Tips for using watercolour pencils for cardmaking with the Totally Techniques Team

The weather slipped into winter here in the UK, but at least as I type this the sun is shining and the sky is blue and I have a card to welcome you with cheery colours and pretty flowers from the Full of Love stamp set.  The Totally Techniques team members are sharing ideas for using watercolour pencils this month.  Our Stampin' Up! pencils come in two assortments so you can start with either depending upon your favourite colour choices and hopefully when you fall in love with them you'll want both assortments.  As with everything Stampin' Up! they coordinate with our colour families and so will coordinate with your card, ink and embellishments. 

For my share today I started by stamping in black Staz On ink around the edge of a piece of Fluid 100 watercolour paper.  If you look at the stamp set below you'll see that I used the stamp with the letter in the centre and only partially stamped on the border of the paper.  

I then used the pencils to add some colour to the image but not completely covering it.  You can create light and shade by the level of pressure you put on your pencil in the first place and then using a blending pen can drag colour to the uncoloured areas of a flower or leaf.  This reduces the intensity of the colour, but also can leave bold colour on the original application. The great thing is that you can use various shades of one colour also to blend with the pen to create even more depth or you can use a single colour.  The next step is to use a mixture of colours, but I didn't need to do that with my design as the single colours worked really well giving bold and pretty contrasts to each element. 

Once I had coloured the outer border I set to on the focal envelope.  I stamped this on an additional piece of watercolour paper and coloured it before fussy cutting the image out.  I've then stuck it onto the middle of my border piece raising it up with Stampin' dimensionals. My sentiment is from the same set and is simply white heat embossed onto a piece of Gorgeous Grape card to connect with my matt layer of the same colour.

The pencils are very cheap way to grow your colour spectrum and all you need is a good pencil sharper and possibly a stamp case to keep them safe.  It's best not to drop them to protect the colour inside the pencil.  I would never claim to be a great colourer but I'm very pleased with how this turned out and very minimal colouring skill is required so great for beginners and more experienced crafters to use.  

For regular readers to my blog you'll know I like a little bling so my finishing touch was to add some Wink of Stella which you can just about spot in the final picture and so

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me In-color opal rounds.  

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the hop via the thumbnails or link below. 

Happy weekend Zoe x

Supplies Used available in my Stampin' Up! shop

Full of Love stamp set

Watercolour Pencils 

Blender Pens

Fluid 100 watercolour paper

in color opal rounds