Make your own Metallic Watercolors!

Howdy! This is cool. Did you know you can make your own metallic watercolors on the cheap? Well you can! I was at the “Dollar Tree” on Saturday and found metallic tempera paint by Prang. It came in 9 colors and of course I got them all (a buck each, can you blame me?) You can use any metallic tempera or poster paint but not acrylic because when acrylic paint dries it goes through a chemical chance and cannot be turned into paint again. Squeeze the paint into a plastic palette, muffin tin or tackle box. Anything with compartments will work and if it has a lid bonus! Let it dry so you have little cakes of color. The paint will shrink to about 1/3 due to the water content of the paint. Then to use simply dip a wet paint brush in the dry paint and you are good to go! You can paint on a rubber stamp before stamping, color in a stamped image with the paint or brush some paint around the edges of a card as I did here:

Now you are probably thinking “Why Bother?” I can leave the paint in the bottle and squirt it when i need it. True you can but the paint contains a lot of water and if you let it dry and use a wet brush to bring it back you control how much water is in the paint and how bright and shiny it will be plus it is a whole lot easier to tote a small palette to a crop rather than 9 bottles of paint! If you want to be really frugal just by the white pearl color and mix it with whatever watercolor you have to make your own custom colors! Have fun & Happy Crafting!