Tips & Tricks Tuesday #9 - Coloring Stamped Images and Shapes

During last weekend's Ready Set Crop Winter Wonderland Retreat that I was a vendor at I did a short technique talk on coloring in stamped images and shapes to customize these for your scrapbook layouts or cards. I love being able to create my own embellishments that coordinate perfectly with a project I am working on.

I talked about 4 different ways to color in your stamped images and shapes and will share some information on each of these along with some tips I have learned along the way with this post.

1. Watercolor Pencils

To work with the Watercolor Pencils you would color in the stamped image with the pencil colors you want. The more pressure you use when coloring with the pencil the deeper the color will be on the image. After coloring then go over with either a water brush or paint brush with some water. This will "smooth out" the pencil lines and blend the colors. I recommend coloring the image fully before applying any water to the paper.

2. Watercolor Paints

You can mix the various watercolor paints together to get the shades you want. I use the "wells" on the lid to do my mixing before I color my images with these. The watercolor paints give a more "chalky" look to the colors.

3. Ink

To color with ink from your ink pads you would gently squeeze the closed ink pad to transfer some ink to the inside of the lid. Use your water brush to pick up the ink and color your stamped image.

4. Triblend Markers

The Triblend Markers from Spectrum Noir are great for coloring images as well as shapes. You can easily blend the various colors together. Each marker has a light, medium and dark shade. You can use the shades to blend in the lines between the different colors to soften the lines.

Tips for Coloring:

1. Use a solvent-based or archival ink to stamp your images. If you use a dye-based ink in stamping, when you go to color the stamped image the ink will bleed. I use the Intense Black Exclusive Ink from Close To My Heart when I stamp my images. This is a solvent-based ink.

 2. Use the water sparingly as too much will cause the paper to start to "pill" and the colors to become muddy.

3. Wipe off your water brush on a paper towel in between working with each color to not transfer one color to another area.

4. When using watercolor pencils it works best to color in all areas before using the water brush as you will not be able to apply another color over an area where the water brush has been used with the paper potentially tearing.

In addition to the technique talk I taught 2 scrapbook layout workshops where I incorporated using watercolor pencils in coloring in elements of the layout as well as the embellishments. For the "Our Getaway" layout we colored in the stamped border strips below the photos. The owls on the "Life's A Hoot" layout were also colored in with the watercolor pencils.

I hope you learned something from this post. Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies list:

- Intense Black Exclusive Ink

- Watercolor Pencils

- Watercolor Paints

- Small Round Water Brush

- Medium Round Water Brush

- Watercolor Paper

- Triblend Markers