondered what it would look like to cover a whole canvas painting with glitter?

Well, I did. And I’m so glad that I was curious enough to try it out. They look so cool and were so fun to make.

And now I'm showing you how you can make one too.

• small canvases

• acrylic craft paint

• mod podge

• glitter in various colors

• acrylic sealer

I also used a tool called a paint writer which lets you make a thin line of whatever acrylic paint you want to put in it. But for the outlining step, you could also try using puffy paint.

Step 1

Find an image online that you want to copy as your painting.

I just did a google image search for colorful vector designs and it led me to find some cool psychedelic art.

Here’s an example of what you’d find:

Step 2

Draw the image onto your canvas.

You can copy freehand or use tracing paper if you’re not confident in your drawing skills.

Step 3

Paint the shapes of the image with the various colors of paint. I used vector images because they generally have one color for each shape in the image.

You’ll have to excuse my paint smudged hands 🤪:

Fill your whole canvas with color.

I still had some pencil lines showing, but it’s ok because they got covered later.

Let it all dry.

Step 4

Using Mod Podge or any other gel medium, paint it over one of your colored areas.

You’ll want to move on to the next step fairly quickly before the Mod Podge dries.

You can choose to fill the whole color block or if you think the Mod Podge will dry before you get the area fully covered, you can do it in sections.

Since mine was an easy shape to cover, I painted the Mod Podge over the whole shape. But on one of the other paintings I did, since the design was more intricate, I did it in sections.

Step 5

Using the same colored glitter as the shape you’re working on, pour the glitter all over the Mod Podged area.

Step 6

Dump off the pile of glitter now on your canvas onto a glitter tray and then blow on your painting to get off all the extra glitter.

If you don’t have a glitter tray to collect the excess glitter, you can fold a piece of paper in half and then unfold it and dump it on the piece of paper. Having the crease in the paper allows you to put the glitter back in the bottle way easier.

Let it dry before you do the other colored sections.

Once one color is dried, you can add the other colors next to it.

Keep adding glitter to all the areas until your canvas is completely covered in it.

If you look at it closely, it almost looks furry.

Step 7

Now you want to spray your painting with some acrylic sealer so that the glitter doesn’t brush off.

Step 8

To make the shapes really pop and the image more defined, we want to outline the shapes in your picture in black.

I used that paint writer applicator so that my lines were thin. But if you have a fairly simple design, you could use puffy paint instead.

Complete all the outlines in your painting. And let dry.

Step 9

Now give it one more coat of the acrylic sealer.

And now you have an awesome piece of art that really sparkles.

And since they were so fun to make, I made three!

I would love to hear what you guys think. Please leave a comment 😊.

Get the supplies on Amazon: