Pencil me in!

One item of my craft stash which is well under-used is my coloured pencils.  I used to use them a lot when I was young and still have some in a box which are over 20 years old!  Since the spotlight at Crafty Cardmakers this week is on pencils, I had a perfect opportunity to blow the dust off and get colouring in.  Felt really strange not to have a marker in my hand!  One of the things I like about pencils is that you can get the depth of shade you are after more readily than with a marker as you can shade very lightly or go over it again to make it darker and can blend quite easily too.  I dug out my watercolour pencils for this as just a touch of water on a paintbrush can alter the colour depth and great some really unique results.

The stamp I have used is from Inca Stamps - The Fuschia Fairy.  I have a couple of their mounted stamps which I have acquired in various places and I really love them.  It's the first time I have used this one since I bought it a few months ago and really enjoyed using my pencils to colour it.  Made a nice change from promarkers.  Once I had coloured it, I touched it up with some water on a paintbrush to add definition and depth to the colours.  I then used my deckle edge ruler to define a rectangle around the image and then used two co-ordinating colours from the main image to sketch some alternating lines and then washed over them with the wet paintbrush to make the lines softer and blend them together to create a sketchy background which I again trimmed using the deckle ruler.  I used a trio of pink gemstones in two corners and my favourite architectural corner sizzix to accentuate the corners plus a couple of flowers from stock with more pink stones in the centres.  I then cut the card to size leaving the back slightly longer and embellished with some ribbons in pink and purple to co-ordinate with the image.