Adult coloring is a huge trend today. Retail stores of all kinds, not just craft and hobby stores seem to be embracing this phenomenon. A walk through a craft store shows a plethora of books, frames, notebooks, journals all to be colored by the buyer. The health benefits of coloring are many, from stress relief to an exercise for your brain. I do enjoy coloring and admit, I have a couple of books myself. Then I came to the realization, I can make my own coloring pages with my Pazzles machine! Using files from the Craft Room, it’s easy to make the perfect “coloring” project, using the Pen Tool. We can choose the type of paper for the coloring medium we wish to use. Why not make it card size, or to fit in a favorite frame? We can reveal our inner artist, and no one will ever guess that it is our imagination and a little “Inspiration” that is allowing us to create the perfect art.
For example, this little “Birday” card was created using the branch from Birds on a Branch, the bird and flowers from Pretty Bird on a Branch and the border and medallion from the Medallion Card Base. The more natural larger branch from the Bird on a Branch file was used, it was sized it to fit on a rectangle to be layered on a 5 x 7 note card. By combining a few of the layers of the Pretty Bird, a bird with the desired details was ready for drawing. The same technique was used with the flowers and erasing a few lines to eliminate layering lines was fast and easy to do using the eraser, scissors and zoom tools in the software. Soft water coloring is also popular and to get the no line look, after testing several pens, I discovered that by wrapping some tape around my 2B artist pencil, I could easily fit it into my Pen Tool. Using Bristol paper is a good choice if you prefer a smoother paper, but water color paper could work as well. The “hand” lettered sentiment was created with the pencil in the Pen Tool and then traced with a water color brush marker. The medallion was also cut from Bristol paper and colored with markers. A white Signo Uniball pen in the Pen Tool drew the stitching lines on the patterned paper. Dimension was added using liquid enamel to make the bird’s eye and sheet foam was used under the Bristol paper coloring and also on the sentiment circle.
The cutting and drawing part were very quick using my Pazzles Vue. Deciding what colors and markers to use was time consuming but also very satisfying. One does not need to be a super artist, just have fun “coloring” the image you create. Just remember, “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents” according to artist Bob Ross. Go and create some of your own “happy mistakes” and call yourself an artist!
~Sheri
Supplies used:
Kraft note card by Paper Studio
Canson Recycled XL Bristol paper
Printed paper Prima Forever Green
Watercolor markers—Kuretake clean color and Distress markers
Drawing pencil 2B
Signa Uni-Ball white pen
Ranger Ink black and white enamel accents
Pazzles Pen Tool
Pazzles Pen Spacer
Font used:
Pazzles Dom casual
This is so pretty! Can’t wait to try this!
Original idea!!! I have never think something like this.
Nice job. I wanted to use my Copic markers with my old pen tool. I might just try that now that I have the newer pen tool…at least with the CIAO markers.
Nice Job, I need to try this
Regina-I’ve seen people report that it will wreck your Copics. We don’t recommend using soft brush tip markers with the Pen Tool.
love this, thank you
This is so fun Sheri! It’s a great look!
Maybe you could clarify, but I understood from your blog that you used a pencil to draw the design with the Pen Tool and then you hand-traced over the pencil with your watercolor marker (that you didn’t put the watercolor marker into the Pen Tool.)
Correct, the brush water color markers are not good in the pen tool, I used the pencil in the pen tool. I also like the softer look of water colors, so by using a pencil, there wasn’t a hard line but one that I could color in. I also use a wet paint brush to move the marker color around for a softer look.