Colour Pencils

A week of discovery and rediscovery for me. I chanced upon a wonderful blog by artist Kal Barteski (link) and was captivated both by her art and, in particular, her enthusiasm for using colour pencils. Check out her amazing shoe paintings, btw. Kal shares her artwork but also her techniques and I had one of those lightbulb moments ....
Now I haven't used colour pencils for years but I knew I had some somewhere. A quick rummage produced a battered tin of Berol Karismacolour pencils in varying stages of use - favourite colours being the short ones of course. In my formative years I could never get on with colour pencils finding them scratchy and hard to get strong colours without a good deal of pressure. Not so with Karismacolour - these are waxy, soft and semi-translucent and they lay down a good degree of saturated colour without too much pressure. Ideal for blending and overlaying. ( It seems that Karismacolour pencils are no longer made but they have re-emerged as Prismacolor and are made in the USA. Other manufacturers have similar soft pencils in their range and are readily available in art shops etc.)
Then I had fun finding out how the pencils worked and looked on different papers. Besides the obvious choices of artists' papers there are a multitude of different supports that can be used. Textured Bazill cardstock proved to be easy to work with and gave an interesting canvassy look, made more subtle by using the smoother reverse. DCWV patterned card also proved effective, as was their textured solid colour blocks.

This led me to thinking about using coloured pencils more for scrapbooking and with the current trend for doodling on layouts it seems like a good choice. Being a dry medium, and easy to use, it has obvious advantages over painting for freestyle scrapbooking.
This led me to my next rediscovery. One of the banes of my life has been having slightly uncontrolled hand movements when drawing or doing other detailed work. It's a mental thing - the more I try to keep a line smooth the more likely it is to wobble! Not too bad for straight lines - I can use a ruler - but keeping curved lines looking right is much harder. Enter stage right - my flexible curve! Another thing bought a few years ago and then hidden by the junk in my studio. I imagine most people will know a flexible curve when they see one, but just in case, it's about 18 inches long, encased in softish rubber with a flattened surface to the underside, and it can be curved any which way to sit on your paper and used like a curved ruler. So simple to use and it gives very satisfying results. I used a roller-ball pen for the the outlines and then coloured in the design with my pencils.
These pencils will work on any colour background, even black. The example below was done on buttery-yellow DCWV cardstock.

The next example was by way of a further experiment on white Bazill textured card. I printed my image straight onto the reverse of the card, giving a subtle but soft effect like a painting. Then I used the curve to make the sweeping lines and coloured them in. This is 8x8" and it could easily go onto a sheet of 12x12 for further embellishment etc.

Another idea would be to get children creating art onto a layout of photos of themselves. Older children can do their own thing, whilst younger children could maybe simply colour in patterns you've created with a flexible curve or hand-doodling. Get the whole family involved - and no mess!

Illustration Friday - Citrus

This is my illustration for the Illustration Friday 'Citrus' subject. It's a colour pencil drawing that I've abstracted digitally. Erm... thing is... do I put it in the colour pencil category or digital? Decisions, decisions....

A Waggly tale

I am the very proud and lucky owner of probably the cutest Westie pup ever (in my humble opinion that is.) I had wanted a dog for over two years, and as much as I tried to put myself off the idea it just didn’t work. I had spent the last two years searching the Internet for articles about my favoured breed of dog, the West Highland White Terrier. Even reading that the terrier can be very wilful didn’t put me off. I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment as the thought of a dog with a lot of ‘spirit’ made me want one even more.

I even had a name for the as yet non existent dog- Pablo. I’d chosen the name in a rather complicated way. I followed Formula one, and admired the driving skills of Juan Pablo Montoya, who drove for Maclaren, who were sponsored by West (are you still following? I told you it was complicated didn’t I?) Anyway, West-Westie- Pablo. I guess there are more conventional ways of choosing a non existent dog’s name really.

So - I do have a habit of making a ten word story into ten thousand words - two years of wanting the said Westie, lots of Westie products in the house (including a Bear Factory stuffed Westie toy, called Pablo of course) I was still no nearer to getting the actual real life furry version. I started searching websites for Westies for sale and came across The Kennel Club site. I found Westies for sale just down the road from us, but a quick phone call later confirmed they were all spoken for. I decided it was just not going to happen, but couldn’t resist frequently going onto the Kennel Club site for another look. Eventually I found another add for Westies a bit further away, but available. We said we would go and have a look but not rush into anything (after two years we thought we were rushing?) We decided not to take any money with us when we went to look at the pups, to stop us buying one there and then, HA!

