Kaleidacolor Pads

I have three Kaleidacolor pads that have been sitting neglected...I normally just use them for brayering. I was thrilled last week when I had a reason to use them again. I wanted an ink that I could "watercolor" with and the Palette inks are so hybrid that they dry quickly and are designed to stay put when you watercolor over them. The Kaleidacolor pads are made up of 5 mini but seperate color coordinating dye ink pads within one container. Just in case you didn't know, The Angel Company does carry Kaleidacolor pads and if you need refills, just let me know because we carry those too!!

There are so many wonderful blogs out there and just in case you missed this tutorial over at CHF, I wanted to share my version of it here. Ready to make some really neat 3 inch little notecards?




In addition to some patterned paper and a Kaleidacolor pad, you do need watercolor paper and an aquabrush. I really recommend the Niji brush (I do have both of the kinds we sell so this is experience talking!). For the watercolor paper, if you don't have any yet, be sure to look for the Strathmore Watercolor cold press pads (it has a brown cover and says 400 series).

1. Cut your watercolor paper into 2 x 2 1/2 inch rectangles.

2. Stamp your Kaleidacolor pad face down (you really only need the lightest two colors) on a plastic stamp lid. Pick up the ink with your aquabrush.

3. Start to fill up your watercolor paper with diagonal brush strokes, zig zagging back and forth - pick up more ink as you need it. Do leave a slight border around the edges - see my final card for clarification.

4. Let dry or dry with a heat gun.

5. Stamp your first flower with the lightest ink from your pad. I used the set Watercolor Plants. I kept my ink pad spread apart to make this easier.

6. Make sure the first flower is dry before you stamp with a second flower - using a corresponding shade. That's why using a Kaleidacolor pad makes this easy!

7. Once this is dry, stamp a greeting in any of the open space. I stamped Tag Tidbits in Noir Palette ink but there are lots of choices!

8. Now cut a piece of your patterned paper - 2 3/4 inch square in size. Feel free to distress the edges or use a border punch on one side for added interest. Lesson learned here - pick your paper before you get started...I was thrilled to find the Hemingway Soar with it Collection matched my ink perfectly, but I only found it after I finished stamping all of my squares. phew!

9. Mount both the watercolor rectangle and patterned paper square to a 3 inch notecard. I cut mine out of matching cardstock, in this case, Kraft worked perfectly with my color palette.

10. Last step is to make an envelope. I used my template from to make an envelope out of Hemingway cardstock but then I found out that a 3 inch envelope will not fit a 3 inch card! So either be sure to cut your note card a snitch smaller before you put it all together, or I found a template here that I could adjust to 3 1/4 inch in size.

If you want to check out our Kaleidacolor pads, you can find them all here. All stamps and papers are from The Angel Company.

Edit: Juliet asked how I inked these up with just one color...you can see on the card to the right, I ended up with a snitch of the ink from the next pad on the flower but mainly I dabbed the stamp by just touching it and twisting it in both directions until I had it carefully inked up.