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Before getting into this DIY Water Wow book craft, I want to give a disclaimer. If you are a perfectionist or don’t want to spend time experimenting, this isn’t the craft for you. There are plenty of other straightforward and fun crafts on this blog that you should try instead. While the hydrochromic paint I used is super cool, it is also the most finicky craft supply I have ever used. The books that I made with it are far from perfect, but my kids don’t care and absolutely love them.
I spent several days playing with this paint to get it to work. I want to save you guys some of that time. The overall craft concept is very simple. Find a board book and paint over the pictures using hydrochromic paint. So, instead of going through my normal steps on how to make your own water reveal book, I am going to instead list what I did as a set of tips. Some things I learned while experimenting before making my two books. Some are mistakes I made while making them and now know what to do different.
My kids have had Water Wow books for several years and they both love them. Even my one year old son will point at my diaper bag where he knows that they are to ask to play with one. They are so perfect for kids and I didn’t try this craft with the intention of replacing them. I just thought that the paint sounded fun to try out and it made sense to start with trying something that I was already familiar with. I do like the idea of being able to turn any board book into a DIY Water Wow book.
Tips on Making a Water Reveal Book Using Hydrochromic Paint
1. Experiment, experiment, experiment:
As I have said, hydrochromic paint is finicky. Do not just jump in and start painting your kid’s favorite book. I bought a cheap used book from a thrift store to start with. After it didn’t go well, it became my experiment book. The below picture shows only some of my tests.
Then, I went and bought two books from the Dollar Tree. I knew at this point that I had a good idea on what to do, but I still didn’t want to use anything too valuable since it could still go very wrong.
2. Get a book that makes sense to paint:
I initially was thinking this would be a super fun way to revamp an old lift-the-flap book that had flaps in bad shape from overuse. This would definitely work for some books, but the one I had in mind has too much detail on the flaps for a white blob to make sense.
Instead I got a lift-the-flap book that had baby animals under it. I got another book that is one of those simple books with a big picture and a word or two on each page. The lift-the-flap book was unfortunately a mistake. It worked well except where there was a picture on both sides of a single page. It got so thin there that my daughter accidently poked a hole through one of the pages.
3. Prep your books:
To make your book look as good as possible, you want nice straight lines. For one book this meant taping with masking tape around each picture.
On the other hand, the pictures in the lift-the-flap book were sunk down enough to make painting in the lines easier. I did go through and cut off all the flaps though.
4. Add water to the hydrochromic paint:
I quickly learned that I needed to add water to the hydrochromic paint. If I didn’t, I had obvious brush strokes and the thicker parts wouldn’t turn clear with water. It was a pain to figure out exactly how much water I needed. If I added too much water, it didn’t dry solid enough and the picture beneath wasn’t hidden. What I found worked best was literally a drop of two of water.
I added the paint to a small paper cup and then dropped the drop or two of water in. When I stirred it, the consistency changed from glue-like to liquid. Once that happened it worked the best.
5. Do multiple coats on your DIY Water Wow book:
Again with lots of experiments, two coats of paint worked the best on my books. It gives the best coverage with still keeping the ability to turn clear with water. When I did three coats, like in the below picture, the paint didn’t turn fully clear when brushed with water.
It also took some trial and error to figure out how to do multiple coats. You have to let the paint dry a little bit, but if it dries too much between coats then it looses its ability to change later. The sweet spot I found was when you could start seeing the white just barely start to show like in the second picture below.
6. Use clothes pins to help dry:
Maybe I am just impatient, but I didn’t want to do just one page at a time. So, I put a clothes pin on each page where I wouldn’t be painting. This stopped the book from closing all the way and smearing my paint. Now I could paint all the pages at once while leaving airflow for the previous pages to dry. After I finished all the pages, I did occasionally flip which page was open the most to give each page a chance at extra airflow.
7. Remove any tape immediately:
Once you finish painting, immediately take off any tape you put on. If you wait until the paint it is dry, peeling up the tape will peel up some of the paint too. This is what happened to the page in the below picture.
8. Mod podge your water reveal book after but not before:
On my first test, I painted mod podge on the entire book before starting. For whatever reason, the hydrochromic paint did not stick to and interact with it well. It might have worked better if I had waited the 30 days for the mod podge to fully cure, but I was way to excited to try out the paint for that.
Afterward, I did put mod podge on the entire book except where I painted. I did this for two reasons. First, the book is going to get wet even where there isn’t any paint. Second, I figured if I overlapped it a tiny amount onto the paint it would help prevent it from peeling up. Back to my impatience that I mentioned before, you do want to let this dry for a few days before you completely close your books. I did not wait long enough and all my pages stuck together and peeled off my mod podge.
9. Get a water pen or brush
To use your new books, you will need some sort of water pen or brush. I just took a water pen from one of our Water Wow books. You can also use a normal paintbrush. To keep the paintbrush wet, you can put a dish sponge in the bottom of a toddler snack cup and fill it with just enough water to wet the sponge. Your kid can then put their paintbrush in the snack cup to get it wet, but has nothing to spill. Lastly, you can always just buy replacement water pens.
10. Your DIY Water Wow book will not be perfect:
The hydrochromic paint is so finicky! Your book will have spots that the picture shows through. It will have places that don’t turn completely clear. This is OK, your kids will still love it. And if yours turns out perfect, you had better go tell me in the comments what you did to get it that way. Even after all my experimenting, I still made lots of mistakes. The books I made still turned out fun enough that I will definitely try again. The next batch will hopefully be better, but I am sure they will still not be perfect.
Conclusion of my DIY Water Wow Book:
The two books I made have so many problems. But, more importantly, my kids love them. My three year old daughter saw the books while I was making them and immediately started asking to try them out. I told her they needed to dry, but that she could help test them as soon as I finished. I ended up letting her take them to Bible class. She spent a good deal of the hour revealing each picture. She only stopped to do something else when she needed to wait for them to dry. The only imperfection she complained about was when she accidently stabbed a hole through the lift-the-flap book.
I have some other projects I want to try with the hydrochromic paint first, but then I am definitely going to have to make some more water reveal books for my kids. If you want another fun book themed craft try making Shrinky Dink books. What book do you think would be fun to turn into a DIY Water Wow book?
this looks like so much fun!
Thanks, we sure enjoyed it