Gelatos are water soluble crayons or watercolor crayons. I have a couple of packs of them, but also own a pack of distress crayons and 2 packs of recollections watercolor crayons.  I use them all but, I decided to do this post on Gelatos because I think they are the best known watercolor crayons. (and I've been using them a lot lately)

#1- Use with stencils

Gelatos can be used to fill in stencils however, they probably shouldn't   be used with stencils with very small holes. because it's hard to get the color into small openings. You need a larger opening so you can color and then use a baby wipe or your finger to blend in the rest.

It makes a very clean stencil line and for the most part you won't have the problem of using  paint which often  gets under the stencil at times if you use too much of it.  

#2- Use with stamps

Using gelatos with stamps gives you a sort of a soft watercolor look. You color on the stamp give it a little spritz and stamp. If you are looking for clear, bright look for stamps then use ink.

#3- Blend like watercolors

You can use watercolor crayons to color as you would do with crayons. However, when you run a wet brush over the colored crayons it spreads and blends giving it a watercolor look. Below I did a sky, blended it and then added some mountains and blended. I then added some homemade foam stamps on top of the picture I created.

#4-Reverse stenciling

To reverse stencil you will need to color a page as we did before, but do not blend it. When its all colored you lay a stencil over the crayon marks and wipe through the stencil with a baby wipe. You can then add an outline or further enhance.

#5- Make abstract background

This method has to be done in pieces. You color with the gelatos onto your craft mat (or other plastic like material) spray the gelatos well and then just turn over the  piece of paper that you are trying to cover and tap it down on top of the wet gelatos. You will then have to move the paper around until you have the whole thing covered.

#6- Match material to crayon color

This method is for when you are also using collage materials in your artwork and you want it to match to the color of gelatos that you are using. You color on your craft mat, spray with water and then crumple the piece you want to dye in the wet gelatos. It will turn the same color as the gelato.

#7- Use like paint

Color as seen before onto your craft mat, spray and use the wet gelato to stick your brush into and use it as paint.

#8- Color, blend, cut, collage

Color any piece of paper with patches of colors of gelatos. Blend with your finger making a beautiful background. You can then use this as a background or cut it up to use in a collage as I did with my flowers below.

#9-Finsish off pieces of artwork

The flowers picture was really not to my liking. I decided to use gelatos to fix it up.  I used a few shades of green to add to the background as leaves and I then colored over the busy collaged flowers with white gelato toning down the busyness of them.

The birds picture was collaged birds on top of a newspaper collaged background. I just added the sky, tree and grass with gelatos to pull the whole thing together.

#10-Make artwork with them

Gelatos can be used to just color straight with them. They work perfectly when you want to color and blend at the same time. I used gelatos here for flowers, grass and the planter.

Any ideas you want to add? Let me know below