As soon as we walked into the room where the pups were we were choosing which one would be ours. I had my daughter’s birthday money in my purse, she kindly donated it to the deposit, not that she knew as she wasn’t actually there.
There were 3 puppies, but one was reserved, we chose the one with the floppy ears, he was so cute, his brother was lovely but there was just something about ‘floppy ears’ that we fell in love with. As the pups were only 5 weeks old we had to wait two weeks to bring Pablo home, two weeks in which I managed to buy just about every puppy accessory available. With my favourite hobbies including photography and scrap booking, I couldn't wait to have the cutest little furball to use as my subject.

This LO was made using Crate papers- Hampton court collection, which was sent to me as a birthday kit from Jillybeans scrap yard. I love the way the papers matched a lot of the photos I had taken of Pablo as a new pup, and have used the kit in a mini pupbum that I can use as a brag book. I used transparency for the title. I love this as you can layer it over your photos or embellishments. The only thing is you have to print everything in mirror image, and I often forget. We thought we would give Pablo his first bath soon after bringing him home, he didn't exactly love the experience!

Selection of mini books I have made

I make a lot of books so I thought I would show some examples.
I hope to share instructions for most of them in the future.

Mini books

I love making mini books and thought I would share this one with you.
1.Cut 8 circles in paper (I used a cd as a template).
2.For the cover you will need 2 quarters of card.
3.To assemble t-bag fold each circle then stick on top of each other.
4.Before you add the covers to each end sandwich some ribbon between each cover and page.

Texture paste

I have been experimenting with texture paste.
First I spread some on a piece of card not too thick but enough to get an image when you stamp into it.
Then I used some of my texture and alphabet plates to stamp into the paste while still wet.
Clean your stamps straight away with something like an old toothbrush to get the paste out of the hollows in the stamps.
Leave to dry for about an hour then paint over the top using one or more colours.
This effect can be used for titles by stamping letters into the paste.
I would do a title on a seperate piece of card and mount onto lo when dry.
Beads and glitter can be used and best added to the paint.

Blooming Transparencies!

Did you treat yourself to these cute sprays of beaded flowers from Jillybeans' site and then wonder how on earth you'd fix them to your project? Here are a few ideas that might help you.

1. Use a liquid adhesive such as Diamond Glaze or Glossy Accents to stick the backs of the flowers and anchor the wire stems behind another embellishment such as a tag, envelope or title.

2. Sew the sprays in place either with a pale thread or contrasting fibre, depending on the look you want. You can stitch around the centre of the large clear flowers but be careful not to pull the thread too tightly as you might pull a hole in your background paper.

3. Tie a ribbon around the stem and secure at the back with a glue dot. Stick the flowers with glue dots too.


4. Make a small hole in your paper, thread the stems through from the front of the paper to the back and secure these on the back of your LO with tape. Your spray will sit more firmly if you bend the wire at the back by about 90 degrees before securing in place. Fix the flowers in place on the front of the LO.

5. Remove the stems from the large clear spray and just use the flowers for embellishments. Cut the wire (this can be done easily with either wire cutters or old scissors) leaving about 1" extending from the flower. Hold the flower with the back facing you and twist the wire round in a tight circle to anchor it before sticking the flower in place with liquid adhesive or glue dots.

It was this last method that I used on the following LO.

One of the members of the U.K.Scrappers forum (UKS) asked for ideas of how to use 12 x 12 printed transparencies. As I love these but have been at a loss for how to use them, I joined the thread for inspiration. Another member then challenged us to use one by the end of the month and this is my attempt.







The transparency is Life's Journey Dream Compass by K & Co which I have had for ages. I've done a search for it and the only place I can see one is an Australian site. Maybe someone knows of a source nearer home, if it's still available? The background paper is Daisy D's but I think it is so old it doesn't have a name!

The LO depicts my mother at different ages through her life. The circle at the bottom right of the transparency had printing on it but I cut this out and the resulting hole is a frame for one of the photos. I rarely give my LOs titles as they don't need to stand on their own - they mainly form part of holiday journal albums or family history albums and each LO is just part of the story in that album. This particular LO will be the start of a series of LOs about my mother's life; not all of them will have pictures. The start of the text on the facing page will have a title - Marjorie . . . a lifetime - heading it and because I wanted to mirror that, I printed the same wording and font on Safmat and laid it over the transparency to give just a hint of colour at the bottom left.

The pointer of the compass is a sunflower brad with a mini framedangoe coloured with silver and metallic blue rub ons. These are not the rub on transfers that are popular just now but pots of creamy colour that you apply with a finger or cotton bud. The ones I used were a freebie from Scrapbook Inspirations magazine but they can usually be bought from shops specialising in rubber stamps. The flowers and leaves, representing fading years, are mainly Prima and those lovely beaded flowers echo the sheerness of the transparency.

They also provide a lovely texture and movement.

I really enjoyed using them and hope you do too.