# What's the difference between Crystalline, Glitter, Sugar?



## Pluk (Sep 23, 2009)

Hi!

I'm a graphic designer and work in the clothing industry. I would like to know what are the differences between the different "sparkles" print techniques, such as crystalline, glitter, sugar and more that I possibly don't know about...

I'm getting a t-shirt printed with plastisol ink and I would like to have a sparkly overlay on top of one of the ink colors.

Can anyone help me with clarifying these sparkle terms?

Thanks in advance!


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## red514 (Jul 21, 2009)

Crystalline is most often a multicolored sparkle suspended in a clear base.

Glitter is most often a single color (available in many different colors) sparkle suspended in a clear base.

Sugarglitter is most often applied to a wet adhesive (i believe it can be a clear base but i'm not positive) after printing, much like flocking is done

all three effects can be printed on top of a flash cured ink color


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## Pluk (Sep 23, 2009)

Thanks Red514!

That actually helped me clarify. 

Is there also a difference between the sparkle sizes in each of these techniques?

Is there one technique that is more resistant to wash than the other or would that just be a quality factor?


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## red514 (Jul 21, 2009)

the sugarglitter is the least resistant to wash as it sits on top of an adhesive, where as the other two are mostly suspended inside a clear base. it has a rather ruff feel as well.

with all three techniques you can control the amount of crystals if you're mixing it yourself to allow more of the color underneath to show. 
I believe depending on the supplier their should be different size crystals/flakes available. Sugarglitter tends to be fairly larger flakes tho and harder to control coverage if you want a sparse sparkle effect due to the application method.


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