IA Challenge: Shine

When Lisa of Wright Stuff offered the theme of this week's Inspiration Avenue challenge on Monday, I knew exactly what I wanted to make. When I read the word "shine," this week's word, my quirky brain immediately thought of shoe polish. After all, I've been using it to add a shiny finish to my altered art for years.

In fact, these are old, but still useful tins of paste shoe wax, along with a couple of bottles of liquid in my arsonal. They all provide a shine, some better than others. I love the polish in a tin, and the longer you buff the finish, the more luster you create. Plus it seems to waterproof the surface of the piece.


A few weeks before Christmas, I stopped by my local Dollar Tree. I admit that the tins of polish were all given to me by people who no longer wanted to mess with the small amount left in them. I may have even purchased one at a garage sale for a dime! But here were these cute little containers of LIQUID brown that I simply couldn't ignore. At the Dollar Tree, there were three of these containers in a package. I bought them on a whim because I liked the look of the brown. And late last night I took time to see what this shoe polish would do.


Although the shine is a disappointment, the subtle colors I got were superb. Unlike the paste, which provides a relatively consistent color, and loads of luster, the liquid from this cheap shoe polish would rival some of the colors being sold under the "distress ink" label. Depending on how many swipes I made, I got a very delicate linen effect after one swipe, all the way to a deep brown after three swipes. This is an excellent aging effect and very, very inexpensive. The one drawback was, the polish was more liquid than shoe polish. Although my vintage sheet music held up well, I suspect thinner papers, like scrapbook paper or some book pages, will buckle under the liquid in this polish. I can live with that, though, especially for the price.

Thanks to Lisa for this challenge. I had intended to actually make a finished project this week, but all I had time to do was play a bit with, and evaluate, my new "product." This is how I shine my projects. How do you shine? Play along, if you like.