Swatch Heaven + Giveaway

I'm literally freaking out today. I might require medical attention.

My friend Nina - the owner of Waffle Flower and quite possibly the sweetest and smartest human I know - has apparently been stealing my wishes while I sleep, because what she is releasing today grants every wish I've EVER HAD for a watercolor swatch/exercise stamp and die bundle.

I literally screamed when she sent me a little preview video of the collection, and if you like watercolor, you will be screaming too. If you are a member of my Daniel Smith Watercolor Split group, I have a surprise for you in there today too.

The BEST way to learn the properties of your watercolors, or ANY medium - ink, pencils, whatever - is to swatch them.

In my split group (we split watercolor tubes to save money), we have all just made our own swatches - just little blobs of paint we use as a reference.

But no more.

At my retreat, my friend Yoorah showed me how she was using the Dyalog insert books to swatch and sketch in. They are the perfect size for a single one of our splits, and the books have different page types depending on what you want to do. I already had a cover (you can add multiple books to a cover with elastic bands) so I got the grid insert book to use this amazing new bundle in.

Here's what I did. First, I stamped the Color Swatches stamp (be still my heart) in Nocturne on watercolor paper twice. Then I used the largest of the matching dies to cut out the group of 24. Since my C split has 27 colors in it, I used the die that cuts out four swatches (she thought of absolutely everything), and cut one off the end. That one will go into another odd-numbered split. Then, you'll see in the video how I use the lines across each swatch, and I painted the swatches. I glued them in the book and added my color key. Much easier to use numbers on the swatches themselves. Luckily, I already have a letter/number system for the entire Daniel Smith line and that's what we use in the group.

BUT WAIT - for each split, I'll choose a red, a yellow and a blue and do the fantastic triad exercise she has as a stamp in the - SQUEE - color wheels set. You can see the colors I used below and in the video - each split will yield fun, different combos depending on the triad I choose. I love that yellow green color bottom center and the central gray is so unique and interesting. This really will get me out of my color box, because I don't typically use a muted yellow like Mars Yellow for mixing, and I'm so glad I did!

BUT WAIT SOME MORE - the COLOR WHEEL STAMP AND DIE, Y'ALL. Seriously. So the dies cut both pieces and you hook them together with a mini brad and you can make any danged color wheel you want!! SERIOUSLY.

So I made TWO of them because I was so excited, and I glued them together with a piece of acetate sandwiched between them. Then I used Scor-Tape to stick the piece of scored Duralar to the book page, and I adhered the triad exercise on top. On the color wheel you can see here, I chose a red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet and painted those wedges. Then I mixed each pair for the red/orange, yellow/orange etc. wedges. For the concentric circles going to the center, I painted one stripe of orange, one of yellow, one of green, one of blue and one of violet all the way around the circle on top of the wedges. LOOK at the beautiful mixes on the blue wedge. This opens up SO many possibilities! You could have a VERY limited palette and find some amazing mixed colors with these wheels.

The wheel that is on the back of this wheel I just did mixes of the color that was opposite a wedge. So on the orange wedge, I did gradual mixes of blue to the center, and on the blue wedge, I mixed in more and more orange to the center - again, 14 unique colors from just a complementary mix. So freaking cool. You'll see me flip through that second wheel in the video. Amazing.

So here's how my book opened to the C split looks. the color wheel folds in and the other one is on the back.

Color Swatches [ WFF ] Color Wheels Stamp Set [ WFF ] Swatch Stamp Set [ WFF ] Color Swatches Die [ WFF ] Swatch Tag Die [ WFF ] Color Swatches Bundle [ WFF ] Color Wheels Combo – WaffleFlower.com [ WFF ] Swatch Tag Bundle [ WFF ] Lacy Flower XL Die – WaffleFlower.com [ WFF ] Adventures Stamp Set – WaffleFlower.com [ WFF ] Watercolor Starter Kit [ WFF ] Cardmaker Swatching Kit [ WFF ] Swatch Stamping Kit [ WFF ] Get Well Soon Matching Die –... [ WFF ] Waffle Flower Clear Stamps, Get Well... [ ELH ] VersaFine Clair Ink Pad, Nocturne -... [ ELH | SSS ] Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors [ BLIC ] Da Vinci Cosmotop Sable Mix F Brushes... [ BLIC | ELH ] Ranger Dylusions GRID Dyalog Insert... [ SSS ] Ranger Dylusions DREAM Dyalog Cover... [ SSS ] Ranger Dylusions ELASTIC BANDS Dyalog... [ SSS ] Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. Cold Press... [ AMZUS ] Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- White [ GNK ] Grafix Dura-Lar Clear Acetate... [ BLIC ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSW | HA | SSS | ELH | MFT | SBC ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | ELH | CST | ART | SBC ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Scor-Tape 1/4 Inch Crafting Tape [ SSS | MFT | JGG ] Multipurpose Liquid Glue by Stampin' Up! [ SUP ] Nesting Porcelain Bowls - BLICK art... [ BLIC ] My Favorite Watercolor Sketchbook [ UTR ] Escoda Versatil Brushes, Travel Round... [ UTR ] Absorber - Synthetic Cleaning Cloth [ AMZUS ] Mudder 10 Pack White Buffer Sanding... [ AMZUS ] Xyron ADHESIVE ERASER 23675 [ SSS | ART | AMZUS ] Essentials by Ellen Storage... [ ELH ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two... [ SSS | ART | BLIC | ELH ] Ink Off Cloth [ INK ] TURQUOISE Studio Bag [ MSW ]

