Faber-Castell Gelatos Colors Set, Iridescents - Water Soluble Pigment Crayons - 15 Iridescent Colors

The queen of the Gelatos Fan Club is here to leave another review for these fascinating, versatile pigments. This box contains fifteen different, amazingly shimmering colors...including Silver Ice, Gold Champagne, Iced Coffee, Metallic Mint, Metallic Grape, Metallic Icing, Iced Rose, Iced Pear, Iced Chai, Metallic Melon, Metallic Blueberry, and Iced Currant. Just like with the other sets, I find it impossible to choose one favorite. I have several I use more often - some, MUCH more often - but I wouldn't want to give up any of these precious metallics. Design Memory Craft just keeps outdoing themselves with these amazing magical sticks!The consistency is like a velvety lipstick - you control whether they saturate the substrate, leaving a slick, smooth, powerfully colorful surface...or more of a light hint that produces a washed out/faded look...or anything in between! It doesn't take much to create a piece that really rocks - especially when water is added. Using the included paintbrush with some water will allow you to move these yummy creams around your project with incredible ease. Adding a little water will just turn these into succulent watercolors - adding more water will allow you to achieve the "washed out" look that is so popular right now. (See the photo of the house I made with the Brights set. This is the same unfinished project I keep adding to my reviews, but I can't seem to remember to take pictures of other projects. Thanks, aging! Grrr)I absolutely love the paintbrush Faber Castell has chosen to include with the 15 piece sets. I think it's perfect - which is strange, since I usually despise the free brushes included with art supplies. (They are usually junk!) This one is my favorite brush and I'm using it for everything - not just Gelatos. The clear handle looks cool, fits in my hand like it was custom made, is shorter than the gajillion brushes I already own, and the white bristles are...ohhh, those white bristles! They pick up the perfect amount of water for Gelatos. They lay down the Gelatos with amazing awesomeness. (That's my official technical term.) Since the Gelatos are creamy it would be easy to understand if the medium got all gunked up at the top of the brush (by the ferrule), but miraculously it doesn't. The hairs don't fall out...the bristles aren't too soft or too hard, and it doesn't pick up too much - or too little - water. Goldilocks would definitely approve...This. Brush. Rocks!Wood, canvas, paper...Gelatos will work on many substrates. Metal and glass are the only two things I can think of that wouldn't work - yet, ven excluding those two things, do you have any idea how many substrate choices that leaves you with?!?You also have tons of options when it comes to putting them on the substrate...slice off just a little, put it and some water in a spray bottle and mist it on your project. Apply directly from the tube. Use a paintbrush. Use a wet paintbrush. Use a cotton bud. A tissue. Your finger. A palette knife. Dauber. Sponge. I'm sure you get the idea. Oh - and these also come with two sponge wedges (like make up applicators) - one soft and one hard. I am so in love!Workable fixative seems to hold these in place, although I have to say that I haven't noticed any color change when adding another wet medium AFTER these have THOROUGHLY DRIED. I also like to use a combination of clear gesso and clear varnish (in a thin coat) to make sure everything stays the same on a prior layer, while adding some tooth for a new layer.Did I mention they are also acid-free? Portable? Wonderful to mix or overlay? Ohh, yeah! They are my new favorite supply - which says a lot. (My house is like a mix of Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and Dick Blick combined....but only because I would need the square footage of all three of those stores to properly store all my supplies!) Whether you are new to arts and crafts, or you've been around long enough to see all sorts of products come and go, you will easily find a use for these. The effects you can create are truly endless, especially when you begin to bring water into the equation. Easy to control, deposits rich color on the paper, wood, canvas, etc you're using (the house is on a birch wood panel), countless ways to apply...ooh! Gives me goosebumps just thinking about all the creamy, colorful fun crammed into this box of velvety sticks!Gelatos are available in a wide range of combinations - a couple of colors are available in sets of 2, there are many different color combinations available in four packs (each comes with a brush), sets of 15 that have a theme (Pastel, Metallics, Brights, etc), a collection of 23 Double Scoops (Double Scoops are about twice the size of these regular sticks), and a few additional gift sets. You can get a good idea of their awesomeness in the 4 packs - they are more than enough to play with (quantity-wise), but fairly priced at around $10. Try 'em...I think you'll like 'em!

Good quality easy to apply good colors and they show up well can build up the color if needed. Recommend 👍🏻 love them.

I loved my pastels, the color variety and functionality were great! I didn’t have any problems with them smearing, and they lasted through several journaling books. I can say the thickness when applied worked great! Love them!

I was hoping to be able to just pop off the cap and run a water-filled brush around the top of the product until it mixed to a creamy consistency, then apply to the page. This works only with the darkest, most saturated of the "gelato" colors; the pale green barely registers on the page this way, being one of the more delicate colors in the collection, and most of them are delicate and pastel. In order to get as much as the pigment is going to give, the crayon should be applied directly to the paper and only then worked with the waterbrush. Another way to go is as shown on the seller page: slice a piece off the top onto your palette, then work it into desired pigment saturation with a little water. The less water, the more saturated the color will be, but again, most of these metallics do not yield much pigment and go on as pastel; I would characterize most of the colors as shimmery in effect rather than metallic. For heavier pigment, I recommend the reasonably priced collections (brand name starts with an "M") of crayon "pastels" in darker colors, and especially recommend the " vintage" color set (the larger set does not contain enough differing colors to make purchase of both necessary, and colors can be mixed as necessary). Back to the "gelatos" under review: they are pretty, delicate and shimmery, and will find their uses (mainly as background washes), but they are not true metallics, and seem to contain more wax than pigment.

Colors with a subtle shine in your beloved Gelatos, can't beat them if you're a Gelatos fan! The first thing I did as usual was to try them out by making my own color chart and this collection is awesome! Some of the colors are non-metallic offered in other collections such as "Grape" and "Melon" but the metallic formula gives a sweet subtle yet attractive shine to the basic available colors. And an added benefit I like is that they're smoother and easier to blend with just your finger alone (I love that simply because I don't have to run around trying to find a blending tool - I can just use my finger and it blends so well. So far I've only used my Gelatos for stamping; spray the stamp with a mist of water, apply the Gelato like a crayon, spray another quick fine mist and stamp! What you get is a beautiful "watercolor" image that can be further blended if so desired! My next endeavor will be to slice a sliver off then add a little water to my palette tray and paint a flower or fill in a stamped image....& after that take another slice to concoct a colored spray to ink an ATC tag and design a shiny base background! These are a fabulous color medium for countless projects and the possibilities are endless. And for less than $21, this is an unbeatable deal and a dynamic way to add more color to so many crafts. (I would also recommend these for kids too, they're that versatile and easy to use - as long as said kid isn't in the "eating crayons" stage!) highly recommend and would buy again!

I’ve been using Gelatos on and off for years, and they always have been consistent in quality and performance. You can do so much with them—I like to mix with a little water and blot with sponges or tissues. Gelatos can be hard to find! So I was excited to try the metallics when they were on sale. In the above pics, I mixed them with black ink, white ink, and colored pencil in my Bible journaling for a “galaxy” feel. Buy these—you won’t regret it!