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Swatching a New Watercolor Set

Learn how to swatch a watercolor set.

I love getting new craft materials. I purchased a new watercolor set on Amazon because my daughter has been powering through my supply of watercolor paints. Before diving into painting, I swatch the colors. It doesn’t matter if the material is watercolor, markers, or such, I always swatch the colors and you should too.

I swatch them in the order they appear in the packaging. It might also be nice to swatch them in blending relationships or color family relationships if they aren’t packaged well together.

Amazon link (affiliate): https://amzn.to/2IV8DvT

Why should you swatch? Often colors won’t appear the same in a solid form. Even if you are provided a printed color chart, it might not relate to how you use the colors. This is often seen in the cap colors of markers. Many artists talk about how the cap colors don’t appear similar to the swatched colors.

I keep the swatch sample with the color materials and often refer to it before choosing a color.

Did you find this helpful. Let me know what materials you swatch before usage.

DIY Color Experiment

A color experiment using Kool-Aid. Can we craft with it? It ends up being spritzed and painted with.

I recently saw a YouTuber use Kool-Aid to dye paper. I thought the Kool-Aid looked similar to shimmer powder. I also thought instead of staining the paper with kool-aid we could just paint with it. So the experiment began by going to the grocery store and seeing what colors I could find. I basically bought yellow, red, blue, and purple. Each package was about twenty-five cents. So home I went to try out our Kool-Aid colors.

Materials:

  • Kool-aid
  • paper
  • water brush
  • plastic containers
  • spritz bottle with water
  • Eye shadow
  • Deco-foil

Video Experiment:

spritz and paint sample page
shimmer trials
card parts

I decided the true test would be if you could use the kool-aid colors in crafting. So I made a few card fronts with the kool-aid colors. The version above has all the kool-aid colors and gold foil. A sentiment was stamped onto the bottom with coordinating purple ink.

xyron sticker maker

I used a Xyron sticker maker to apply adhesive to the back of the card front and then adhered it to the front of the folded card base.

finished red

And here is the red version. I added a Rinea foil sentiment and a diy flower from another tutorial here on Try it – Like it – Create it. Here’s the link to the flowers if you want to see how to make them: flower embellishments.