Six ways to use Magicals by Kate Palmer

There are 2 questions I get asked on an almost weekly basis:

1. What’s the difference between the Lindy’s Stamp Gang Products and
2. I’ve just bought some Magicals, now what do I do with them?

To answer one of these questions – today I’ll be covering my six favourite ways to use Magicals (aka Magical Powders) from Lindy’s Stamp Gang.  Yes I’m sorry – you’re probably going to want to buy some of these versatile little pots!

 What are Magicals?

Magicals are little pots of sunshine and goodness available from Lindy’s Stamp Gang. They are not like any other product I’ve ever used, so I can’t really compare them.  But if you want to get technical, they are powdered paints, where the pigments are activated by water (or other liquid).  Some Magicals have gorgeous sparkly mica in them, others are ‘flat’ ie have no shimmer, and some of the new colours are creamy – all types have multiple uses and are beautiful to work with, I love them all and may be a tiny bit addicted!

A few common Magical misconceptions:

Magicals are without a doubt the most misunderstood of the Lindy’s product range!  The most common misconceptions are:

1. Magicals are a mica powder – NO they are a powder paint
2. My Magicals are contaminated – NOPE you see a variety of colours because you haven’t mixed them enough.  To get the smoothest and most ‘true’ colour from your Magicals, you should mix the powder with water – STOP – NO – Not the whole jar!  Just mix a little of the powder at a time, and only as you need it.  I use a mini paint palette to mix the powder and water in, make sure to mix well and you will get beautiful consistent colour every time.
3. My Magicals are missing their sparkle – CHECK carefully before you purchase, as not all Magicals are shimmery – some are ‘flat’ it will say this on the lid and they will be called FLAT Magicals when you purchase them.  Some of the current FLAT Magical sets are: Carribbean Cruise, Hawaiian Islands, Beauty School Drop Out, Go greased Lightining,  Tres Chic, and Under the Boardwalk.

What I’ve Used for my Samples:

• Magicals from Lindy’s Stamp Gang in Tea Pot Purple, Rusty Lantern Lime and Time Travel Teal.
• Bold Stamp from Stampington – Printed Butterfly by Christine Adolph
• Versamark Watermark Stamp Pad
• Paint brushes – make sure they are soft, fluffy and cheap as the paint brushes DO NOT like Versamark ink.

Now without any further ado here are my 6 favourite ways to use Magicals…

# 1 – Straight from the Jar ie: ‘Neat’

Using a waterbrush, dip the tip of the brush into the powder (you will only need a little) and then paint this straight onto your project.  This method gives the greatest variation in colour, as you are not mixing the pigment powder at all.  This can produce amazing and unexpected results and colours.

You will also get different results on different materials – using the same colours and amount of powder I coloured a bird cut from grungeboard – you will notice the colour is much darker, this is because the grungeboard is more absorbent.

You can also see that when dry there is quite a variation to the colours and some ‘pops’ of unexpected colour – this is because I have not mixed the magicals.

# 2 – Mixed with Water as a Watercolour Paint

This produces the most consistent and ‘true’ colour and anything you can do with traditional watercolour paints you can do with Magicals!  Take a small amount of Magicals powder and add to a plastic paint palette, add a small amount of water (for concentrated colour) or more water for paler colours.  Apply this with a normal brush and make sure to stir each time, as the mica will settle to the bottom.

When dry you can see that this produces a beautiful even colour and allows you to blend colours as you paint.

# 3 – As a Powder

Stamp your image using a clear sticky ink (I like Versamark for this) and then use a small soft brush to ‘colour’ the image using the dry Magical powder, like colouring with mica powders.

Then use another clean soft fluffy brush to gently brush off any excess, leave it just like this – soft subtle and sparkly!

Just look at that shimmer!  Remember for bolder results, just use the darker coloured Magical powders.

# 4 – As a Stamping Pad (sort of)

This is almost the reverse of #3 – for this, ink your stamp with a clear sticky ink, then use a small soft brush to apply the Magical powder to the ink on the rubber stamp, make sure all areas of the image are covered and then spritz the powder with water.

Spritzing a little water = a little blending and a crisper image, a lot of water = a lot of  blending and a a more watercolour look to the image.  Once wet, carefully stamp your image onto cardstock.

Up close you can see that the image where I’ve sprayed a little bit of water onto the powder the lines are crisp, but the colour is ‘spotty’.

On the image where I sprayed more water, the lines are blurry but the colour is better.  You just need to decide what you want is more important for each image, colour or crisp lines.

# 5 – As Ink

Mix powder and water as in step #2 but make it a stronger mix – ie add more powder than you normally would.  Use either a plastic pipette or eye dropper to dribble on the colour or a dip pin (dipped into the mixture) to write with the mix, yes you can use it as an ink and write with it – imaging the truly awesome coloured handwritten pieces on your scrap book pages and journals!  Now I wouldn’t normally write over wet ink, but I got a bit excited here 🙂

 You can use this over the top of other products or underneath like I have here.

# 6 – To Colour Pastes and Liquids

Yep – if it’s moist or a liquid then you can mix Magicals with it to add colour and sparkle!  For example I’ve mixed the Magicals powder (Tea Pot Purple, Rusty Lantern Lime and Time Travel Teal) with texture paste to produce stunning pastel coloured pastes.  You can also mix with gel mediums, molding paste, bead gel, acrylic paint, gesso, glycerine, etc.  The choices are truly staggerering – only thing you should know is if the product you are mixing the magicals with has an opaque base you won’t see any shimmer – just like the images below.

For the first example I have mixed 3 different colours of the magicals with white texture paste and then randomly spread each colour paste over cardstock.  While wet, I stamped into the paste – left it to dry and then stamped the same image in black ink over the top in about the same position.  You get a funky raised and coloured image complete with loads of instant texture!

For this example I used the coloured texture paste that was stuck to the stamp (from completing the step above), and stamped onto white card.  I then sprinted to the sink to clean my stamp – do NOT let the paste dry on your stamp or you will find it VERY difficult to remove once it is dry.  Pretty cool huh !

So there you have it – my top 6 ways to use Magicals – there are many more, but these are the ideas I use over and over again.  I’ll also be loading a clip onto the LSG YouTube channel tomorrow so you can see then exactly what I’ve done for each idea.