Whimsy Mid Month Mini Release - #Fun

What a fun release this is - Whimsy Stamps mid month mini release! Do you like gnomes? Then this one definitely is for you! Check it out here in the Whimsy store. All Whimsy products I used are listed below with links!

I stamped the cute little gnome with the kite onto Strathmore mixed media paper using a black hybrid ink. I knew I want to use several different coloring mediums and this gave me options. I ended up coloring this cutie with alcohol markers, pencils and watercolors. 

I have some alcohol markers which I do not like to use as much as others. So I had to think of a different way to use them and I tried combining them with other mediums. On my card today I used them together with pencils. 
Oh and I will not mention any names of markers I don't like because I feel it is a personal preference if you like a marker brand or not. So for someone else they might be the perfect marker. 

What I do is I lay down the lightest color (sometimes light and medium but mostly just the lightest color) with the alcohol marker as kind of a base color. Then I do the rest of the coloring and shading with my pencils. I combined pencils and markers before but then I colored like I normally would with markers and just used the pencils to add some more shading. In this case I used 3-4 different shades of each color with pencils. Also a very light shade that matches the shade of the alcohol marker. This makes blending much easier. I like this method and it is a fun way to color and faster than just using pencils on its own. If I use the markers this way I can get at least something out of them instead of having them just sitting on my shelves and drying out because i don't like this particular brand.

The outline and base was done with waterbased brush markers and instead of a waterbrush or brush and water I used a waterbased clear shimmer brushmarker to blend it out. This added a fantastic soft shimmer to my background as you can see in the photo above.

The background was stamped with the NEW Slimline Scribbles BG stamp and Oxide inks (kitsch flamingo, salvaged patina and mustard seed). All the card layers including the slimline cardbase were die cut using the NEW Slimline Cornered Rectangles Die Set. 

Whimsy products used:

  

Thanks for stopping by and see you soon!