PanPastels and Crepe Paper Peony

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but the last 8 weeks have been a bit off. I’ve had a lot going on personally and just haven’t felt right. I’ve pushed myself to move forward, because if I don’t, I may stay in this rut for longer than I’d like.

So, with this post, I want to talk about PanPastels. Now I’ve wanted to purchase a set for a while, but in my opinion they’re quite expensive. I finally purchased a set, and in the video below I’ll make another crepe paper peony, but with fine crepe paper and use my new PanPastels.

Before I get to the video, I want to take a moment to discuss my new PanPasels. An important question when buying craft supplies is; are they worth what I payed for them? With the PanPastels, I still don’t have an answer to that question…which may actually answer the question.

I purchased the landscape set, which gave me a wide range of colours – 20 to be exact. I looked far and wide to find the colors I wanted at the best price. Amazon is where I found this set.

The set comes with a lot of tools – 2 soft knives, 10 soft covers, 3 soft mini applicators, soft sponge bar, big oval sponge, and storage jars. The tools are important for applying the pastels but if you don’t have them, makeup sponges work just fine, which is what I use on my crepe paper peony.

The colors in this set are beautiful. Once I opened the jars I could see the quality in these pastels. The colors are bright and vibrant. It’s easy to see the heavy pigment in these colors. The powder is soft and doesn’t seem to clump. The color transfers with ease to the paper and I don’t feel I have to continuously grab more color to add to my paper.

Pros

Lots of pigment
Easy to use from the jar
Stunning colors
Comes with tools
Easy application on crepe paper
Soft powder and cleans easily

Cons

The jars stack and you can’t see the color inside
Jars can be difficult to open
The cost for this product is high

As you can see, there are more pros than the are cons, but considering the cost, not being able to see the color of the pastel before opening the jar is an issue. I have no interest in opening 10-20 jars to find the color I want to use. Why the manufacturer doesn’t add a color label to each jar makes no sense. Again, I keep going back to the cost. I payed over $100 for this set, and I can’t see the color in the jar? As you can see, this really irks me. With that said, I made my own labels by cutting label stickers into strip and using the pastels to color the strip. I then adhered the strip to the applicable jar.

Crepe Paper Peony

Lets get to using these pastels on my flower. I decided to make another crepe paper peony because it’s an easy flower to make and a perfect flower for adding some color.

Supplies

Fine Crepe Paper – 60gram (flower head)
Heavy Weight Crepe Paper – 180gram (for greenery)
PanPastel – Permanent Red
Hot Glue and Tacky Glue
Floral Wire

You can see in the photo below, the pastel gets into the grain of the paper. I love how this looks. It give a realistic look and feel to the flower.

Flower Template

I created a template for this particular crepe paper peony for download. The petal template is for fine crepe paper. If you use this template with heavy weight crepe paper, reduce the width of the petals to almost half. Heavy Italian crepe paper has a lot more stretch to it than fine crepe paper.

crepe-paper-peony-template Download