DOUBLE WATERCOLOUR IMAGES WITH DISTRESS INKSDist

Under-colouring with distress inks.

This is a super-easy way to add colour to a stamped image, although its one of those techniques that people either love......or don't.  I'm in the former category,, and use this a bit, especially with some of my more solid stamps, such as these ones from Darkroom Door.

You just wet a piece of thickish (ideally water colour) paper, ink up your stamp with distress inks and stamp them down onto the wet page,  Leave them there for a little while so that the colours soak and spread.

Dry the page (either with a craft heat gun) or leave it to dry naturally, then re-ink your stamp with black ink (I used Versafine), and stamp on top of the blurry coloured image to add back the detail.

That's pretty much it!

RESIST STAMPING

STAMPING RESIST

We used to do something very similar to this with crayons in grade three, but this is the "grown up" version.

Colour the base paper with permanent markers - I've used really bright colours and a swirly pattern just to make the sample obvious, but you can be more subtle.

Stamp on an image (one with lots of solid area is most effective, this one is from G45) using embossing or watermark ink (I used Versamark) and heat emboss using clear powder.

Go over the whole thing with a dark dye ink , and then gently wipe off the embossed areas to reveal the colour beneath.

EASY LAYERED BUTTERFLY CARD

LAYERED BUTTERFLY CARD

This is a simple layering technique that doesn't involve complicated cutting.

Die cut the number of layers you want  from background card - three seems to work well, then chose a stamp large enough to cover them all.  (I've used a Kaiser butterfly)

Stack them up, centring each on the one below and stamp the stamp over all layers.  (You might need to put a bit of extra pressure on the outer edges as they will be a bit lower than the middle)

Colour in the image if you want to.  I've used Tombows( but haven't bothered with shading and blending - this is almost like a guilty admission nowdays but its OK you can just colour in without getting too fancy about it).  I've added some highlights with a gold glitter gel pen.

You don't have to add borders but I think it looks best if you do (and it helps hide edges if you don't get your layers super straight when assembling).  If you have appropriate dies cut the mats to fit.  If you don't, just do what I did, and stick the butterfly layers to the matting (purple) card and cut around with scissors leaving a small border.

Now stick the layers together with foam tape underneath so that each layer is raised about the one below, stick the whole thing to a background card, or scrapbook page or whatever you want to use if for, and you're done.

COLOURING WITH EMBOSSING POWDERS

COLOURING WITH EMBOSSING POWDERS

I don't think that I'll do much of this as I was a bit underwhelmed with the result, however this might just be a function of lack of practice so I probably should give it a few more tries before I give up.

I stamped and embossed the fish with black powder, then used a versamark pen to colour in the silver bits of the fish, then the copper, gold and white in turn, heating between each addition, and finally covered the brown background with clear embossing powder.

You can see on the back that the silver powder is "overcooked" and patchy, whilst he white powder has "escaped" its borders, spreading more that the copper and gold which, if anything, seemed to shrink when heated.

If I try this technique again, I think I'll try just heating the powders until they are stuck in place until the final layer to try to avoid the overheating issue, and I might also choose a design that's larger so that I can space out  the embossed areas a bit between heating,  A sensible person would also do a little trial to determine the properties of each of the different embossing powders before throwing them onto the main project!

Still....it kind of looks OK, and is quite nicely raised and textured (even if the latter is not quite in the "supposed to be" category) so I've probably talked myself into trying again during the course of writing this entry!

GOLD EMBOSSED IMAGE COLOURED WITH TOMBOW PENS

EMBOSSED AND COLOURED IMAGE

Back in the day.............and I'm talking 20+ years ago, this is how we did our stamping for greeting cards.

Emboss the outline with gold and reach for the marker pens!

It still looks nice, and is ironically less "old hat" today than it was five years ago.

I've used Tombows and a blender pen for the colouring, and cut the lovely design (from Paper Roses) in half to fit over the aperture, mounting the top on some foam tape to add dimension.

A final "retro" touch is the gold outline sticker that I've carefully stretched around the edge of the oval cut out..  This is a little reminder to myself that no matter how exciting new techniques are sometimes the "oldies but goodies"are worth dusting off too.

GLITTER "STAINED GLASS" TECHNIQUE

COLOURED GLITTER PICTURE IN PROGRESS

This is an easy technique but a very effective one,

Just chose a die with a lot of open spaced suitable for colouring.  I cut this Art Deco parrot with double sided adhesive on black card so all I had to do was peel off the backing
to stick it onto Kaiser crystal glitter card.

The next step is to use some Tombow pens to colour the image.  (You can experiment with different types of pens but I was happy with these).

