A bit of a trick for shading with Promarkers

Hello everyone!
I hope you all had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year celebration.  I know, I know it's almost the end of January.. My 'New Year New Blog Attitude' hasn't started well, but as usual I have an excuse! I've been really working hard on some new Funky Hand digital products which are now all with my wonderful Design Team so you should be seeing them very soon.  So, less of the weak excuses and on to what I really have come to talk about!

Promarkers & Colouring in general.
I don't know about you but I have got a bit of a 'thing' about collecting Promarkers at the moment.  Over Christmas my collection grew nicely, and the New Year sales helped the storage to get a little fuller! That's all well and good but, I need to work on my actual colouring.

I was browsing some blogs and websites over Christmas and I came upon a really good idea for working out where shading should be on your image.  This is something I always have trouble with. The problem is I can't remember where I saw the tip.. If I find the Blog again I will come here and leave the information for you.

It's really simple, all you need is some acetate and a permanent marker..

What the heck?  I hear you thinking.  Using this simple little technique I was able to work out how to colour the shading on these two Bot - Fire Away digital stamps.  One with the light at the front and the other behind.

I have written all the details for you on a full blog post over on the Funky Hand Design Team blog  Get Funky & Craft  Pop over there and see all the details.

Hopefully you will learn something new, if not then take a look at the other posts over there.  There are sure to be some card images or techniques that the ladies have shared that will inspire you with your crafting.

OK, I'm off to finish off some new images for the website.  I'll be back soon to share some other nugget of crafting info or just my general chatter in the near future.

Anice xx

Layering a Funky Hand digital stamp

Welcome to you all! 

Today I thought that I would share a bit more information about my idea for layering one of the Georgie digital stamps 'Georgie Angel' that I posted about over on the Funky Hand Design Team Blog. Get Funky & Craft.  For this creation I messed around with the stamp and created a GSD to cut out the image with my cutting machine.  You don't have to have a cutting machine.  You could just print out the digital stamp image four times and just cut the parts that you want to layer out.

Please remember: Not all digital stamp designers would be happy with you doing this sort of thing so you must remember to check all terms and conditions linked with each stamp.  If it is not mentioned there, it doesn't mean it's OK to do.  Always ask.

OK, here is what I started out with for this project,

As you can see I decided that I wanted to layer her face, the upper part of her body and her hands holding the heart.

I coloured the images in with Promarkers before I cut them out.  Colouring small parts of images when they are already cut out is really hard in my opinion but if you prefer to cut out first please go ahead.

Sorry, that was the perfect opportunity to show off my Promarker collection to you. To say I'm a bit obsessed with them is a little bit of an understatement! I have to admit Ian was a little shocked when he saw them all out on the table.  He says he didn't know I had so many.  I told him I'd had them all ages (wink)

Before I go on, if you have some Promarkers you might like to grab this really helpful free download from Sarah Hurley.

It's a  layout of all the names of the currently available Promarkers (including Limited Editions) with circles to add the pen colour to. Print the download onto the same paper/card that you use for colouring your digital stamps and colour in each of your markers. It will then give you a true coloured effect.  Sarah has laid them out in a really helpful order.  Grab the free download from her website  http://www.sarahhurleydesigns.co.uk/oldshop/prod_2834920-Promarker-Colour-Charts-Updated-for-Winter-2013.html  Please don't just share this freebie with your friends send them over to Sarahs website to grab their own copy. 

OK, lets get colouring in Georgie.  I started with her skin and then her hair..

For her skin I used these Promarker colours: Almond, Blush and Dusky Pink.  It actually looks very pale on this picture but it doesn't look so pale in reality.  For her hair I went for a deep brown/auburn. The colours I used were: Tan, Cinnamon and Coco.  I also added a tiny bit of Henna at the darkest places.

Next up is her Angel outfit.  I saw this collection of Promarkers being used for Blonde hair and I thought it would be a good combination as I wanted it light but not just leave it white.  The colours used are: Ivory, Satin and Almond.  For extra shading I used Vanilla.

Here is Georgie all finished.  I wanted a warmer colour for her wings and ballet shoes so decided on pinks.  The colours used are: Antique Pink, Dusky Rose and Budding Rose.  Finally the heart, I wanted a nice vibrant red colour so I used Red Sweater and Ruby.

I decided to colour in each layer of the image as I wanted no white bits showing under the layered stamp, but also, because it was an opportunity to practice the colouring, as the lower levels of the face, upper body and heart wouldn't be in clear view!



