If you are here as a customer who just received your new Water and Whimsy Co. watercolors, congratulations! If you found your way here by other means, welcome! These tricks and rules of thumb apply to all watercolors, not just my own! If you're a painter, you can benefit by reading the following instructions.
Suggested Best Use Practices For Your New Watercolors:
- Your paints may have gone through any number of fluctuating climate conditions on the way to you and may be a bit sticky, especially if it’s hot.
- If sticky, place in freezer for a couple of minutes.
- Your tin comes with a custom cut piece of parchment in the lid of each tin to prevent your paints from sticking to the lid, which especially happens when they are put away before fully drying. It is recommended that you keep the parchment in place to help prevent this.
- When you’re ready to paint, use a dropper, syringe, or brush to place 2-5 drops of water on top of the paint pan to activate the paint. More drops = more color dilution. Less drops = more vibrant color. The longer you wait to swirl the water, the more paint will lift with it. I usually let it sit for around 2 minutes.
- When you are done painting, leave the lid off of the paint tin/container and set aside until the pans have fully dried. The paints should not mold, but they do not contain preservatives and with climate conditions varying, this is the best way to ensure the quality and longevity of your paints.
- Do not consume these paints and keep away from children unsupervised.
Suggested Practices to dispose of your paint water:
- Option 1: The slower option. Let your container of used paint water sit somewhere for a few hours to a day or so to let the particles settle on the bottom. At this point, you can pour the water out through a coffee filter and wipe the built up pigment out of the cup with a paper towel to dispose of. You can also follow the above steps, but speed it up a bit by pouring some of the water out until there’s only a little left and leave that until the water has fully evaporated then wipe out the dry pigment. This is a more thorough method.
- Option 2: The faster option. You can pour the water container out through a coffee filter slowly. Keep rinsing and pouring through the filter until it is clean and wipe out any excess pigment.
We recommend after reading this, that you check out the "Disclaimer" and "FAQs" sections under the "More" tab before using your paints for the first time. It's a quick read and you won't regret it!
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Thank you!