Happy New Year! Bonne Année ! poodle card—using colored pencils to color stamped images

Here's wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!!! Bonne Année ! I thought at first my little poodle stamp from Docrafts Pampered Pets collection was a prissy Parisian poodle. But the more I looked at her I realized she was actually quite Bohemian and what better to suite her than Graphic 45's Bohemian Floral paper.

I stamped the image on a piece of paper from a vintage 1939 French Marie-Claire magazine. I love old paper. It has such nice texture; you just can't get that from new. I like stamping on unexpected surfaces where the background comes through, it's like creating a transparency, but without all the fuss. The tag is also vintage paper.


I've had some questions about how I color my stamped images so I thought I might answer them here. I use colored pencils. I like their transparency and blendability.  I've drawn with colored pencils in the past and when I started stamping and cardmaking I reached for the tools I had on hand and that's pencils.

You can get some very nice results with inexpensive pencils, you really don't have to spend much, but my favorite (and what I use) are Caran D'Ache Luminance 6901 pencils. The trick to getting a soft even blend with a colored pencil is to build up your colors, starting with less and working in more color and shadow where needed. Use the side of your pencil point to color and blend not the point. Use a stub, or stump, to help you blend.

There's a very good article on using stubs here. Other handy tools to have in your color pencil arsenal are a burnisher and blender pencil. The burnisher gives the pencil a pit of shine and the blender, well, it helps to blend. I like Derwent's. What you will get with colored pencils is a very soft see-through kind of color. What you will not get is detail. I usually color in first, then go back and add a little detail with a fine tip black artist pen or I'll use a very fine brush and bring in detail with ink. Here I used a Signo white pen on the necklace and the gleam on the eye (it also gives a bit of texture). Like anything, it takes a bit of practice, but pencils do have their advantages. They can be very inexpensive, they're soft and blendable, you can customize the tip to your own drawing style, you can erase (small imperfections to some degree), and they don't dry out.

See ya' next year!

Material

Paper—Vintage 1939 magazine paper, Graphic 45 Bohemian Floral, Folia, cardstock.
Stamps—Docrafts pampered pets poodle, Toga Bonne Année and swirl.
Dies—Die-namics rectangles and squares, Artemio tag.
Embellishments—Flower, ribbon, stick pins, metal corner.