{Spotlight Project} Monika Colors Color Blooms

Hello, crafty Friends! It's Monika here today putting a new addition to the STAMPlorations shop through its paces. Color Blooms is a colouring book designed by Shery for cardmakers, crafters, and mixed media artists. What a chance to dig out my hugely underused paints and get creating. First up are the projects I made using my coloured page: two cards and seven ATCs!

As you can see, there is lots of scope for using your coloured pages. I am sure you can think of even more than I did.

Color Blooms itself has 34 colouring pages featuring 6 beautifully drawn blooms in different variations. The paper quality compares well to other books I've seen around. Actually the slightly rougher finish provides a good key for chalks and crayons. In today's Spotlight Project, I am sharing my thoughts on how I found working with one of the pages from Color Blooms.

First I decided on a page to work with and cut it from the book as I felt it was going to be easier for me to work.

Next I gathered some colouring media, some of the more conventional type and others a little less, like the wax crayons from the pound shop. Given that the paper weight (60# white), like in all the colouring books I've seen, is on the light side, I felt that it was best not to use anything too damp and watery.

This is my finished page and below is the reverse. Overall the paper did hold up well without too much buckling. The Promarkers as expected had bled through, but then they do that with most card stock too.

Let's see in more detail, what was used where. I decided to include a photo of the reverse of the coloured image underneath to show how the paper reacted.

First up are the Promarkers. I started off laying down Buttercup yellow before adding shading in Tulip yellow and Gold. I then blended with Buttercup all over and added a few touches of Honeycomb. I was able to colour close to the lines without any bleeding out into the surrounding areas. The colours blended easily achieving a good result. Once dry, the paper was almost flat.

Next up are Liquitex Inks which are quite fluid. The ink didn't bleed out, and I was able to move it around easily for colouring. I only did one full layer as the paper started to buckle. Once dry I lightly added some shading with a mix of yellow and black and, after a little more drying time, some shading with my Gold Promarker. Interestingly this seemed to reduce the buckling flattening the image a little.

Next I used my chalks/pastels on two of the corner blooms. Using little applicators one was coloured with a mix of pink and red and the other one with a mix of yellow and red. The colours blended really well and the paper provides a perfect key for this medium.

Next up is a translucent Fresco Finish Acrylic Paint by PaperArtsy. I easily could apply a second coat for shading with hardly any buckling and the mix of opaque and translucent below gave pretty much the same result.

I put down the opaque Stone colour first, allowed this to dry and gave a wash with the translucent Beach hut color. I really like this effect, and it is one, I shall use more often.

NOTE: The opaque paint will cover the lines of the image, care needs to be taken when colouring. Covered lines can always be drawn in again using a fine liner pen.

The watersoluble was crayons just lightly blended with a breath moistened finger gives another great result. You don't achieve smooth blending, but the sketchy look really suits the flowers. I simply scribbled some pink and lilac roughly where I wanted the colours to go and rubbed with my breath moistened finger. It is really easy and gives a great sketchy look.

For the green flower, I applied the crayons to the paper and blended with a lightly damp brush. I did this very lightly as the paper absorbed the water quickly. The shading isn't how I hoped for, but again I like the sketchy look.

Here I was thinking outside the box and got hold of some children's wax crayons from the pound shop. Given the slightly rough finish of the paper I felt it was worth giving it a try. In a scribbling motion, I applied pink and red/orange and buffed it with a piece of tissue before adding some light shading with a Promarker hence the marks on the reverse. This could be a good quick way of colouring blooms for a background.

The Starlights Metallic paints were applied straight from the bottle. These too cover the image lines. I drew them back in once the paint had dried. It was easy to apply three layers, nevertheless I would like to try and dilute this paint next time as I felt it was a little too thick even on a small brush.

Overall I liked the result. What was going to be a messy trial page became something I could work with, and I decided to colour the gaps between the blooms using my Decorating Chalks which I rubbed on using my finger. The finished page was the one towards the top of this post or so I thought.

I decided to try and add something else, Spritzing Inks!

I lightly spritzed with pink and gold. The pinks seeped through in a couple of places (top left hand corner on the reverse), but it didn't cause any further buckling, it simply added to the messy artsy look.

Once dry, I started cutting my page up. Two pieces glued directly onto the base card were used to make the cards and framed by a doodled line. The square card has a sentiment panel (Sentiment Builders: Thank You), and the tent fold one features some black spritzing and the CUTplorations Word Die: Hugs. Both cards were finished off with sequins.

For the ATCs I played around with adding news print paper, fibers, pearls, embossing, glossy accents, doodling, sequins and sentiments. I shall introduce them in more detail in separate posts linking to next week's Inspiration and Stencil Sunday posts.

It was easy to use the pieces from my coloured page. Each has its unique charm. Once glued, even the buckled pieces stuck down flat on my cards and ATCs. Overall I'm really happy with my makes.

  

That's it from me for now. Hope you feel inspired to try Color Blooms for some mixed media colouring. You can grab a copy for yourself here. Be playful!

Have a lovely day!
Hugs
Monika xxx

here is what I used:
Color Blooms, Sentiment Builders: Thank You, CUTplorations Word Die: Hugs