 Finally here's the finished card I made and a closer look at the layering..

I used 1mm foam pads to layer the head and upper body and 3mm foam pads for the heart.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

If you have purchased the (or are thinking about it) Georgie Angel digital stamp and would like the GSD I used in this post, send me a message through the Funky Hand website Contact Us page and I will email it to you for free.

All there is left to say is, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas. Just incase I don't get back to post here before the big day.  I'm crossing my fingers that Santa has more Promarkers in his sack for me.  I hope you get all the crafty stash you have asked for.

Speak again very soon.
Anice xx

How to colour Funky Hand Doodlewords digital stamps

Hi there! Once again it has been too long since I have posted here.  It's for a good reason I promise, I've been working on the Christmas Funky Hand releases which my wonderful Design Team are pretty much finished with so, they will be released very soon.  Look out for some Bloggy fun to celebrate the releases.

On the Get Funky and Craft Blog I posted a technique for matching your Promarker colours to the backing papers you want to use when colouring in the Funky Hand Doodlewords digital stamps.  I thought I would share it here as well incase you had missed it there.

Here are my tips for colouring in Funky Hand Doodlewords digital stamps.  Obviously this is my own idea for matching up the colours. If you have any other tips please add them in the comment section, I'd love to hear more ideas.

Ok, so first off you need to decide which Doodlewords Digital stamp you want to colour, there are quite a few now and very soon there will be Christmas themed ones.  Then, you need to decide on your Funky Hand backing paper collection.  I've chosen the Thank You Doodleword digital stamp and the backing paper is from the Spring Has Sprung download.

When I design all the backing papers for Funky Hand, whether they are on downloadable collections or on the craft CD ROMs, I always use FIVE different colours.  Each backing paper pattern may not have all the colours on but they are all made up of the same five colours.  That's why it is easy to mix and match the backing papers in a collection together.  Anyway, there is pretty much always a striped paper and when colouring your Doodleword digital stamps to match with a collection this is where you will find all the colours in that collection laid out nicely. 

So, print off the striped paper from the collection and the digital stamp. I have printed my digital stamp onto Neenah Classic Crest card which is great for using Promarkers on as they blend well on it. The backing paper I printed onto white card. This is where the fun starts, matching the colours.  I have used Promarkers but the same technique will work for any pens you want to use.

 
The image above is the striped backing paper on the white card underneath some scrap Neenah Classic Crest card, the same as I have printed my digital stamp onto.  It's important to use the same product that you have printed your stamp on to or the colours wont come out the same when you colour the stamp.  Now start testing the Promarkers you have against the backing paper collection colours.  As you can see it took me a few goes with different pens until I found the match I was happy with.  Something I have learned is that you should allow the ink you have matched to dry for a few seconds as the colour changes and many times I have tried a pen colour, thought it was too dark and put it away only to discover it was perfect and I couldn't remember which one it was!

I decided on my five colours for this digital stamp..

They are, Tropical Orchid (Special Edition), Powder Blue, Pink Carnation, Eggnog and Leaf Green.  I've told you what colours I decided on just for interest.  These ones are possibly not what you would choose using the same backing paper download collection.  The reasons for that are, what paper or card you print your backing papers onto which will have an effect on the colours that you will see.  It also depends on the printer you are using if it's an Inkjet or Laser.  How much ink is in your printer? If even one colour is low that can have an effect on the colours that you get when you print out the digital backing paper. So, don't just follow what I have said, test it out for yourself.

So, Promarker colours are chosen, now you need to think about how you want to colour the letters in the Doodlewords digital stamp. The images are quite whimsical so you can mix all the colours together on one letter like this..

 
Or perhaps you would prefer to only use two colours like this..

The colouring is completely up to you.  These stamps are great for newer colourers, like me, as they are pretty easy to colour but you can get a really great effect. Which makes the colouring more fun when you start out as you actually want to use what you have coloured on your card creations.

Here is the Thank You Doodlewords digital stamp completed, layered over the striped backing paper...

I think it has matched the backing paper pretty well, what do you think?

OK, so there you are my tips for colouring Doodlewords digital stamps.  I hope you found them helpful.  As I said at the beginning of this post the new Christmas downloads will be released pretty soon and they include three Christmas themed Doodlewords digital stamps.  I've had fun using this technique matching up the colours from the new backing paper collections.  As it's Christmas maybe I will use those Metallic markers as well.  We shall see.

Thanks for visiting, speak again soon
Anice xx