Crafterateur

I learned how to make my own watercolors! Talk about taking my crafty skills to the next level. When I discovered Pinta PH I became interested in learning about making watercolors by hand. Then, I discovered Case for Making – and handmade watercolors is what they are all about! I quickly signed up for one of their watercolor making workshops.

When I arrived to class these beautiful pigments were all lined up on the workshop table. AHH, I couldn’t wait to get started. Our instructor (and shop owner) Alexis shared her watercolor making wisdom and demoed one of the colors – fluorescent magenta!

The watercolor base is a propriety mix of distilled water, gum arabic, and honey. You gradually add the base to the pigment and mix and smash until you get the right consistency. For the fluorescent pigments we also used a few drops of rubbing alcohol to get the pigment to mix well with the base.

We each got to make two colors for the entire class. Each pigment behaves differently so it was fun to see all these pigments in action. I made gold ochre light and fluorescent yellow. The gold ochre is an ‘earth pigment’ and it was on the gritty side. It required a lot more base than other pigments and a lot more smooshing. The finished product had the consistency of peanut butter and ‘stood up’ in the paint pots.

The fluorescent yellow was smoother than the gold ochre, and after staring at this yellow for so long everyone’s skin looked red in my eyes. What a weird brain sensation!

My classmate caught me mixing!

Check out all the colors we made! We each took home a full palette in a metal tin. The paints needed a few days to set, but theoretically we could have started painting with our colors right away.

I suppose the next level would be creating my own pigments to make watercolors. Whoa. For now I’ll just enjoy painting with these handmade colors! 🙂

Oh, and here’s a peek into the Case for Making shop. It’s small but boasts a huge selection of painting tools and materials, plus a variety of writing utensils, books, and, of course, their entire collection of CFM watercolors!

Yay for exploring new crafts and shops!