Glitter embossing paste, and an experiment

This turned out to be a side project from some other Christmas cards I was making. These are done with a Sweet Poppy stencil, and some Cosmic Shimmer glitter embossing paste that was among the items I was gifted a while back. I'll post the actual cards in a day or two.

I thought I'd give it a go, to see what it turned out like.
 To be honest, it turned out very well, and the real beauty is that you have the glitter look, without any shedding.
 On the downside, I think it's very expensive for the amount you get, given that this pot holds 50ml, and retails anywhere between £4.50 and £5.50, depending where you buy from.
 Sweet Poppy's own paste comes in 150gr jars, and retails around £9.
 After a bit of Googling, it seems that 1ml= 1gr, so you get three times as much in the Sweet Poppy jar, for around double the jar cost.
 However, as yet, Sweet Poppy don't seem to do a glitter paste.
 It was while testing it- and forgive the slightly blurry photo here- that I had a thought.

As I applied it, it seemed to me it had a very similar look & consistency to glitter glue. It had quite a gritty feel to it too when spreading it over the stencil.
Apart from Stickles, I don't have any glitter glue, but I will be getting a pot to see if it works. I may have to add some glitter to thicken it up, but we'll see.
 Now, I had another idea. Could I mix normal glitter into a Translucent paste, and get a good result?

I dolloped some paste (Dreamweaver), onto a small mylar mat. then added a generous amount of blue glitter. The fine stuff- there is a company called Glitter Magic who are often at craft fairs, and any number of retailers on E-bay.

Gave it all a good mix together, I used a combination of a palette knife and an old store card to do this.

I used the same stencil, and it applied just as easily as the ready made one.

This was the piece after I removed the stencil. I left it overnight to dry. At this stage, it looked much the same as the 'real' stuff.

The excess went into a little pot for next time, if it works ok.I reckon I'd probably get 4 or 5 stencils from the amount of paste I made.

Next day, and I've got exactly the same effect- nice glitter sparkle, with no shedding. Now I can mix up any colour of glitter paste, and I'm pretty sure it's going to work out way cheaper than buying little pots.