Testing Art Media on top of Acrylic Paint

In the process of cleaning the craft room, I came across a stamp set I've owned for a really long time but never used. I'd been wanting to test how some of my art supplies work on top of acrylic paint and Fiskars' Up In the Air stamp set (affiliate link here and below) gave me a great way to do that. 

I painted a blue sky and green grass with Folk Art acrylic paint and let that dry. Then I used Shadow Grey Archival Ink and a stamping platform to stamp two hot air balloons plus a cloud onto the page. The ink stamped wonderfully on the painted surface. Good to know!

I started by coloring the cloud white using a Posca pen. That worked beautifully. I may end up getting a full set of Poscas. I've used the white ones I have on a ton of projects in the few weeks I've owned them. I need to think about what size tip I would use most often. 

Next, I used Caran d'Ache Pablos for the larger hot air balloon. I love my Pablos and have used them successfully on many projects. However, I wasn't thrilled with how they performed for this test. I had a hard time filling the spaces completely and wasn't getting the crisp edges I normally do with my Pablos. At first I blamed the acrylic paint, but now I'm realizing that the cold press watercolor paper I used is largely to blame. Sorry, Pablos! I'll save you for more appropriate uses. 

I colored the smaller hot air balloon with my Ohuhus. They were acceptable over acrylic paint. The coverage wasn't nearly as good as on plain paper and the results were a little splotchy. Again, I love my Ohuhus and will save them for other projects. 

I used Tombow Dual Brush Pens for the grass area. They worked beautifully on top of the paint. The yellow pen didn't show up well over the green paint, but that's no surprise. 

I wanted to test one more product on acrylic paint: Flair Pens. I had previously painted a page in my sketchbook with pink acrylic paint and drew concentric hearts, but hadn't done anything with them. So I used my flair pens to add some scribbled roses. The Flair pens were fantastic on top of the paint. 

This was a very interesting experiment and left me with some new ideas. Neither project is particularly attractive, but I learned a lot from trying something new. And since this year is all about PLAY, that's a double win.