Have you ever looked at the craft paints in the Crafter’s Square aisle of your local Dollar Tree and wondered if they were any good. I know I have so I decided we should put them to the test this week.
I am almost out of white craft paint and I need to get more soon. So I have been really tempted by the craft paints at Dollar Tree, I mean I’m already there if they are any good it would save me money and also I wouldn’t have to go to the craft store across town. So I decided to test those paints so we can all see if we can get decent craft paint for only $1.25.
I purchased three of the paints offered by my Dollar Tree. I left the one marked as “washable” behind as well as the Ceramic Paint. The ones I got were the Acryology Premium Acrylic, Crafter’s Square Tempera Paint, and Prang Ready-to-Use Tempera Paint. All brands in white. In the test I am using my Anita’s Acrylic Paint as my control to compare the others against.
I made up a test card for each brand on the cards were strips of 3 colors of card-stock (tan, red, and black) to paint over to test for opacity of the paints. I gave myself room to do see how opaque the paint was with 1,2, and 3 layers of paint.
I decided to also add a stripe of Mod Podge over the part with 3 layers to see how it affected the color, finish, and to see if it lifted or smeared the dried paints.
I think most of us in my generation remember painting with tempera paints in grade school. I remember my teachers had to mix the paint powder with water before we had art class each time. Other than that I really didn’t know a lot about tempera paint so I did some research when I got home today.
According to Google tempera paint should be vibrant and opaque and quick drying. On the other hand it washes off (both from clothes and your project) and is not flexible.
Acrylic paints are more durable, have a smoother finish and are flexible.
So lets look at the test and how the paints did in the test.
I set up the paints with their cards on my work tile. I dedicated a wide brush to each sample and kept the brushes wrapped with wet wipes during drying periods. I did shake the liquid paints before getting the working sample out of each bottle and the working samples were kept covered during the drying periods as well.
On the first step of the test I painted 3 stripes of the paint on the corresponding cards. I did my best to use the same amount of paint on each card and on each stroke of the brush. After the this first layer the only card that really had much coverage was the one for the Anita’s paint. The rest were very translucent. I set the cards to dry but I did end up using my heat gun to speed up drying since I needed to get the video finished in time to post it.
For the second step I added two more stripes of paint to each card. At this point I expected the paint to look fairly opaque on the cards but this was not the case at all.
The third step was another repeat of the steps giving each card the final stripe of color. I was surprised that the coverage was a terrible on most of the cards as it was. I mean I wasn’t expecting this to be great paint but for some of these there was so little coverage.
Once all the paints were dry I added a stripe of Mod Podge down the center of each 3 layer sample. I wanted to see if the Mod Podge would lift the paint so I wiped the brush off on a piece of the red card-stock after each one. I also used a different brush for each sample because I was afraid some of the paints might come off onto the brush. I was pleasantly surprised that at least there was no lifting of the paint.
So here are the each of the brands of paint with its test card so you can see for yourself how the coverage looks.
Acryology- I had high hopes for this one before I purchased it. However as you can see the coverage is pretty dismal at best. I think I will play around with this one and see just how many coats it would take to get coverage.
Crafter’s Square- this one has the worst coverage of the batch. I’m not sure if it has any uses.
Prang- this is another one I might play around with to see if it can be used as a base coat to seal porous materials before painting them with something else.
Anita’s- my control sample card looks just the way I knew it would.
As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.
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