Recently I have been playing with my Twinkling H2Os watercolor pots. I found them in a drawer and thought “I haven’t seen these in a long time! Let’s play with them and see if I like them.”
I love them!
I have been using images I have stamped and embossed on black cardstock. Then I watercolor them.
Completed cards:
The Twinkling H2Os really shimmer and shine!
I especially like Personal Stamp Exchange large botanical stamps. These are from the 1990’s, but you can still find them for sale on Etsy and eBay.
Any largish size stamp works for this look. I try to choose stamps that have open areas rather than a lot of fussy details.
Stamp by Stampin’ Up!
I have experimented with embossing powders in Silver, Copper and White, in addition to the Gold.
Silver:
My favorite is the gold embossing, although the silver is nice every now and then. I will continue to try a few different colored powders with other stamps.
I have also tried different dark colored cardstock. Black remains my favorite, but dark brown and dark navy work well too.
This one was stamped/embossed on navy:
This one is stamped/embossed on dark brown:
This one I used maroon cardstock:
These neutral tans seem to work also, although the colors don’t ‘pop’ quite as much:
I did a little reading about twinkling H2Os. They suggest you take the caps off and spritz them all with a spray of water. Let that soak in and after a few minutes they are ready for you to start painting.
I have not tried that.
I get water droplets on my paint brush and wet the watercolor pot with that. Then I swirl and start. I find they do need frequent dips of your brush into water to keep the pigments rich and vivid.
I have several large angel and fairy stamps - but - people faces really do not watercolor well on black!
The above card is a good example of what not to do! Large open areas really are best for this technique. The colors get lost with a lot of fine detail.
However, you also do not want large areas of embossing, as then there is nowhere to watercolor!
I ordered some extra colors on eBay. I did not have a good white or yellow. Even with the new colors, white and yellow are very difficult to apply a smooth look, or even to cover the black cardstock very well.
I didn’t want all my cards to look alike, so in a few I tore or cut the image out after watercoloring. This added a nice variety look, I think. What do you think?
I love stained glass look stamps with these watercolors. Stampin’ Up! had a couple of nice sets, retired now.
Excited about these shimmery watercolors yet? Can’t find Twinkling H2Os anywhere? I reached out to RubberStampMadness, a rubber stamp themed magazine, to see what they recommended. Their first suggestion was to mix watercolors with a powder like Pearl Ex. While I do have Pearl Ex, I don’t really want to spend the time to do a lot of mixing.
For pre-made watercolors their first suggestion was
Finetec (Coliro) Artist Mica Watercolors
Type in the name to your browser, and you can find places to purchase these.
The second was
Kuretake Gansai Tambi Starry Colors
The third suggestion was
MozArt Komorebi
This one seemed to have the most color choices.
I recently purchased a fantastic set of watercolors on Amazon. It has neon, shimmery, metallic and regular watercolors. It also came in a handy tin box with a set of brushes and an eraser, all for less than $20.00.
The shimmery colors are similar to Twinkling H2Os. I do love the 100 different color choices.
Even though I have stamped/embossed the same image, I think you can get a nice variety of looks depending on your color combinations and how you mount the images.
Here are a few more examples:
I hope you are encouraged to get out your watercolors and play. Consider checking out some of these shimmery watercolors to add a new, fresh look to your art. But most of all, just enjoy creating something today.
‘Til next time,
inkspired
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