Stacking Mixing Dishes

I find regular moulded palettes a trial to use, the wells in them are usually too small and because 6-8 wells are all joined in one palette that makes them too large to hold and awkward to pack. I am talking about this kind of thing.. 

They are usually super cheap, but I just don't like them much. Also a bit of a pain to clean out, again as the little wells are quite small. 

I wanted something with bigger wells, but not bigger overall, something that was easy to take with me to demos. I saw someone using little porcelain dishes and thought these would be perfect. I believe their original use is for ink, rather than paint.. but I liked them.. 

How cute would these be stacked up on a desk, I like the vintage feel of them.

But.. I have never actually seen them anywhere near me for sale, and even if I saw them I doubt if I could afford them, so how could I get something similar for a fraction of the price?

In town we have a general all purpose kind of store,{Wilkinsons} that has these acrylic coasters/feet for sale at just 55p each. In the past I have only ever seen these in brown, they go under the feet of wooden furniture. 

I spotted these clear ones, there were 2 sizes, these are the larger ones and measure 2.5inches across. 

They might work really well I thought, so I bought a few to try. Of course being clear, whatever you have them stood on shows through, making it hard to see the paint colours you have put inside.  So I turned each one over and painted the underside with 2 coats of white paint, followed by 2 thin coats of matte gel to seal them and stop the paint scratching off. 

Now when I turned them the right way they had a white bottom...{ if I had painted white inside the pots that would have come off whenever I cleaned the inside}

Now I can use them for watercolour paints and for acrylics and for inks and they wipe clean. 

They stack up nice and neat, take up hardly any room and they are small enough to slot a couple into my large pencil case to take with me on demos while still giving me a large enough area for paint. Very handy when you don't want to have blobs of paint all over the demo table. 

ok, so they are acrylic and not porcelain, and they don't look as cute, but for 55p each they do a great job as little mixing dishes. I only have tiny hands, and one of these nestles neatly in the palm of my hand making it really comfortable to use. 

if you are a beader, these, or even the smaller ones, would be perfect little sorting dishes for your beads. 

Darcy x

Launch Week Has Arrived!!!

EEEK!!! it is so exciting, and has been so hard to keep secrets, but at last Launch Week is here.... or rather it is over there... on the PaperArtsy blog. 

Tonight is the first night of collections aunches, and we will have new products to show you every night for a whole week. 

We kick off the week with 16 brand new paint colours, all of them yummytastic!

First up the new blues.. 

we also have new purples. 

and if that wasn't enough, we also have 2 new sets of limited edition colours from Lin Brown and Jo Firth Young. 

If you pop over to the PaperArtsy blog you will see all the new paint families, and some fantastic samples that have been made by our guests this evening. 

Here is a video from PaperArtsy explaining the paint. 

I have made a quick journal page with the blues,purples and 2 of Lin's colours. 

I started by adding torn book text, paper doily and music paper to my page. 

Then I brayered on in this order.. Smurf, Wisteria, Glass Blue then Lavendar. I knocked it all back with a little Blue Oyster, and then stamped the scratchy rectangle stamp from EEV02. I dipped the stamp very lightly into blueberry and stamped in both directions. 

I then painted some circles with Snowflake, and once dry I painted them again using Banana and Tangerine Twist. These are both translucent colours and so look truer if used over white. 

Then using Blueberry I stencilled just over the circles..

Then using Black Archival ink I stamped the bold spiral from EEV01

This is deli paper, on one half is Glass Blue topped with Smurf and Wisteria. The other half is Purple Rain topped with Blueberry and Blue Oyster. 

I tore the deli paper into strips and glued them to the page. 

Then I mixed Grunge paste with paint and added some textured petals using stencils. 

Once dry I added doodling around the Grunge paste. 

Next I added a border all around the page using Blueberry, and torn card as a template. 

I painted 5 small tags with China, blended on  a little Glass Blue and mounted them onto white card. I then printed out a quote, cut it up and glued it to the tags. 

these were then stapled to the page. 

 and so the page is done. 

 I just love that background

Do go to the PaperArtsy blog for more great samples and ideas and most importantly lots of information about the new paints. 

All the new products are availabe for sale NOW from your favourite PaperArtsy supplier. 

Remember there will be more reveals, samples and videos every night this week. 

Darcy x