The glitter stays glittery and the end result is a cheery "stained glass" effect,

GLITTER "STAINED GLASS"

STAMPING OVER TEXT

I wanted to stamp and colour over a manuscript but when I just used pencils the printing was so intense as to be distracting and the outline of the stamp was lost.

After a bit of playing around this solution seems to be OK (not brilliant but OK).  I stamped onto the background, then painted over it with gesso, which provided a nice "toothy" base for colouring.  The notes can still be seen underneath but much more subtly.

I then outlined the stamped image using a fine black marker pen.  As I was using an acrylic stamp (a freebie from a magazine) I could have tried re-stamping the image over the top but I quite like the hand-drawn look and wasn't totally confident about how well I could align the two pictures.

PHOTOGRAPHS FOR COLOURING

Sunflowers as line drawing

Colouring is still a popular activity which many people find really relaxing.  If you have access to an image editing programme such as Elements you can easily turn your photos into images for colouring. 

I've just used the auto pencil sketch function for this, made a duplicate layer, blended the layers using "Multiply"and then adjusted  levels to increase the contrast.

If this all sounds too hard (believe me it isn't, but its probably easier to have someone show you if you aren't familiar with how to do this) then you're welcome to use the sunflower image (Yes I did grow them!) to colour.

I have to confess I haven't really been bitten by the colouring bug - I spend far too long agonizing over colours for it to be in any way relaxing - but should it strike I think it would be kind of nice to use some of my own images, and as I draw at around grade 3 level, photos are my one hope!! 

Original photograph

COLOURING EMBOSSED METAL

EMBOSSED METAL COLOURED WITH SHARPIES

Last week, I showed an example of colouring a stamped image with Fusion pens, which didn't work overly well on metal.

This week I've embossed an image, again on the reverse of a soft drink can, and coloured the image with Sharpie pens.

I'm much happier with the results - still a little patchy but not nearly as bad as my last try.

It was also a lot easier colouring the debossed areas of the panel, which had a nice easy to feel edge (yes, my eyesight is terrible - and yes, that may explain a lot!), but also meant that there was no need to carefully avoid a Staz-on stamped outline.

All in all though, I have to confess to preferring the plain black ink stamped Beethoven image I posted ages ago!

COLOURING RUBBER-STAMPED METAL

Metal coloured with fusion pens.

I've been trying out some different ways to add colour to metal.  (Yes I know its not paper, but you can use them on cards!)

This weeks example is a stamped image coloured with Kaiser fusion pens.  The metal was the reverse of a Diet Coke Can, cut with deckle scissors.

I chose alcohol based markers because the water based variety would bead, and probably not dry, although I was aware that I would have to avoid colouring over or if possible into the stamped lines, as two different alcohol based products might dissolve into each other.

 I wasn't overly impressed with the results. There was a lot of streaking.  This might work OK (although I'm not convinced it does) for the water, but not so well for areas requiring a smooth result.  I tried colouring in long streaks, randomly, and in small circles. The latter worked best, and is the example shown.  All in all the Fusion pens which are great for all sorts of other things are not ideal for this application.  I did find something better though.........I'll post the result next week.

MARKERS WITH SPRITZER

SPRITZED SHAPES

The Tim Holtz spritzer which is designed for use with Distress markers is very poular at the moment.  These examples were done with a "kiddy version" of this tool, which blows air across the tip of the markers, spattering the colour on the page.  I used some unloved generic pens as well, so imagine a much better result with the "real thing."

The samples were made just to explore a couple of techniques and to see if I wanted to buy the more upmarket version of the tool.  The first is just to spritz through a punched hole, which as you can see worked quite well.  The second is a daisy punched from a piece of paper with colours sprayed over some outline stickers which were then peeled off.  This worked OK too, so...maybe my bright orange spritzer will do for now........

COLOURED PENCILS ON WOOD

COLOURING STAMPS ON WOOD.

O.K so last week I worked out that Versafine stamps well on wood.  The next issue is deciding how to colour it.  The images were stamped onto a piece of sticky-backed cherry wood.

I did some little samples first.  (Bottom right corner) Alcohol based markers bled very badly into the wood.
Water based markers were OK but a bit overly bright for what I had in mind.  I finally settled on pencils, and was pleased with the results.

I was interested in the top example as I think with a bit more thought you could get a nice faux intarsia effect.

PAPER LEAVES

DIY LEAVES

Now that we have access to all those lovely dies and hole punches its often easy to overlook things that are right in front of us.  This is an example of one thing I did manage to notice.......

The leaf at the top blew in through the door at work.  The leaf at the bottom is some of our packing card with under 5 minutes "work".

I used the real leaf as a template, and cut out the other with scissors (yes...they're still useful).  After scrunching it up a bit, I added some "veins" with a coloured pencil (there was only one brown one in the cupboard so I didn't really chose the shade), then dabbed a bit of distress ink here and there.  A little bit more scrunching added extra shape.

