Like many others, now that we've seen THE LIST of retiring stamps and accessories, I'm anxious to see the new Stampin' Up! catalog. And, I'll get my chance next Monday when I attend the Eagan, MN Catalog Premier with one of my downline, Annette Elliott. Aside from all of the other new things I'm especially interested in learning more about the new alcohol markers, Blendabilities.
In fact... I'm so excited about these that I couldn't wait and last week I studied Kim's list of Stampin' Up! comparible colors at Joyful Creations with Kim and went to pick out a few retired Stampin' Up colors in Copics so that I could play around. Summer Sun, Sage Shadow, Poppy Parade, River Rock and the soon to be retired Midnight Muse are a few of my favorites so I started with a small collection around those, just getting the smaller, less expensive, Ciao markers.
I stamped a few images in Memento Black ink onto Whisper White, White Naturals, Barely Banana (retired) and Shimmery White cardstock, grabbed my new toys and headed upstairs to color and watch/listen to a rerun on TV with my husband:
OK, I confess. A couple of them were actually colored a few nights later when I played around with using the Colorless Blender (not the same as our Blender Pens) to get lighter colors:
Here is a close-up of the only one that is finished, so far:
Some of the things I've learned so far:
- I still have a lot more to learn ... Maybe a Copics class, especially since Debbie Olson is practically coming to my neighborhood in a few weeks...
- I've heard that Whisper White isn't good to use with Copics but with my little bit of experience it was definitely doable. The main image on the card above is on Whisper White. All of the papers I tested worked.
- I think that pretty much all of the images I colored will be good enough to end up on a card so success is possible with alcohol marker just out of the "box".
- You can play with these with just a few colors. I used 3 colors on this card. Golden Yellow, Lipstick Red, and Light Prawn. (When I looked at the colors in the store the suggested Poppy Parade color just looked too orange, so I went with the Real Red color which will probably be close to the dark shade in the Calypso Coral Blendabilities trio.)
- I have traditionally favored Stampin' Up!'s lighter marker colors and have used them in layers to get shading with the same marker. With my current skills, this isn't quite as easy to do - and maybe isn't what alcohol markers are meant to do. What they easily do well is give solid coverage of an image without streaks.
- It takes a little work to lighten these colors. While you can lift color with the Colorless blender, I found it a little more manageable to color with the markers on a plastic bag and then use the colorless blender. I'm really curious to see the lighter shades of the Blendabilities trios.
- Again, see # 1.
PS. The Happy Birthday message is stamped with Countless Sayings 2, one of Stampin' Up!s photopolymer stamp sets, something else we will be seeing more of in the new catalog. I sure hope this one makes it in the big book!
Here's hoping you are getting some beautiful spring weather! At least where I live in Minnesota we are getting April showers instead of snow showers.