The individual swatch stamp and dies make a nice ring you can throw in your travel kit with your palette, or they also fit in those pocket pages if you prefer a notebook. I like a ring, so here's mine for the C Split - it's easy to just toss the ring for whatever palette I'm traveling with into my MISTI bag and go. The matching die has little hole reinforcers too. The key is for granulation, so on mine, I filled it in for granulating colors. T = transparency, so I half filled for semi-transparent, blank for transparent. Daniel Smith uses a four level scale for Staining, so on that circle, I drew an X, and I filled in 1, 2, 3 or 4 triangles to indicate low or high staining - all are shown here. Then you have a space for the brand, the lightfastness rating and the pigment number. I found copper color rings here, which are just fun and different.

Here are what the stamp sets look like:

 

  

Here's what the book with my split swatches and wheels looks like closed - this is the cover with the elastic band. I can fit all 8 of the Daniel Smith splits - the full line - in the front, and still have 3/4 of the book left for sketches or notes or whatever. Such an awesome use of space for a reference tool!

Here's my video of this amazing release in action, and you can see what I'm talking about with the two different color wheels I made. 

Now that it's all swatched and pretty and organized - I can actually PAINT with them.

I have wanted to do no-line watercolor on this adorable stamp set forever, and I noticed while I was swatching that this split has an ideal grouping of some complementaries to build scene like this with, so I stamped the image in Fadeout ink on watercolor paper and went to town. 

Is that kitty not the cutest? I really hope he gets to feeling better. FYI - this stamp is retiring, so you'd better hurry if you want it. 

Waffle Flower Clear Stamps, Get Well... [ ELH ] Get Well Soon Matching Die –... [ WFF ] Fadeout No Line coloring Detail Ink [ INK | SSS ] VersaFine Clair Ink Pad, Nocturne -... [ ELH | SSS ] Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors [ BLIC ] Escoda Versatil Brushes, Travel Round... [ UTR ] Da Vinci Cosmotop Sable Mix F Brushes... [ BLIC | ELH ] Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. Cold Press... [ AMZUS ] Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- White [ GNK ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSW | HA | SSS | ELH | MFT ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | ELH | CST | ART ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Multipurpose Liquid Glue by Stampin' Up! [ SUP ] Nesting Porcelain Bowls - BLICK art... [ BLIC ] My Favorite Watercolor Sketchbook [ UTR ] Absorber - Synthetic Cleaning Cloth [ AMZUS ] Mudder 10 Pack White Buffer Sanding... [ AMZUS ] Xyron ADHESIVE ERASER 23675 [ SSS | ART | AMZUS ] Essentials by Ellen Storage... [ ELH ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two... [ SSS | ART | BLIC | ELH ] Ink Off Cloth [ INK ]

So, as I said, if you are a member of my split group, something fun is waiting for you in there today.

Nina has some amazing guides and printables, professionally printed, that will ship with any Color Swatches bundle purchase! They include a spacer for the MISTI to help you perfectly line up your swatches.

She also has bundled some of these products together - she has a watercolor starter kit, a cardmaker swatching kit, a swatch stamping kit and of course if you want to hit the buy it all button, you can get all the stamps, dies, plus a beautiful new stamp set and stunning watercolor-friendly die.

Each of these bundles is below.

Watercolor Starter Kit [ WFF ] Cardmaker Swatching Kit [ WFF ] Swatch Stamping Kit [ WFF ]

And of course we are hopping today to celebrate our friend the genius and this release. There is a giveaway - YAY - and please note, that Nina is also a sponsor of Dare to Get Dirty at Splitcoast and will be giving away a big bundle of these products too, so be sure and join us - the challenges run through the 10th.

Waffle Flower is giving away $25 gift certificates to THREE lucky winners. You can leave comment on my blog by 11:59pm ET on 8/12/18 for your chances to win. Winners will be chosen at random from the comments left on any of the posts on this blog hop and will be announced on the Waffle Flower blog on 8/15/2018.

To celebrate the new release, all orders placed by 11:59 PM ET on 8/15/18 will receive an Adhesive Eraser from our friends at Xyron! No code required; limited to 1 per customer; while Supplies last.

Next up on the hop is the lovely and talented Mariko.

Loveyameanitmakesomeswatchesbye.