Experimenting with painting tissue paper

Yesterday I painted some tissue paper for a paper swap I'm doing with my art group. I've always wondered about the properties of craft paint vs. Golden fluid acrylics. Starting with the Golden paint I knew I had to add some kind of medium in order to get the volume I needed. So I globbed some gel medium in a container and added water until it had the consistency of milk. Add the water slowly or else you have to stir and stir and stir to get the lumps out. Then I put drops of color in and stirred. Depending on the tint (look on the back label) strength of the color will determine how much you'll need. So for my samples below I used very little paint - drop by drop - to get the color I needed. The problem is the medium I used made the paint very transparent  so I couldn't get the strong color without using a wasteful amount of expensive paint. However, I did like the almost gossamer effect it gave the tissue paper.

 Use a wide soft brush to quickly and gently stroke and pat puddles of paint on.

Here it is drying. I love my new nail polish on my tootsies!

Tip: do not dry your papers on a breezy day even if you have rocks to hold it down with. Also don't walk too fast with your wet paper precariously perched on some foam core board:)

 Here's what quinacridone nickle azo gold looks like.

 Here's what the phthalo turquoise looks like over black and white scrapbook paper.

 Here's what cheap red craft paint added with water looks like over the same scrapbook paper. It's a whole lot stronger in color when used straight. I like both in their own ways but the craft paint wins hands down for the ease of use and strength of color as well as the price. I will have to try some other craft paint colors to see what comes out. Then I'll have to use the painted tissue papers in a collage painting. I hope I didn't bore you too much with my experiments.