stencil butter? texture paste? What do you recommend and why

Quite a few companies have high quality pastes, and my favorite is TCW—the Crafters Workshop. Their Light & Fluffy is a go-to. It’s matte, but they also have shiny pastes. Their butters are so highly pigmented that the tiniest dot will color a big glop of white paste. Or you can use the intensely colored butters on their own, or mix them with each other. There’s a great chart showing combos.

Their customer service is top notch if ordering directly from them, but other on-line shops carry their lines. Once an order from got lost en transit so they sent me another. When on the phone we talked about the cicada invasion and I said I loved cicadas. The rep put a butterfly stencil in the replacement box with a note apologizing they didn’t have a cicada. And when the original box showed up they told me to keep or donate it.

Mixing your own colors with white paste and ink from ink pads, re-inkers, watercolors, anything with color works well and is really fun. Just a white like White & Fluffy or a shiny one, plus your colors. 

store.thecraftersworkshop.com/ and many shops.

Others that have worked well are Goldens (more expensive), Ranger, including Distress, Dreamweaver—really nice, soft metallics, Faber Castell though they may have stopped making them.

The only ones I’ve had trouble with drying out fairly quickly are Nuvo, though I’ve only tried a couple types of theirs. Any of them can dry out and putting plastic wrap or Press ‘N Seal over the top before closing helps.

I’ve made some basic paste, just enough to realize I’m not a fan. I was glad I didn’t buy any. Buying in small quantities, mixing your own colors, and using press n’ seal to keep the jars from drying out are all the tips I’ve heard. I don’t know if regular cling wrap works as well. If you need press n seal, it’s pretty pricey so message me and I’ll send you a piece! I have more than enough for my die cut arrangement purposes.

The lunar paste is the one that’s caught my eye a few times lately, probably because I follow Simon on IG and it’s very pretty. I’ve seen him rub it onto dry embossed textures with his fingers which is about as messy as I get. It looks fabulous on black.

Love the lines from Picket Fence. The glimmer pastes are amazing. I met a lady from The Crafters Workshop who said to give the pastes a spray of distilled water before the press-n-seal. I haven’t tried it, but I intend to the next time I use some. I’ve found the Nuvo and Gina K dry out the quickest.

A tip for preserving your paste: Place some plastic wrap over the top of the jar before putting the lid back on. "Trap" the plastic inside. That will keep the moisture in so that the paste doesn't dry out as quickly. You can also spritz a little water into the jar before you put the plastic over it. Distilled water is preferred, but I use regular water, and it seems to be OK. I was actually able to save a few jars.

My mixed media soulmate! I can sit at my craft table all day and do any one of the above. Playing with color in any formulation is my thing.

I like Picket Fence pastes. I haven't tried butter but now that I know about the scrapbook.com special I may **need** to buy something today.

Okay, I had been interested in the Lunar Pastes, so this thread made me get the free stencil paste & additional pearl white stencil paste from scrapbook.com....and a few other items since I was ordering!

If you have a local dollar store with craft stuff, take a peek there for stencils.  They won't have the biggest variety but even a few will give you something to practice with and won't be costly.

I'd have suggested AliEx first too previously, but stencils have crept up into the 2-3$ range as of late and (at least in my local area) the dollar store now is the least expensive option. But if you want a bigger variety without paying an arm and a leg and are willing to wait for mail delivery, it's the place to go.

Well this was a product I didn’t know I needed. 😂 I watched a video to see what it even was and then bought a crafter workshop jar of crimson stencil butter from Amazon. I bought crimson since I wanted it for DD. I probably wouldn’t really want any other colors anyway so this will be a fun thing to play with for dd and my new AE stencils. I don’t care if I could maybe get it for less somewhat else- with prime shipping it’s probably cheaper than a random order somewhere else + shipping. They only had 3 left so I didn’t want to miss out.