Lia lives in the United States and comes from a diverse etchnic background including Hispanic/Latino. She is a self taught artist who works in a variety of mediums but mainly in watercolour and digital art. You can find her selling her artwork at large music festivals throughout Pittsburgh in the United States and has an online store. Her Hippie Spooky style has fun, funky, colourful and floral themes. She often incorporates skeletons, ghosts, and things sort of Witchy in her artwork. Her stickers and art prints are quickly growing in popularity and she hope to someday own a brick and mortar store to sell her artwork from.
While creating this piece, I wanted to capture the look and shine that a beautiful Cardinal’s feathers have in real life. Using Shimmer Drops paint allowed me to add a dimension that I would not otherwise be able to achieve using standard watercolors. The feathers in this piece now feel like the flash of color you see as a bird flies by I did this using the color Red Flair. Additionally, I was able to create an eye-catching element using the metallic paints to create a bright and lively nature look, with leaves shimmering in the background! I used the colours Mermaid and Forest to create the background and leaves of the piece, I subtly blended the colors to be in places that would create a harmonious balance while simultaneously attracting the viewer’s eye. Shimmer Drops paints always allow me to add a new dynamic focal point to each painting I make, leaving my customers astounded each time! I’m excited to see the masterpieces I will create in the future using these beautiful, highly-pigmented metallic paints!
]]>Elsa Douillard is a French artist currently living in Israel who has recently settled after living a nomadic life around the world in places like Canada, Brasil and Thailand. She has mostly worked with acrylic paint mixed with other mediums such as gems, clay and glass, however in recent years she has focused on watercolour paint because it was easy to transport during her travels. Elsa creates the most wonderful mandala designs by combining watercolour pencils along with shimmer drops watercolour paints for added colour shift and shimmer highlights. Her designs are a colourful play of interlocking harmonious shapes. Each shape colourfully shaded and often including detailed dots and pattern. Elsa has written about a piece she has created.
I created this piece in a moment of transition in my life when I decided to settle after almost four years of nomadism. I usually paint on white paper but at this time I was suddenly attracted to work only on a black background. Black is not a colour, it is the saturation of all colours at the same time. It symbolizes fullness that will soon make space for renewal. By adding colours to the black paper, I created spaces and emptiness around the shapes.
Looking back now I can see how it made sense for me: the saturation of experiences, of these four years of moving around, and the end of that chapter of my life. At the same time, I found Shimmer Drops on TikTok and fell in love with the Mythical Creatures set! It felt like I had been waiting all my life to come across such watercolour paints! Looking at them from one perspective they were a certain colour and from another perspective they completely changed! They were the perfect match for what I was going through and the possibilities that the unknown future was holding for me. So as soon as I received them, I tried Pegasus and Siren on black paper and created this piece as a type of self-therapy to process to support the changes in my life. It has simplicity with a lot of empty space. Stability symbolised through the number 3 and magic with the colours.
It is still one of my favourite pieces to this day!
One thing to keep in mind is that there are two main categories in our paint collection. They are Shimmer and Colour-shift and under both of these there are also subcategories because each collection uses a slightly different type of pigment. But I won’t go onto all of that now. Let’s get into how to use the paint.
Step 1
Put a drop of water on top of the pan
Step 2
Dip your wet paintbrush into the pan, move it around to pick up some paint and away you go.
We have specially formulated our paints to activate quickly. That means when you put the drop of water on the pan you don’t need to wait before you can start painting. They are ready to paint with straight away. The exception to this is the Gemstone Collection. With these 12 colours, at step 1 you will need to allow the water to sit on the pan for around 2 minutes to activate before you can paint with these colours.
Our paints can be used with lots of water to create a wash which will give a light coloured shimmer that could be a great background or lighter version of the colour just as in traditional watercolours. However, if you are trying to use our paint with the traditional wet on wet technique you will find that they won’t flow and bleed like traditional paints do. This is because the shimmering pigments are heavier and just won’t float around in the water on their own. You will need to push them and dab more pigment in places you want it to be. It simply won’t travel there as traditional watercolours do. They will also give a beautiful granulated effect when used in this way.