A bit more time, and more careful selection of colours would do wonders!!!  In the meantime I'm waiting for summer so I can acquire a new range of "leaf templates"!!

PENCILS OVER WHITE INK

PENCILS WITH WHITE INK

 This is an easy way to look like an artist.  Stamp on black paper with white ink (I've used a Versacube and a Darkroom Door stamp).  Colour over the top with pencils (I had some cheap kiddie ones on hand and only a selection of 6 colours, so imagine what you could do with "real" ones!).

FEATHER COLOURED WITH GLIMMER MIST

BLUE GLIMMER MIST FEATHER

Can you colour white feathers with Glimmer Mist?  Yes, you can!!  I know this is not paper, but colouring card, paper flowers, cotton ribbons and things such as feathers with an ink spray is one way to make sure everything co ordinates beautifully for a variety of paper-based projects.

It does make the sides clump together a tad, but if you don't like this look I think it could be teased back into shape.

STAMPING ON CORK

STAMP WITH COLOURED PENCILS ON CORK

There's a simple example of a simple idea this week.  Stamps will (with the correct ink) stamp an image onto any number of different surfaces.   Cork works well with most inks - I've just used Versafine sepia on a stamp from Rubbadubbadoo in this example, and coloured it in with pencils (nothing fancy, just some of the kids cast-offs).

The very thin cork I've used here tends to be a bit crumbly so I've punched slightly larger holes than I would normally make for the split pins.  Tearing the edges proved quite hard to control, so I had to resort to a ruler on the outer boundary to make sure it didn't tear too far.

I have written myself a mental note to try some other colouring media on cork to see how that turns out.

COLOURING VERSAMARK STAMPS

VERSAMARK AND KAISER PENS

Yes I know this is very "ordinary' colouring of an otherwise very nice Kaiser stamp HOWEVER fortunately I wasn't trying for a masterpiece of  colouring technique.  I was, rather,  experimenting with the idea that if I stamped in Versamark I'd be able to see the outlines clearly enough to colour without them being too obvious afterwards.......in other words, to make the images look more "drawn"  and less "stamped".  It works best on coloured "dyed through" papers but it does work, as shown in this example

DIY COLOUR SCHEMES

COUNTRY LANDSCAPE

SPRING

AUTUMN

I have a bit of a tendency to use fairly "safe' colour schemes, and think that maybe its time to branch out a bit.

All I've done here is use the eyedropper tool in Elements to select a few colours from each photograph, by way of inspiration.

The country and spring colour schemes are fairly conventional but the autumn example throws up some fairly interesting combinations.

The next step of course, is to stop playing with the charts and actually translate the colours into papercraft projects!!!!

BRUSH MARKERS AND STAMPS

BRUSH MARKERS AND STAMPS - EXAMPLES

I'm still making myself explore different ways of adding colour to images.....who knows it might grow on me.

I have used my new set of Art Stamps Australia brush markers for these images.  These pens are water based (i.e. not alcohol based like the new Kaiser pens or Copics).

They are suitable for colouring straight onto stamps before stamping BUT they work best on rubber rather than acrylic.

The solid "LIFE" (Kaiser) stamp was the worst result - the colour beaded and went distinctly splotchy.....I guess if you're after a distressed result it might have applications.  The butterfly outline stamp (also Kaiser) was a bit patchy but worked OK.

I wasn't overly keen on the results on the rubber (Rubbadubbadoo) trees either - once again the ink seemed to bead.  this might have been my fault, however, as I think I might have used too much ink.  A lighter touch on the strawberry (also Rubbadubbadoo) worked much better.  Finally the result I was seeking!!!!

The best outcome though was actually colouring in a prestamped image (Judikins).  I just put a tiny bit of colour on each petal of the flower and dragged it using a damp paint brush and "ta da"...instant shading!  I think this is how I'll be using the markers from now on.

KAISER FUSION MARKERS ON DIFFERENT SURFACES

SOME THINGS TO COLOUR WITH KAISER FUSION PENS 

I've just treated myself to some of the new Kaiser fusion pens.  I haven't really played around much with  alcohol markers before so I'm still at the experimental stage.

So far.....they work well on peel-off stickers and silver rhinestones but the colour is affected by the surface so in this case both turned out several shades lighter than the tomato red marker marks on white paper.

The colour was "truer" on the gold split pin, although this was harder to colour than I had anticipated - there may have been a coating on the metal??  Some "blingy" trims (Green Tara) coloured really well (and yes I did use purple for the second one, it isn't a weird colour effect!

Overall I was pretty pleased with the results but have made a note to myself to colour test first if I'm colouring an unusual surface to make sure the results will be what I'm seeking.  I'll be experimenting more in the near future.