Friday, September 2, 2011

new paints

Have you walked down the paint aisle at Michael's lately? It looks totally different:


The paint aisle, mid-transformation.

The paints are all located on the lower half of the displays now, which means I will continue my habit of sitting on the floor to pick out colors, which I'm used to doing, anyway. The Ceramcoat line is gone (strange, it's good paint), the Apple Barrel line has been updated, and there is a whole section devoted to craft acrylic products from Martha Stewart.



I felt compelled, as a person who uses a lot of 2 oz. bottles of acrylic paint, to try it out, just as a public service.



There are five types of paint. I purchased one of each, and they all seemed to have good viscosity and opacity (well, the glitter was not opaque, but it's glitter paint, and I'll cover that soon). The photo above shows one coat of each type of paint. The gloss was great - it looked exactly the same wet or dry.

I did notice that some of the available "brighter" satin colors look a bit more muted than the color depicted on the label...it's hard to tell this without opening the paint and taking off the protective seal.

I decided to test the glitter to find out how many coats it would take to cover a surface. The display has a hemisphere of glitter and it seems a bit deceiving, because it's opaque with glitter. As seen below, opacity takes about seven coats of glitter paint.



The caps definitely seem like a higher quality than other paints - they close well, which is important. I am a fan of Apple Barrel and Ceramcoat acrylics, and you can tell the difference between these brands and the Martha Stewart brand below.



The coolest thing so far about this line, besides the extensive range of glitter paints, is that it's truly a whole line of products. There are four colors of chalkboard paint. There are many finishes and special effects products. And there are extensions to the caps, like rollers and daubers and texture tools, among other things.



Final thoughts: they were on sale, so I went back and bought more. Paint is fun!

No comments: