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Home / Craft Product Reviews / Craft Fave: Stickles and Distress Stickles by Ranger Industries

Craft Fave: Stickles and Distress Stickles by Ranger Industries

December 23, 2011

If you love the look of glitter, but dislike the mess, then you probably gravitate toward glitter glues. So now let me introduce you to the Cadillac of glitter glues- STICKLES by Ranger, Ink.

Stickles Glitter Glue

Stickles are super glittery and come in a wide range of sparkly and iridescent colors. They are a great way to add a little pizzazz to your projects without the mess of loose glitter. Here’s a swatch of how these colors look when they are applied to paper:

You can see here that after they are dry, they really sparkle and shine!

Now, if you are looking for some texture, but don’t want a lot of sparkle, Distress Stickles might be what your are looking for. Created by the famed Tim Holtz for Ranger. Here’s how they look in the bottle:

And here they are on swatches:

You can see that the colors are a bit more muted (to match the Distress Stains and Stamp Pads) and also you get more chunky texture rather than sparkle.

There are two big differences that I have found between Stickles brand glitter glues- 1), when they are dry the medium shrinks up almost entirely, giving you the “pile of glitter” look. Both Distress and regular stickles totally look like glitter when dry.

The second is that these bad boys don’t clog, gunk, or sputter the way some other glitter glues do. I don’t know what magic they put in that medium, but it almost always flows smoothly without the “burps” of air bubbles that can potentially ruin a project.

I noticed that the two versions of Stickles actually have different nozzles:

The Distress Stickles, on the left, has a wider nozzle to accomodate the larger glitter chunks.

You also might want to know that when I created a “fall card” using Stickles, it warped my paper a bit. (That means that there is a fair amount of water content in the glue media.) To solve my problem, I waited until the Stickles were dry, then lightly misted the back of the card with water. I then placed it under a phone book to press it flat again. Problem solved!

Here are some examples of how I used Distress Stickles and regular Stickles.

Add a touch of sparkle to your quilling projects. (It's great for adding some "pop" to stickers and 3-D embellishments as well.)

 

Add highlights and an extra 3-D effect to embossed images.

Or take home decor to a whole new level! Check out this amazing Sugar Skull by Vicki O’Dell:

Calavera by Vicki O'Dell.

Click on the image or this link to go to her blog to see how she made it- using Stickles, of course!

Stickles are an inexpensive, fun way to add glitter and sparkle to your project without the mess of loose glitter. And for under $2 USD, that’s a lot of happy in a half-ounce bottle. I’d also like to note that it’s non-toxic, so you can let your kids play with it too….that is, if you let them!

This article is derived from one I wrote for CraftsUnleashed, and ConsumerCrafts.com graciously supplied the Stickles for me to review.

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Posted in Craft Product Reviews, Paper Crafts | 5 Comments

Comments

  1. debb says

    December 23, 2011 at 13:28

    I love Stickles!

  2. Mark Melnick says

    October 2, 2014 at 22:16

    I have a question: Can Distress Stickles be used on fabric [and then sealed]?

  3. Jenny says

    October 10, 2014 at 12:35

    You can use them on fabric, but there wouldn’t be a way to seal them, or frankly a need to. Just hand-wash cold, no wringing, lay flat to dry.

  4. Nancy says

    February 26, 2017 at 22:59

    have you ever tried to make your own to save money?

  5. Jenny says

    March 9, 2017 at 18:16

    With as inexpensive as they are, I would rather buy them and have more time for crafting. 🙂

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Hi! I’m Jenny, the co-host of Hands On Crafts for Kids on PBS and the Head Dummy behind CraftTestDummies.com where you’ll find craft product reviews, tutorials, and craft industry news.

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Jenny Barnett Rohrs is Head Dummy and Pied Piper behind CTD, which focuses on reviews, tutorials, and craft industry news. Jenny has appeared on HSN, Scrapbook Soup PBS series, and is currently the co-host of Hands On Crafts for Kids on PBS.

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