Joy Sanderson Stampkittn@aol.com
Hi - acrylics will work on anything. What on earth did you buy that cost 6.49 per tube? Surely not the copper! You can buy the small jars for as little as 49 cents when they are on sale and only 1.49 to 1.99 not on sale depending on make and type. As to mediums - there are dozens of different ones. Aleene's which is on sale this week for 88 a 2-oz bottle at Creativity, has about 18 different "enhancers" as they call them all doing different things. There is a medium that slows down the drying of acrylics. Another for making paste type stuff - another for making them good for fabric painting. Tulip paint has developed a series of rubber stamps, apparently made of polymer as they are gray and you just paint directly on to them with the paint right from the bottle tip. Yes, clean them off as soon as you've stamped in water. You can also of course only color part of a stamp, instead of the whole - they have one with a heart on it, and by coloring only the heart you can use them to look like leaves.

Elaine Le Page  elaine.lepage@ntlworld.com
Originating source unknown. To make a small batch of water based paint, start with a small amount of pigment (approx. one teaspoon) on a clean non- porous surface. For all water based paints you first must add water, to wet the pigment. So work small amounts of water into your pigment, using your palette knife until it turns into a paste. If the mixture turns too watery, just add more pigment to achieve the desired consistency. If you have difficulty dispersing your pigment into water (in other words if the pigment lumps up in the paste), try adding a drop or two of alcohol (rubbing or denatured). Once you have wetted your pigment, you are ready to add a water-based binder of your choosing. Please note that even though your color paste (pigment and water mixture) may look like paint, it is still missing the binder which is crucial. If you apply the current mixture, it would only return to its previous dust state. For acrylic paints you can add whatever fluid acrylic medium you are already using or try Golden' GAC100, which we recommend because of its high binding qualities. Add the acrylic medium in small quantities. The amount of medium should not exceed twice the volume of the color paste. Once you have combined the color paste and medium you are ready to use it as you use any of your pre-fab paints.

For information on related topics see:
Tips & Techniques: Fabric Decoration
Tutorials: Painted & Stamped T-Shirts
Product Reviews: Lumiere & Neopaue Acrylic Paints, Ready Tex Paints, Pearlescent Liquid Acrylics