Consider Yourself Hugged or Coloring Techniques Part I

I didn't manage to get any new cards made this weekend but I did finish the web entries for one I made about two weeks ago. The layout and stamps are based on a card Inky Antics was doing for a make and take at a stamping convention this summer. They had one of the better make and takes that showcased a lot of the products they were selling. One of those was Gamsol, which allows you to color with colored pencils and then blend the colors together. You didn't get to do the actual coloring (time was limited) but you got a precolored dog image. It's a fairly inexpensive technique since you can get the big 132 color sets of colored pencils for just over $100 with a 50% off coupon so I wanted to try it.

I, of course, did not have any of the paper they used - just the stamps, blending stumps, the Gamsol and my completed sample so I went through the 12" x 12" stacks I had and found two papers that would coordinate well. Next I picked a base color and scallop color and got busy. It's not totally obvious from the pictures but the dog lifts up and the words go under him. It's really two cards that fold into each other. The bottom part folds down and you place it inside the dog card while slipping the dog under the scallop tag to close it. There is a picture of the open card on the website if that didn't make sense, just click on the card image to get the full directions. The directions are available exclusively from this blog entry for the next couple of days. Here are the two new cards:

      

Prior to blending I basically colored next to the black lines in the areas I wanted to be darkest. I used the blending stump, damp with Gamsol, to blend the color out into the white area. As you can see it does do a fairly good job of breaking down the colored pencil and allowing you to move it across the page and get a blended look. It didn't cause any visible paper damage either on the 110 pound Georgia Pacific white cardstock I used. The only real trick is I got the pink by blending the red tongue and using the residual color on the stump. Inky Antics' PDF explains Gamsol blending so much better with step by step pictures so click on the card image and go to the card instructions and then follow the link there if you want to read more about how to do it.

I like the technique's results but I did feel like it took a little more blending effort than other techniques. The technique is really set up to blend and create a gradient from dark to light like you see in the samples. I tried to color in some larger areas from another image but didn't have much luck in getting it to blend out the pencil marks. Part of the problem is the lead in the colored pencils I was using was very hard and it was difficult to get it to get this brand to go down evenly so I was hoping I could solve that with this technique but the color mostly stays where you put it in the first place.

Next up will one be of the following:

• A Copic version of the same puppy love stamp on an original card layout, or...
• A watercolor version of the same puppy love stamp and the Dove blender pen from another Make and Take, or...
• A non blended colored pencil card puppy love?