I have a mad love and passion for Twinkling H2O’s.

I admit it – they’re just one of the most beautiful products out there and add so much to a project.

So I had fun today and decided to try them out on a couple of different surfaces using a resist technique. My plan was to see if I could come up with some Christmas Card ideas and I think I have!

All you need (I forgot to take a pic of supplies!) are Twinkling H2O’s, a paintbrush, water, a mister of water, embossing powder and a heat tool, and any surfaces you want to paint on – I used vellum, watercolour paper, and kraft glassine.

First, mist your Twinks with water. These are solid paints and they need to sit a bit to get , well, painty! For this technique I made them really liquidy, like watercolours.

Next, stamp your image with Versamark ink and heat emboss. I did kraft glassine first:

As you can see, due to the nature of the coating on the glassine, the image isn’t as crisp as it would have been on paper.

Now, swipe colour over your embossed image, the coating on the glassine will cause the paint to pool a lot on the surface:

At this point, I pressed my cloth onto the surface and picked up most of the liquid, and so, the colour:

As you can see, it’s very faint but the shimmer sat right on top of the glassine and looked awesome!

I tried watercolour paper next, and because of the surface, it took the colour really well but left less shimmer – definitely the easiest surface to work with but not as much final impact:

It’s still pretty though!

Finally, I tried out vellum. This was the hardest surface, it curled a lot with the water, and the colour didn’t sink in so ran a lot because of the curling, but it had the best combination of colour and shimmer together:

Also, the translucency of the vellum made a great effect too.

Once  I had tried them all out, I went back to the vellum and held it down so it wouldn’t curl and the colour wouldn’t run as much. Then I heat set the paint until the surface was dry. I like how it turned out but it’s way too much fussy work for quick cards:

I also used silver embossing here, instead of the white I used on all the other pieces – love the extra shine it gives!

I went back to the glassine and thought that the colour might take to the glassine better if I crumpled up the paper and broke the coating, which I did, and then added another layer of paint. It turned out pretty well!

And this turned out to be my favourite card – I love the soft colours.

My favourite effect though, happened when I embossed the stamp on glassine, then crumpled it all up and painted on the broken surface – the darker paint colours stayed vibrant with a ton of shimmer!

And see the flecks of white on both glassine surfaces (you can see it best on the first card)? That’s the embossing powder. When I crumpled the paper it broke the hardened powder and when I painted, the brush and water caused flecks to flake off and stick in the paint colour. I think it looks cool – love that side effect!

I’ll definitely make some more glassine cards – it’s too much fun not to and it’s the perfect thing to do at the Retreat when it’s 3am and my mind no longer functions properly!

Hope you liked the cards, and I really hope you go buy some Twinks to play with – they really are the bomb!

S.