Mostly we find that our paints are used with less water and this creates an opaque vivid result of saturated colour. This is also how best to use the colourshift paints and will give the best result to show the colour shift in the watercolour paint.
Now let’s get into the different categories of our paint we have two main types they are Shimmers and Colour Shifts.
Shimmers are just what they say, shimmering paints. This range is made up of Mica, Chrome and Christal pigments. Most will have a flat colour and some will have what we call a duo-chrome effect. This is where they will have two different colours on the shimmer and will paint a different colour on black. But this is an exception as most will be the same colour on black and white paper.
The Glimmer Collection is made up of all our chrome shimmers, these watercolour paints are super shimmering and very vibrant.
Mica and Christal Shimmers make up the majority of our shimmer range. These paints will paint with a buttery consistency and will activate fast and give opaque results. These are sold individually and in several different size sets - from the Obsession set of 28 colours to a set 12 like the Devotion palette or a set of 6 like the Blissful or Metallic palettes to name a few.
All of our shimmer paints can be used with lots of water as a wash for a background or over the top of traditional watercolour to add a shimmering translucent look.
They can be used with less water that will give an opaque effect. This will be vibrant and can be used to add shimmering highlight to your traditional artwork. Alternatively, they can be used on their own to give a very shimmering vibrant look to your finished piece and they work really well for lettering.
Colour shift paints are paints that will change colours when they are looked at from different angles or in different light. These gorgeous and extremely popular paints will reveal their true nature when you move them around the room or when you walk past them and see them from a different angle. There are three different collections in our colour shift paints. They are the Mythical, Pastel Chameleon and Gemstone collections.
The Mythical Collection is made up of 12 opaque colours that have bright and contrasting colours in their shifts. These colours are best used with less water to give bright and opaque results when painting. The paint is slightly tacky in the pan and this is very normal for this pigment. They work best when used with watercolour paper, they have been made to be used on this type of specialty paper. Although if you use them with other types of paper you may find that they smudge after drying; you can stop this by adding a drop of Gum Arabic to your pan when painting. This helps the paint bond with the paper better. You can find liquid Gum Arabic at any good paint store.
The Gemstone Collection is made up if 12 extremely shimmering colour shift paints. These paints are translucent and have been named ‘Gemstone’ because of their translucent qualities. This is the one range in our whole collection that has a longer activation time. When using these watercolour paints you will need to put a drop of water on top and allow it to sit for 2 minutes to activate the paint. This will give you the best results. These colours will surprise you, because they will often paint a different colour to the colour in the pan. Peacock Ora has a purple colour paint in the pan, but it will paint blue on the paper and its shimmer will be purple. That’s what is so special about this range - it’s the shimmer that is a different colour. These are are not like our other colour shifts; they are quite unique in their qualities. This set also paints quite different on black and white paper and truly is like getting 24 colours in a set of 12.
The Ghost Collection is made up of 6 exciting and very cool colour shift paints what have almost white pigments. These white paints have a very faint colour on white paper but the shimmer really pops and will shine coloured unexpectedly. Making them fantastic for layering over regular watercolours. But on black paper is where these paints really come to life, like a ghost in the dark! because these white paints will paint a vibrant colour onto black paper. The best way to use these on black is to use only a little bit of paint with your water. Less is defiantly more when using them on black. If you pick up too much paint with your brush they will come up chalky but with more water and less paint they are divine.
Black Paper
All of our paint works very well on black paper. Giving vibrant and saturated results. The paint is all highly pigmented so they will give excellent results.
Taking care of your Shimmer Drops Paint
When you have finished using your paint, remove any water from the top of each pan and allow the pans to dry out for several hours or overnight before closing your tin or container. Some paints will remain tacky and that is completely normal. Watercolour paint is best stored in a tin or container to keep them from absorbing moisture from the air and kept in a dry cooler environment.
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