My favourite colour is purple but somehow I rarely use it on cards, isn't that funny? So, today I have a card for you with purple elements on it!
I started with the cute kittens from the Newton's Nook Designs "Newton Unwinds" stamp set (one of my new goodies after the Black Friday sales). Because I wanted to use my new Copic Sketch markers I stamped with Memento "Tuxedo Black" ink.
Where do I start on the Copic markers subject: I guess I'll start by saying that I have almost zero experience with alcohol markers, I tried out a couple of cheapy one's to see if I like the feel (for one of the results see the last picture of today's post), and I did, so I ventured on in unknown Copic marker land!
I see all these great tutorials on YouTube where people create the most beautiful colourings with them and for the longest time I told myself they were way to expensive and I have enough other colouring mediums and ....... I kept thinking about them every ones in a while.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I bought my first ones after long and hard thinking and looking for swatches on internet. To prepare myself I bought Sandy Allnock's "Copic Hex Chart" (https://sandyallnock.com/product/hex-chart/) and looked for colours that spoke to me. Since then I bought a couple more (because with Copics a few are not really working, you need a couple more then a few! Like, at least 3 or 4 in the colour-groups you use. Warning: ones you start you will not be able to stop collecting them!).
Off course my first colourings are no master pieces and honestly, Copics are different from every other colouring medium I have used. There sure is a learning curve! But I like a challenge and in time I hope to master them!
A few kittens landed in the waist bin unfortunately: I found it particularly hard to make the fur look a little like fur. My first attempts turned out real flat and a bit blah! While trying I remembered that somewhere on the internet I heard someone tell that when you use dots on animal colourings this will make the fur look more like fur, so I tried that. I still have a long way to go but that's okay!
As a result I now have two cute coloured little kittens: one I will show here today and one is for a future post.
For the fur I used : E21 / E13 / E19 en E29.
His belly: W1 and W3.
For the inside of his ears and paws: R00 / R01 and E21.
And for the wool I used: V20 and V17.
And then a disaster happened ! I think the neighbours could hear me yell (very loud) ! I finished the colouring and fussy cutting and then I thought that I needed to ad a little more E29 on his paws and BLOOP : a big bloop of dark brown ink on my little paw, oh no, what now! Fortunately I always have Kleenex on my work desk and I ripped some out of the box (box flying away) and dabbing my kitten. Thankfully I also bought a Colourless Blender although I read reviews that said you don't need one. I carefully pushed some of the dark brown back into the lines and carefully restored the dots inside the paws. I put some white Gelly Roll Pen on the edge to make it really white again! Pppffffffffffffffffffffffff saved!
Surely something like this will not happen twice, will it? Well, it happened to me! a little bit of E29 to finish a different paw and BLOOP and another (very loud) yell and some cursing followed! Another rescue kitten mission followed and another hug with my Gelly Roll Pen in white and then I put the piece away to have it dry and not look at it again for a couple of hours. Man, that was scary! Do they know at the Copic company that their products can cause hart attacks?
(Apparently something with the air pressure inside the markers can be off, then these big BLOOPS happen, more often with darker colours then with the lighter ones. To solve this: you take both caps of and let the marker rest for a couple of minutes. That should take care of the BLOOPING. I sure hope so!!!)
Then I started working on the background.
From a piece of patterned paper from Studio Light's paper pack called"Janneke Brinkman-Salentijn" I cut a circle with the MFT's Stitched Circle STAX and another from some beautiful purple card stock with the Crea-Nest-Lies XXL Circle Dies. After drying I put the kitten on there with some foam tape.
With another stamp from the Newton Unwinds stamp set I made my own background with some Prima Marketing Metallic Chalk Edger in "Platinum" (these edgers can give the most soft inked images, that take a little longer to dry, but I so love them, especially for my backgrounds). Apparently this was not my best day for card making because I was almost done with the background and then suddenly the sponge fell of, WHAT, exactly on the edge of my background of course, leaving an awful smear! HOW was I going to fix that : I couldn't make it go away totally but I was not going to throw this piece away and start over either. In the end I decided that I should make the edge of the background a little softer with the (now loose) sponge edger and hope for the best. I think it worked out well enough! Then I needed to wash my hands because the ink was all over my fingers.
For the sentiment I used yet another stamp from this versatile Newton's Nook stamp set and I matted that piece with different squares from the Crea-Nest-Lies XXL Square dies (normal and stitched).
Because I knew I wanted to use purple on this card, the day before I made some enamel dots with different colours of Nuvo Crystal Drops. These were kindly sent to me by Tonic Studios UK (for which I'm very grateful because I wanted to try them out for the longest time). Not all of them turned out nice but I think that is just me having to learn to use this product a bit better, this was my first try after all, and maybe the temperature in the room where I was letting them dry over night was to low also. A lot of them turned out beautiful though! And I love how you can make them as big or small as you prefer. I seem to like to smaller ones best.
I let them dry on a piece of acetate sheet and then glued the ones I wanted to use on the card with Ranger Medium Matte after deciding where they fitted best. That is also a great plus of these drops, you don't have to use them directly on your project, you can make them on your craft sheet or a piece of acetate sheet and then glue on the ones you like in the colours you want!
As you can see in the pictures I used the purple colour called "Crushed Grape" to finish of this card.
NOTE: The enamel dots do flatten if you put something on the card or, like me, when you keep your handmade cards in a binder until they are mailed.
That's it for today's card. I think this is the cutest kitten ever!
Do you have accidents happen when you craft, I wonder?
One last picture:
This is one of the cards I refer to above where I have used my first colouring attempts with alcohol markers:
For those who celebrate Christmas I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and lots of fun with all your loved ones!
#makeyourlifecolourful #copicsketchmarkers #purple #NewtonsNookDesignsNewtonUnwinds #NuvoCrystalDropsCrushedGrape #PrimaMetallicedgerPlatinum
