…handmade watercolour paint :: advent blogalong day11…

A week or two ago, I started following a lovely account on instagram by the name of @redwoodwillow, featuring their handmade watercolour paints, made using honey and glycerin. I admired, and it crossed my mind briefly that I should file that under “things I want to learn one day”. Then, within a few days of this, a message from the usual suspect came through. “Would it be mad to consider making my own watercolours?” asks she, and just like that, we were off.

A quick google gave me some direction, and thankfully I had some basic ingredients to hand, and by lunch time, we had a mix of four different watercolours to set aside to dry.

We used roughly equal parts honey and glycerine, and then coloured with organic food colouring powders. It wasn’t an overly technical process, we just eyeballed the quantities and then mixed by hand. The paints didn’t go very hard though, so it definitely requires further experimenting. They were more the consistency of paint from a tube.

Colour wise, three of the four were nice and consistent, with no sign of graininess, but the fourth it was obvious we used a powder to colour with, which, to be honest, wasn’t overly surprising, as the colour had looked a bit clumpy in the tin before we started.

Overall, it was a fun process! We will have another go at making some more, after a bit of research and possibly adding some extra supplies to the collection.

~~~

This is project three of 26 for the Make All The Things Challenge I am doing with Carrose Creative. You can see my other finished projects here. Please feel free to play along if you would like and drop us a link in the comments to your project!