I recently completed a card (I’ll add a copy of it below) when I looked back at the card I realised on the one card I had used
Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Powders
Derwent Inktense Watercolour Pencils
Ranger distress oxides
Versa Mark ink pad
White Cadence Acrylic Paint
Pan Pastels
VersaFine Clair ink pad
Posca Paint Pens
Sakura White gel pen
Pentel Mattehop Pens
Pentel dual Metallic Hybrid Pens
Ohuhu Alcohol Markers
Stickles Glitter Glue
I couldn’t quite believe how many mediums I had used!
So I thought it might be helpful to give a bit of an overview of different types of products and where you might use them.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is far from an exhaustive list and I haven’t tested a lot of the brand out there, or in some cases I may not even know they exist. Nevertheless this is the kind of information I might have found helpful when I was new to colouring.
If you are interested in a particular type of product I hope to do some follow up blogs for each type with more detail (otherwise this would be verrrrrryyyyy long!) So be sure to check my other posts.
Watercolours:
Again this might sound simple but within watercolours you have Paints ( both Pans & Tubes), Markers & Pencils.
Watercolours tend to give a more translucent finish and I find them to be quite forgiving. Personally I find the paints work better if I am wanting to mix colours or cover a large area and the pencils work great for more detailed work. I don’t very often use water based markers.
The price can vary hugely when it comes to watercolours. You will find nearly all watercolours are made up of pigment and filler. The cheaper ones tend to have more filler and less colour and the more expensive ones have less filler and more pigment.
My personal advice if you are starting out is to go for a mid range product and get a smaller range of colours. You can easily mix colours but you can’t change the quality!
I am a huge fan of the inktense pencils. These are highly pigmented and blend beautifully. But once heat set with a heat tool (the type you use for embossing) they are set and even if you add more water after it won’t pull the colour out.
In this particular card I used the pencils to create the green/yellow fields. I used them over the base brushes and they came out beautifully even the yellows. When using the pencils make sure you apply the colour and then add the water, or lay it down on a piece of acetate and then take the colour from there using your paint brush. If you get the wood of the pencil wet this can deteriorate over time.
Brushos/Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Powders/Lavinia Dinkles
These are small pots of intense powder that when water is added create beautiful bursts of colour.
The Brushos are fantastically intense paint powder and comes in small pots. I like to use them to create backgrounds, you can get so many different effects with them. You can also use these for watercolouring but that is not something I have tried.
Dinkles are very similar to Brushos but they only contain a single colour where as brushos contain multiple colours.
Pixie Powders are a mica and dye mix that when the come into contact with water they explode creating a beautiful shimmering effect.
In this project I used pixie powders to create the original background before adding inktense pencils over the fields. Because they are water based the colour will shift and move when you add water on top. If the colour shifts too much just use a piece of kitchen towel to dab it off. You can see in the sky the sort of effect you can get with these powders. Again I will do a separate post on this so be sure to check back.
Acrylic Paints
Acrylic paints dry really quickly and give an opaque vibrant finish. I used the white acrylic to paint over the brushos to create the basis for the river and sun. This gives me a great neutral base to build up the colours on top.
Paint Pens
My go to paint pens are Posca pens, the white and black are essentials in your stamping journey. The black can be used to fill in any areas of the stamp that aren’t as opaque as you would hope them to be and the white is great to add highlights to your projects to show the reflections of your light source.
There are other paint pens out there, I bought some really cheap ones from Amazon and found the paint to be so translucent I might as well not have used any! I have also used the Ohuhu Graffiti markers, I found these to be a good cheaper alternative to Poscas. All are great to add details.
Gel Pens
This is an area that is really going to be down to personal preference. There are opaque gel pens, glaze gel pens, glitter gel pens. And within each of these I find that the finished effect will vary greatly.
I absolutely love the hybrid metallics from pentel. These are super intensely glittery with the ink colour and glitter being different colours therefore giving a completely different effect on light or on dark card. I have used them on this project to add a glittery finish to the vellum butterflies l.
The Mattehop pens also from Pentel are my latest find. They are opaque colours that when dry give a slight plasticy/glossy finish. They are fabulous for adding florals and fine colour details. I have used them here for the florals.
I will do a seperate post showing the finishes from each in a follow up post.
Pan Pastels
These are a super soft pastels that create wonderful blended finishes. They are great for layering over the other mediums to get a more subtle finish. I have used them around the edges of the river as well as to add highlights to the landscapes.
Ink Pads
Depending on what you are using as your colouring medium will determine the type of ink pad you want to use. Also whether you are looking for an opaque or transparent finish.
For getting a clear stamped image I recommend VersaFine Clair ink pads. This ink is an oil based pigment ink, so it is waterproof when dry and is fade resistant.
Distress inks are perfect for blending and are water reactive so great for adding effects to your projects. The Distress Oxides are a Water Reactive & Pigment fusion so they work with your water techniques giving an oxidised effect, they also create a more opaque finish when layered. You can see this in the blue stenciled areas at the top of this card.
Phew… that’s a lot of products… I know this is quite simplistic so be sure to check back for more detailed product reviews.
Xoxo
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