#not the best quality watercolors i have (those would be the viviva color sheets) but definitely the best smelling ones lol

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

So most recipes for watercolor binder recommend using clove essential oil for its antimicrobial and antifungal properties (so your paints dont start growing mold)

Well I could not find clove oil for a reasonable price anywhere near me

I did however find cinnamon essential oil at walmart

So I did some digging and cinnamon oil can be used in place of clove oil for antimicrobial and antifungal properties. SO im not sure why all the watercolor binder recipes that tell you to use essential oil specify clove oil. I thought maybe other oils might make the paint weird? But I figured it was worth a shot to try the cinnamon oil. So far the paint seems to work just fine and its hardening nicely.

So if youre making watercolor binder but can't find clove oil (and you want to have an essential oil in there for the added antifungal properties) just know that any with antimicrobial and antifungal properties are likely ok to use. (This note isn't the point of this post I just feel the need to put it cuz I had a very confusing week of digging around online to figure out if I could substitute clove oil for another type of oil because literally every single recipe that recommended using an essential oil said CLOVE oil which makes me think that clove oil must have something about it that makes it different from other essential oils with antimicrobial and antifungal properties thats making all these other people use it specifically and was finding NOTHING and decided to just say "fuck it" and see what happens-.....anyway.)

This has had the lovely effect of making my paints smell very strongly of cinnamon

Which is definitely an upgrade from how I imagine they wouldve smelled had i not added essential oil at all. The gum arabic solution smelled very bad lol. The cinnamon oil helped quite a lot.