Pencil heaven!!!

I'm in pencil heaven at the moment, two weeks ago I took delivery of the brand new Spectrum Noir 

blend-able pencils, and I must say I totally "LOVE" them!

I'm still in the early stages of discovering what I can do with them but so far have loved what I have achieved.

So, what did I colour?

Well I recently discovered Crafts & Me and in particular their Sara Burrier digital images,  I simply fell in love with this gorgeous fairy image called Hide and Seek.

For her skin I used  003, 005, 008, 009 and 023, then used 001 to blend followed by the blending solution on a paper stump.  Keep adding a bit more colour if you need to, but if you are using a smooth cardstock there is only so much pencil it will take.

The poppy is, 020,  024, 025, 026, 083, 105 and again blend with 001, blending solution and  paper stumps.

For her dress, 015, 020 and 022.

Her stockings, 002, 113 (the white stripe) and 021 and 043 (orange stripe)

again I used the blending solution and paper stumps.

For the greenery 057, 058, 059 and 060, also I used the 001 to help blend but left some of the streaks as texture.

Her Hair is, 097, 098 and 102.

Her wings are 061, 062, 037 and 38.

And finally the background is made up of 043, 044 and 046, this took quite a bit of blending with the blending solution, so that the colours are mottled .

I can't tell you just how pleased I am with the finished result, and this is primarily because of the quality of the pencils, and the way they blend. 

One thing I will say is download the colour charts from the Spectrum Noir website, its a real help when deciding what colours to use.

Hope you enjoy getting to know these pencils ,

Happy Colouring x 

Part 2 as promised!

This week I took delivery of some much awaited Spectrum Noir coloured pencils, and I am hoping to have a couple of projects to share with you soon, but for now..

here is image no 2, from our recent hair and skin workshop, and as you can see we used the same image,

her name is April and she is from Make it crafty

I chose this image so that she can be used as a real practice piece, but in the same download you also get her in a slightly different pose so you can easily put her on the front of a project.

So, onto the list of colours:

Hair

Apricot

Ginger

Spice

Burnt Orange

Skin

Peach

Oatmeal

Blush

Tan

Soft Peach (lips)

Eyes

Meadow Green

Marsh Green

Remember that practice is the key to getting great looking colouring, so relax and have fun, it might not always go according to plan, but hey at the end of the day its a bit of paper, and yes lots of my stuff ends up in the bin or popped in a tin never to see the light of day again! Go on give it a go!

Happy colouring x

Nicky

Quarter of the way through the year? How did that happen!

I know I sound like a broken record but life just seems to be flying past at a great rate of knots!

and change albeit a great thing, still takes time to get used to, and life with two teenagers in the house is also  quite a challenge!!

So what have I been getting up to? Lots of colouring in! I have also been finding new digi stamp companies as well as my old favourites like Saturated Canary and Mo's Digital Pencil, I'm loving The Paper Shelter, Rick St Dennis and Make it crafty, talking of which...

I had a lot of fun with the ladies in my colouring in class recently doing skin eyes and hair, and we used the gorgeous April stamp from Make it crafty. We coloured her four different ways in the class, and I also did an extra one just for fun so over the next few posts ( I promise they won't be six months apart!) I will share our Promarker colour combo's.

 No 1

 Hair

Soft Lime

Buttercup

Mustard

Caramel

Skin

Coral

Sunkissed Pink

Dusky Pink

Pale Pink

 Eyes

Powder Blue

Sky Blue

Cyan

As always the colours are all listed in the order that they are used.  

Happy Colouring everyone!

I'm Back again!

Hello all, am I a bit late to say Happy New Year??? Life has run away with me a bit just recently and  in general has just been a bit taxing, but its a new year so I am determined to get a wriggle on and blog more frequently.

As I'm sure most of you will, by now, be aware that Flutterby Crafts is no longer, and I now work for the lovely Cate at The Mulberry Bush, the location is still the same but the shop looks stunning, and there are lots of plans for the coming year.

Anyway, I thought I would do a quick picture tutorial of how I made the lovely paper flowers that the girls in class have been using over the last couple of weeks, I can't stop myself from making them at the moment, and enjoy sitting on the sofa with the family making them instead of tucking myself away in my craft studio!

I started off by die cutting some of the lovely Madame Payraud's papers

from Papermania using a Marianne flower die.

I used distress inks to colour the backs and front edges.

I then spritzed them all with a gold ink also from DoCrafts, I should mention it is one of the best spritzing inks I have ever used and doesn't seem to clog.

Just a word of caution though, cover up your area very well, as you can see even though I was very careful and sprayed into a box lid, some spray still found its way onto the paper underneath, creating a nice effect, but it wouldn't have looked quite so good on my white tablecloth that was underneath!!!

When all the papers are dry, start rolling them up with a pair of tweezers.

Then when there is enough to grip in your fingers, continue rolling until you reach the end, and secure onto the disk at the end with a dollop of pva and hold until stuck, or hot glue for an instant grip, but be careful as this can burn your fingers! 

I then put a bit of pva into the centre and wedged in a pearl

I left all of my flowers overnight to fully dry before using them on my project.

And here's the finished piece.

Your comments are always welcome,  Happy Crafting

Nicky

Here are some of the products used: