Current class from the Free Little Purple Art Studio

Painted Coasters

I am super excited to launch free mini-classes through the Little Free Puprle Art Studio in Madison. 🙂 The name is a mouthful I know!

May’s class: 

DIY Paint your own coaster

It’s three simple steps to promote fun and learning!

1. Decorate the watercolor paper with paint, markers, or whatever you find compelling. 🙂

2. Glue the watercolor paper with ModPodge to the acrylic disk. Make sure if it’s an etched disk it faces the paint to make it easier to clean. Let it rest for some time under pressure (a book or two).

3. Attach the cork backing.

Done!

Some Tips:

• Prang school watercolors are a good affordable paint.
• Make sure your watercolors have enough water mixed in. If the paint isn’t really activated yet, it will be weaker in color. I often use a spray bottle to spray all my watercolors and wait a minute or two before beginning.
• Washes Lay water down first then add pigment! This is fun to watch and see spread. Play with the water
• Acrylic allows you to layer over and over. If you don’t like something you can simply paint over it once it dries with acrylic. Adding white to watercolor paint is fun to experiment with. It adds opacity and lightens it. 
• Removing paint is often as much fun as laying it down. Add water to a brush and brush over watercolor to see what happens.

Unique features of watercolor and acrylic paints and Sharpie markers:

Permanance:
Acrylic paint once dry will not move. Acrylic also leans towards being opaque; standard white always is. Same is true for Sharpie markers — it will not move and will not bleed once dry and it’s opaque.Impermanance:

Watercolor will activate when wet and move again. It also tends to be transparent.

Use these qualities to your advantage! You can achieve stained glass-like effects by putting opaque lines down with sharpie or acrylics and letting them dry, then add in a wash of watercolor.

Additional supplies if you want to explore further:

Watercolors work far better on watercolor paper. Premium experiences can be found with 140 lb Arches cold-pressed paper, available at Dick Blicks at discount. Arches is phenomenal and worth experiencing. For more supply recommendations see the Supply blog post. Otherwise whatever brushes you have will be fine. DecoArt tend to be good low cost fluid acrylics and it’s fun to get some in gold and glitter too. Premium paints that have intense pigments include Golden Acrylics and Daniel Smith watercolors. They are very expensive. Of note, one uses far less of the paint as the pigments are so strong. The premium coaster kit to buy includes samples from both of these at a more affordable price to try.