SENZ 2016 : Some of my favourite things I KReated Part 1

Wow not quite a month since SENZ but time flies fast. I must admit I spent a weekend making wedding invites for Pete's daughter plus I've been playing with my Copics working out colour combos & blending a bit. I think I can see why the adult colouring book craze is so big, it truly is very satisfying to straight out colour. More on that another day!

Back to SENZ; I managed to squeeze in 6 classes over 4 days so plenty to share. My favourite class was with Sharon Newport entitled making coloured backgrounds. After the class I think it needs to say making COLOURED backgrounds, wow they were colourful. I think one of the main reasons I enjoyed Sharon's class so much was there was no pressure & it's really fun to get your fingers INKY!

We used Ken Oliver Color Burst powders (class colours as above with 2 extras I also bought, extras were Burnt Umber & Turquoise). I also played at other classes with Beck BT's Color Crush powders which were also fab. For myself I think I liked the control I got with Ken's bottles better rather than the shaker on top of Beck's wee pots. A friend of mine bought back Nuance Magical powders from the Brisbane craft show & I liked them the best as the hole you created yourself with a push pin, so it is quite small & seemed easy to control where you spread the powder.

All 3 powders are amazing though!! A little goes a long way & you can create awesome washes with water.

This piece was my favourite as it used the Alizarin Crimson, Orange & a wee tad of Lemon Yellow. Poof a bit of the powder on in different spots, then spritz with a mister bottle & let the colour reaction begin. Once dry we added a clear medium with stencil. I'm pretty sure the medium I used was my Art Basics Clear Gloss Gel - transparent. Once dry I've sponged it with my Black Soot distress ink, which has darkened all the non-gelled areas. Takes emboss resist to a new level!

This is the reverse of the page above which I touched whilst wet; 2 for the price of one!

Last but not least, love the colours in this which are so intense. Created using Violet, Pthalo Green & Ultramarine Blue.

This was the first class I've ever done with Sharon but I certainly will be looking out for her classes at SENZ 2017!

✿ Karen ✿

Quick & easy colouring

Hi everyone I've been really inspired by Kathy at TheDailyMarker.com who is running what looks like a regular 30-day colouring challenge. I don't think she'll get me to colour for 30 days but maybe twice a week maybe doable. She has some fantastic ideas & helpful tips & I'm enjoying seeing a daily inspiration from her in my mailbox.

For my birthday (way back in March) I bought myself a set of Zig Real Colour Brush markers as at that time I was resisting going down the Copic pathway (as their price was scaring me). Do not ask me why but I never actually opened my box & played with them. I'll blame Distress Ink pads for that, as I love watercolouring with them.

Anyhow I thought it would be fun to have a go watercolouring the large flower and the leaves on my stamp in this month's Simon Says Stamp kit. I bought the kit for the hand written messages on the stamp set which are adorable (thanks Kristina for having such pretty hand writing), well the kit has sold out but the stamp set is still available. Well I'm really pleased I opened the box as I ADORE my ZIG Real Colour Brushes, they are so easy to blend with themselves or with a water brush. I'm sure blending with a clear Wink of Stella would also be very pretty.

Kiwis I asked Fiona at Create to order the markers for me (they cost me $140 for the 36 colour set, if I realised how much I would love them, I probably would have got the 48 colour set but there are quite a few possibilities for blending even with 36 colours, it's my understanding each brush marker can also be purchased individually). At just under $4 a marker I think these are fabulous value. The brush tip is a true brush and you can do thin lines to a broad line very easily - see the side of the box & my wee swatch too.

Recipe:
Stamp set: Handwritten Floral Greetings (SSS)
Ink:  Black Archival (Ranger), Soft Sky (SU!) used for the background wash, Steel Blue (SSS), ZIG Real Colour Brushes.  I played around with a few colour combos as I went along but my flowers were Bright Yellow & Orange markers & my leaves got a real good blend of  Blue Gray, Mid Green & Olive Green.
Paper: Watercolour, Gumball Green (SU!), Confetti Cream (SU!)
Other: Watercolour brush, Woodland mix sequins - bought at SENZ last week from Three Little Whimzee


✿ Karen ✿

Bella truly is beautiful!

Hi all & once again a long time between posts, one of the things that is stopping me from blogging is I'm put off by how fabulous the quality of the images I see on my favourite bloggers blogs. My "new" camera is great for taking outdoor photos but it really sucks at taking photos of cards etc, my smart phone is also not that smart.

But I've decided that I like blogging & am happy to share my inky journey so I'm not going to let my camera get in the way!

For a really long time I've admired the colouring of stamped images with Copic images but to be honest with 358 colours it really is very hard to know where to start with building a collection. So imagine my delight when one of my local crafting stores in Ellerslie Memory Crafts offered beginner's lessons for 4 Saturday afternoons with us slowly building our collections along the 4 lessons. I'm at week 3 now & really enjoying the process. I have to admit that after 3 lessons it was obvious to me that if I truly wanted to colour in stamped images I needed a few more markers than I had bought for my 4 introductory lessons.

I'll be honest I still didn't know where to start with building a collection, so it was Google time & the post I found the most useful was from one of my favourite bloggers Jennifer McGuire which she wrote in 2010 but I still find relevant today. I think this post by Debbie Olsen will also be really useful when I want to expand on Jen's favourite colours.

But back to my beautiful Bella, she is one of the newly released stamp sets from Stampin' Up! & was delightful to colour in, the stamp set has many Bella images so hopefully you will see an improvement in my colouring of her. I coloured her in with C00, C1, C3 & C8 - the C8 is too dark so guess I'll have to buy a C5 or C6 this Saturday plus I've added a wee hint of pink to her cheeks with R30. The balloon is YR21, YR15 & YR68. The wee parrot is BG11, BG45 & BG49. Shadows are N0.

I've tried to make the RHS be lighter as if the sun is hitting on that side & am happy I acheived that with the balloon.

Recipe:
Stamp set: Bella & Friends (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Memento Black, Soft Sky (SU!) sponged on the cloud
Paper: X-press It Blending Card
Other: Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Border dies, dimensionals, Wink of Stella clear brush to add some sparkle to the balloon.

✿ Karen ✿