Learning New Things

Hi Everyone!


I was sick with a cold all last week so I spent my home time learning some stamp coloring techniques.  I have always been amazed at how so many talented people are able to color gorgeous stamps and I've never been able to do it myself.  I watched a ton of You Tube videos on different techniques and decided that I would like to use Copic Markers.  Then I discovered that I couldn't afford Copic Markers ( I almost fainted at the price of those Markers... I mean they are MARKERS for goodness sake lol.)  I then found that Letraset Pro Markers are very comparable in quality to Copic and decided to go that route.  The expense of the Letraset is about 1/4 of the Copic and I got luck and found Set 1 at my local JoAnn's.  I also had a 50% off coupon in my purse which brought my total to 15 bucks for a set of 12 markers plus a blender.  I was happy.  


I had to wait until the next day to play with my new markers and all of my new found excitement quickly disappeared when after trying to color/highlight/layer/blend with them ended up looking like a 2 year old's water coloring drawing thingy :(


I then decided instead of giving up completely, perhaps color pencils would be a better choice for me.  Back to JoAnn's I go armed with the knowledge that Prismacolor pencils are a good quality pencil for beginners to work with.  I end up back in the art department with a basket full of pencils, wax blenders, erasers and what-nots.  I realized while looking into my basket (the little kind that you carry, not the big push cart) that the final dollar amount was adding up rapidly.  I notice there were a few different brands of pencils at a much lower cost than Prismacolor and being budget conscious I look around for someone with more knowledge about this stuff.  I located a young woman in the framing department that was incredibly helpful.  She said that the water color pencils in the Sargent brand would be good to learn with because water color pencils are softer.  Softer means easier to layer and blend and much easier on my budget.  She exchanged the plastic eraser that I had in my hands for a putty type of eraser and said that I don't need the waxy type of blender pencil I had picked out.  She even showed me how to color using different directions give differing shades and showed me what was meant by "light source" highlights.  


I played around with my new color pencils a bit last night and yes! so much better for me.  I'm very excited about my color pencils because this leads me to a Paper Piecing technique that I've been wanting to use.  


Paper Piecing for cards and scrapbooks is pretty simple.  Take a rubber or acrylic stamp and stamp on both  white card stock and whatever patterned paper you choose.  For example if your stamp is that of a person, say a young girl, cut out the part of the stamp that would comprise of her dress which is stamped on the pattern paper and use the stamp that is on the while card stock to color her face, hair, etc.  then piece her dress on the card stock.   This gives a finished item that is part drawing part cut out and looks beautiful!  Once I get my first paper piecing done, I'll post it here.