Hi everyone, today I have a fun card for you involving coloured pencils on tan coloured paper!

I started this card by stamping the Wild Rose Studio’s stamp called “Fox on Branch” on Strathmore “Toned Tan” paper with Versafine “Onyx Black” ink. Next I coloured the image with my Bruynzeel coloured pencils.

If you’re not familiar with this brand : it’s a Dutch brand and these coloured pencils are used by adults and children alike, you can buy like 45 pencils in a tin for about 10 Euro. The only additional pencil I used is a Caran d’Ache Luminance pencil in White/001. These Bruynzeel pencils are good quality. I guess you don’t really need expensive pencils to create a nice image, expensive pencils don’t make you a better colourer! Only bad paper or bad, scratchy pencils make you images less nice.

But of course, being a crafter and all, I also like to try out other stuff and I made a similar card with Faber-Castell Polychromos: you can find more information about that card further down this post.

Back to the card at hand: because I wanted the colours to be as vibrant as possible I first put down a white base with the white coloured pencil that comes in the Bruynzeel set. Then I looked up a picture of a fox on the internet and looked for coloured pencils that matched the natural colours as much as possible: I picked a yellow-orangy colour, a lighter warm brown and a reddish brown (the Bruynzeel coloured pencils don't come with numbers or names). For the white parts I picked a medium grey and the white Caran d’Ache pencil and for the dark grey parts I used a dark-grey, a black and the white from the Bruynzeel set. I put several layers of colour down until I was happy with the results. For the branch I choose cooler brown tones and bright green tones.

After colouring the fox and the branch I found that the tan coloured background needed some extra colour to make a better contrast for the fox. I first put on some white and picked a light olive colour that seemed to match the scene. That unfortunately didn’t work too well (the card at hand was my first time colouring on this specific Strathmore paper, after a few more colourings I'll know better what works and what not), I think the olive green in the end was to warm for the tan coloured paper. I didn’t wanted to throw this piece away so I added a lot of white pencil to subdue the olive green and make it less warm and in the end that worked out very nice I think.

To define the stamped image more I draw over the lines with a black Copic Multiliner and added some white to the eyes and the nose with a white Gelly Roll pen.

For the rest of the card I wanted to continue using the earth tones I already had going on! After die-cutting the image with one of my Crea-Nest-Lies XXL stitched rectangle dies I edged this piece with a Prima Marketing Chalk Edger in “Lead”. Then I looked through my stash for a matching piece of card stock and found this reddish brown piece that matched the fox well which I edged a little with Memento “Pottery Clay”.

Then I started working on the background: I used some crème coloured linen textured card stock (the same as I used for my base card) and a stencil from The Crafters Workshop called “Mini Leafy Branches” with a Prima Marketing Chalk Edger in “Bronze” to make the background. I choose this stencil because it added to the theme I had going with the branch from the stamp already there. I also edged this piece of card stock with the same Bronze colour that I used with the stencil.

The idea for the sentiment was that I wanted two sentiments on this card: one saying “Happy Birthday” an the second “Follow your Dreams”. Because I didn’t have a stamp with the text for the second sentiment I made my own with an alphabet stamp set I bought on Etsy. In the end it was to busy with both sentiments on the front of the card, so the second one ended up inside the card. I used the smallest banner from the “Double Fun nr. 1” die set from CreaLies to cut the sentiment and matted it on some matching green card stock.

To finish this card I added some enamel dots with Nuvo Crystal Drops in “Ebony Black”, “Woodland Green” and “White”. I make them on a an acetate sheet (you can also use a craft mat) and, after drying, glued them on with Ranger Medium Matte.

I would like to submit this card to the following challenges:

SSS Wednesday Challenge: “Cute”

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/wednesdaychallenge/simon-says-cute/

The Ribbon Girl February Card Challenge: "Anything goes"

http://ribbongirls.blogspot.nl/2017/02/ribbon-girl-february-card-challenge.html

My second card for today features the same theme but I used Faber-Castell Polychromos for the colouring and I used different colours for my background.

I don’t have a dark gray in my Polychromos so I used a white and a black instead and I didn’t have a reddish-brown either so I mixed different warm browns with a red and and a yellow.

I used the following Polychromos: 101 / 199 / 232 / 112 / 171 / 177 / 180 for the branches, the leaves, the black and white pieces of fur and 283 /217 / 185 / 187 for the red fur. I used 103 (Ivory) in the background to create a bit more contrast with the fox ( I don’t think it’s really visible in the pictures but somehow your eyes know it’s there, yes I know that sounds really weird! ).

For this card I choose more cool tones in my background paper and that’s why I used a Prima Marketing Chalk Edger in “Platinum” with the stencil and edged the brown card stock with Distress Ink “Aged Mahogany”.

And that finishes today’s cards! Hope you enjoyed.

#handmadecards #makeyourlifecolourful #bruynzeelcolourdpencilos #FaberCastellPolychromos #wildrosestudiofoxonbranch #nuvodrops #tcwminileafybranches #primametallicchalkedger #doublefuncrealies