DIY “Peerless” Style Watercolors Tutorial

Hi Friends! I had a request the other day on the facebook page to make faux Peerless watercolors. Peerless watercolors are dye watercolors that come on small rectangles of paper. They were mainly used for photo tinting but lately stampers have been using them for coloring because it is easy to control the amount of color you get.Here is a card I colored with my faux Peerless palette. The rose stamp is from Lost Coast Designs.

I really loved the ease of coloring. You can use almost any water-media you have to make a Peerless style travel palette but I had the most luck with my Inktense blocks and traditional watercolors. See how I did it:

The dye reinker and marker attempts never dried fully, even days later. You can also use watercolor pencils and crayons or gouache. If you can’t get the Yupo paper I used try laminating cardstock or use a report cover or transparency. If the paint doesn’t want to stick you can lightly sand the plastic first. Yupo is designed to be used with watercolor so no treatment is required. I liked the sample I made with my set of 12 inktense blocks so much I swatched out my set of 72 and it did not make a dent in my blocks! I love that I can take my full set of colors with me while leaving my set of blocks safely at home. since the Yupo paper is thin I attached it to a file folder.

This is a great idea for classes and supply sharing too since we rarely use up our watercolor pencils and crayons!

So you are probably wondering why anyone would buy real Peerless paints if you can make these so easily, well, I reckon that the peerless watercolors have more paint on the swatches and they are super transparent because they are a dye. I will probably have to reload my inktense palette many times to equal amount of use I would get from a stack of peerless sheets. I’d love to try them someday but this works for me and my budget right now! Plus it is always good to use what you have. Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!