Use It or Lose It -- Paint Dabbers

My craft room overfloweth with neglected craft materials. How about yours? I have so many items in my craft room that I have purchased because I was absolutely sure that I "needed" them. Most of them were in my beginning stages of crafting when I was easily convinced by products I saw or heard (or read) about. My craft funds have pretty much dried up, so I am at the place where I either rediscover what I already have or I need to sell it to buy something new. So, I have challenged myself to use it or lose it. This week I chose to use my Paint Dabbers that I put on my Christmas list two years ago. Quite honestly, I haven't really used them all that much. In fact, most of them were dried up and I had to resurrect them. Thankfully, this was quite easy to do.

They are easily thinned with water, so I took the cover off and put just a few drops of water in the bottle and mixed it with a craft stick. I used the craft stick to "dig" all of the dried out paint that was in the top and put it back in the bottle and mixed it in. Shake it up really good, it should be of the consistency to shake. The tops were also dried out, so I ran hot water in my kitchen sink and dabbed the paint dabber in the water in the sink until the paint loosened up. They worked like new again.

I really had a lot of fun playing with these and made all kinds of accessories as well as cards. I will share with you what I did. You can click on the pictures to view them larger.

I found they work great on raw chipboard. The daisy flower was painted with the dabbers. You can put glitter on the paint while it is still wet and it will stick really well. I really like this look. I also did this with the white tag. I painted it white, then added glitter to the wet paint. I painted a fabric flower purple. It also works pretty well on coated chipboard, I just needed to used two coats. I love the look of the metallic paints on raw chipboard (the tags). The pearl is so pretty and dried with a crackle look. I used the paint on some fabric leaves that come on silk plants that you can buy at craft stores. I dabbed some copper on one, gold on one and some red pepper on another. I also tried it on acrylic, you can get different looks depending on how much you apply. If you paint on the back you can stamp with Staz-On on the front. I also love the look of edging with the paint dabbers.
On this card I used the acrylic that comes with the Papertrey stamps and cut it with nesties in my BigKick machine. The Labels One die is stamped on the front with Staz-On and I dabbed some Copper paint on the back of the stamped section and around the edges. I then ran it through the BigKick with the swiss dot embossing folder.

The Designing D.I.V.A.S. are having a Secret Sister challenge right now to make lollipop flowers, which I had never heard of before, but it sounded interesting and I checked out the links. Super cool, I just had to try it. In the tutorial, she used alcohol inks but I wanted to try it with the paint dabbers. After I cut the acrylic circles from Petite circle nesties, I ran them through the BigKick with the tiny bubbles embossing folder. I then used the red pepper and butterscotch paint dabbers on the front and copper on the back and edges. I used my heat gun to melt the acrylic circles. I held the circles together and used the Crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the center and used a brad to hold them together. I really like the way it came out. I don't like this card, but I love the flower. lol You can find the tutorial I used here.
For this card, I used the Aqua paint dabber to paint a background for my stamps. The stamp is from the All Things of Nature set by The Angel Company. I stamped it with Broken China Distress ink. The sentiment and the music notes are from the Birds of a Feather Set by Papertrey and are stamped in the same ink. The bling in the corner is clear bling colored with Stream alcohol ink. For some reason, this picture makes them look like they are embedded. Weird.
I used the paint dabbers as my background again on this card, but I used watercolor paper. I stamped the image from Spiral Bouquet (Papertrey) in Aged Mahogany Distress Ink on top of the lettuce background. I tore the paper and inked the edges with Shabby Shutters Distress Ink and the blending tool. I added some clear bling to the flowers and matted it onto Scarlet Jewel paper and adhered it to the Spring Moss card base. The sentiments are also stamped with the Aged Mahogany ink.
Here I used the cranberry paint dabber to ink my stamp. The stamp is a retired stamp set from The Angel Company called Partridge. I stamped it onto a plain manila shipping tag, then blended Old Paper distress ink onto it with the blending tool. I wrapped some twine around the end and put some ribbon through the tag hole and secured it with a button threaded with twine. I matted it onto Wassail paper from Basic Grey. The edges of the paper are distressed with a distressing tool and inked with Colorbox Creamy Brown ink. The paper is then matted onto Olive paper (TAC). My husband adored this card and snatched it to give right away. What a compliment!

So, the verdict. I really had so much fun playing with these and now that I have spent so much time playing with them, I have all kinds of ideas. I am going to keep them and keep playing.

I want to share one more thing with you. I have made this chart that I keep in a binder to keep track of the colors I own. I have done this with almost all of my craft supplies. It is a really nice reference tool when I am looking for a certain color. I can look through my binder and see all of the different products and colors that I have.
This isn't the best picture, but I think you get the idea. If you are interested in a chart like this, feel free to email me and I will send you the file I made. It includes all of the colors (except the metallics which I will add) so I can easily add the other colors if I choose to purchase them.

I know this was a really long post. I hope you found it informative and maybe it even challenged you to use the paint dabbers you own or something else you have neglected. I would love to hear how you use paint dabbers or see something you made with them, please leave a link in the comment section and let me know.

Have a blessed day!