Peerless Transparent Paints

I feel I must share an amazing discovery on the old internet, Nicholson's Peerless Transparent Watercolour Paints. If that sounds like an old fashioned patent product that is because they are!

 

Peerless paints are manufactured in the US, and have been since 1885 when they were developed to hand tint photographs. The unique thing about these paints is they are coated onto the surface of a special paper and then activated when water is added. They are dye based, really transparent colours. I saw them when I was googling storage of watercolour paper and came across this film on YouTube by Jayne Davenport. They are really thin sheets of paint which makes them incredibly portable. Now as soon as my paints arrived, inspired by Jayne,  I had to get my own portable palette oragnised. I warn you now some may find this post a bit dull, while others may get as excited as me by such a task! 

First I did some test swatches on scrap paper to work out colour groupings, that got me really excited by the colour intensity. I then designed a grid with an inch square for the paint itself and space underneath for a strip of watercolour paper for a test paint splodge and the name of the colour. This shows the format for the blank pages printed on white card with the watercolour paper strips added. The final page has an index of which paint colours come from each set of paints as various options are available.

 

I gradually painted my colours onto each strip of paper and I also cut out some inch square samples.

 



I used masking tape to organise my paint squares onto a spare grid printed onto paper. As I cut the inch squares out I wrote the colour name onto the masking tape and added a square of red line tape on the back of each ready for mounting. Now this is a little bit of a mucky job as the paint does activate on your hands if you have hot hands as most of us have recently!

When all the swatches had been painted on, the next stage was for me to trim up the grids and laminate the panels. I had left the excess edges in situ while I did the painting and that worked well as my mucky fingers were only touching something that would be waste when trimmed off. Once laminated and trimmed, I used some A3 kraft card to make a four fold palette. Between each of the sets of two I used acetate as Jayne had to separate colours if wet and also providing a mobile palette for mixing paints.

 

Once I had stuck down my four grids, two with a hinged acetate panel underneath, I was ready to stick on my paint squares.

 





The end result is my lovely palette of all the gorgeous colours. I can imagine taking this on holiday and to all sorts of places, with just a waterbrush these paints are good to go. I want to make a decorate folder to house the palette, but in the meantime, I can just delight in the result of my work of about three evenings!!! Please excuse the messy desk, but you know how it is.

I bought my paints here and I cannot recommend the customer service and speedy delivery I received highly enough.

I hope someone out there will enjoy this post!!! Thank you to Jayne for the inspiration.

The cooler air this evening is a delight, we have had no rain down here yet though, I think some other may have had our share!

Let me leave you with a pic I took outside our front door. This little plant seems to hang on by a thread, but never grows very much. I noticed this week, something had been making holes in the leaf and the little muncher seems quite artistic, because they have created a leafy butterfly with holes in each corner!

Elaine

For a friend

I used the corners from the Chocolate Baroque Poppy Meadow stamps to inspire this card.

I embossed the corners in silver on the black card and added the sentiment from Pretty Poppies. The heart is from the Rose and Thistle CB set, embossed in a dark red metallic EP on pink pearlescent card and then added colour with H2O paints. I gave the heart some dimension by mounting it on the left over grid from foam dots.

Whatever you are doing I hope you have a good weekend. We have a blessed breeze here on the south coast and what a delight it is! A beach picnic today might be lovely, but everyone else has the same idea on a day like today which may make it less of a tempting idea!

Elaine x

A butterfly card

This is a card I made for a friend recently to let her know I was thinking of her.

 

I actually started off with one of my leafy backgrounds. Then I overstamped with the script stamp from Chocolate Baroque Edwardian Gentleman and the stained glass fragment stamps from CB Steampunk Butterfly.

 

I added a foliage stamps from CB Wild Meadow, coloured with a Distress Marker and the Butterfly from CB Butterfly Dreams. I can't believe this is the first time this butterfly had been inked, it certainly won't be the last! I restamped the butterfly and cut out the wing section so I could colour separately which I did with more ink shading and some coloured pencil highlights with my Prismas. I stamped the semtinent on a die cut - this is from a second hand Stampin' Up set I bought at the recent craft show in Portsmouth. I matted onto black as I like the highlight it adds and finished with some toning gems.

 

I hope you are managing to keep cool. I am loving being outside more and enjoying the early mornings with the sun coming through the leaves is one of the things I like to do when I wander around the garden in my dressing gown - fortunately our postman does not arrive early here! This is one of our hop vines taken on one of my early morning meanders this week.

 

 

It is great to spot any new flowers as they come out, like these amazing lilies which are such a deep colour, even bleached out a little in this picture.

 

 

It is great working in my shed when I get the time with the top of the door open for coolness. The fact it is surrounded by trees for shade is a blessing in this weather. It looks like the wrens are back in residence in my craft shed bird house and I did smile the other day when one nearly took a detour into the shed itself while I was playing the Lark Ascending as I worked.

 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a great week!

 

Elaine x

A family card or two

I am busy trying to get ahead on the family card front this month, as there are six birthdays to deal with, including two of my brothers. Here are a couple of cards I tinkered with.

As is sadly so often the case lately, this is not a great pic. I had an unused new Andy Skinner mask that I spotted as I was pondering ideas for this card and that was what got me started. The brother concerned will probably think I have gone all soppy sending him a card like this one! As usual I used Adirondack die inks to shade and Ranger Archival and Versafine for stamping. The stamps are a mix of Chocolate Baroque, Lavinia and Inkadinkado.

The second card is more simple. This one used ink swiping to back the stamped panel.

I rarely use this technique, but I was pleased the way my beach and sea and sky worked out. I stamped in Lagoon Versafine, the stamp is from Inkylicious. The sentiments on both cards are from a Just Rite clear set of very useful sentiments in such a nice font. The paper is from the Bo Bunny Serenity collection.

I had a great visit to the new craft show in Portsmouth on Sunday. It's always nice to do a bit of crafty shopping and I got some brilliant bargain dies which will gradually get outings before too long!

Elaine x