First play with Distress Watercolor Pencils

I'm sure I am not alone I saw all the fab people online playing with Tim's new brainchild last year and went and bought all 3 sets and then never touched them! I have told myself this year to stop watching so much stuff online so I can't be tempted and I don't have to own it all. One of the bloggers I love said recently "I am not a craft store, I don't have to have everything" and that is so true.

Scrapbook & Cards Today have a FREE magazine  you can read online. It is fab and chock full of scrapbooking and card making ideas. I would purchase a hard copy but shipping to NZ is horrific (they are in Canada) so I'll just read online. They also do lots of free stuff and yesterday had scheduled a Facebook Live with Jenn Shurkus who as you know I love, using my new stamp set from Lawn Fawn Wood You Be Mine and using distress watercolor pencils. They have a 2 page story with Jenn and 2 others using the distress pencils in their current magazine (Winter 2022). You can see that 2 page spread HERE and if you want to read the whole magazine online you can check it out HERE.

Jenn made it look so easy but I found it quite hard to build up layers and I did dry in-between. I followed Jenn's colouring methods, sometimes dry pencil to paper, then wet and spread with my paintbrush. Sometimes I used wet paintbrush to pencil, the only thing different is I added some Vintage Photo to one of my beavers (LHS one).

Some pencils seemed really pigmented which is what I thought looked really fab when I saw the original lives promoting the distress pencils (Candied Apple, Picked Raspberry, Tattered Rose, Vintage Photo, Salvaged Patina) and some seemed really dry and I could not really get a good water reaction happening (Walnut Stain and Kitsch Flamingo). I also found you don't want to paint over your lines as it dulls the lines with almost a white film/pigment. I went over the worst lines with my black sharpie fine pen. 

I am going to have a go at recreating this card just using my mini Distress Inks and watercolouring with them but if I am honest I don't think I needed these pencils in my life. Even though my background doesn't look as smooth as Jenn's I really like my splotchiness.

✿ Karen ✿