Fall is in the air here in "da U.P!" The cool air feels great after the heat that we've been experiencing. I just love the nippy mornings and the faint scent of woodsmoke from the outdoor boiler! We even have a few leaves starting to turn red in the treetops. In honor of Fall, I pulled out some fall images to stamp with this weekend. Tonight is this Lockhart Scarecrow guarding the pumpkins. The little ""hello, pumpkin" on the inside is an A Muse sentiment. Isn't it sweet? 
After coloring my image with Copic markers and trimming and matting it with Spellbinders Nestability classic and Scalloped oval dies, I rummaged through some of my patterned paper stash and found this Daisy D's Classroom Stripe and Classroom Dots. The colors went pretty well with my scarecrow image, considering that I hadn't planned to use this paper from the beginning! (Copic colors used were Y31 and YR07, airbrushed in the background; and in the rest of the image, E31, YR13, E27, Y17, YG03, YG95, B000, BG09, R27, and 0. I colored a 1/8" white grosgrain ribbon with BG09 to coordinate with the scarecrow's pants.
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I wanted to address coloring in general, and coloring with markers specifically. There's been some buzz lately about markers--who loves them, and who doesn't. First, each person is entitled to an opinion; I'm just expressing mine here. If you are coloring-challenged, a new medium will not suddenly turn you into Kathy Sanders. (I'm guessing that Kathy is good with pretty much any coloring medium.) In fact, you may even be adept at certain media (like colored pencils or watercolor crayons), and still not enjoy solvent-based markers. That's okay--there are enough cool products out there for each of us to be able to use the ones that we love! There is a learning curve. I am still learning. But after my first couple of hours using them, I was able to come up with something that I was happy with. Have I continued to learn since then? Yes. Do I still occasionally botch something? Again, yes. (But I do that with watercolors--and life--as well!)
One common mistake is trying a color selection that really isn't workable for gradations. If you have a set of 12 random colors--let's say primary, secondary, and tertiary colors in the color wheel, you may have a good assortment of color, but you still don't have a great set to shade with. It is helpful to have at least a light, medium, and darker shade in each color. I'd rather have four colors with three shades each, than to have twelve totally different colors and no way to shade smoothly with them. Does that make sense? I feel strongly enough about this that even though I have five or six Copics in duplicate that I could give away on my blog, I haven't done so yet simply because I don't think having a red, a blue, a black, etc, would do anyone much good. Several stampers who have had access to all 322 colors have gone through them and tried to pick a workable limited color range. Since I have not had access to all 322, I'm counting on them to point me in the right direction. (I know that Ellen Hutson spent several weeks paring down color choices, so I took Ellen's advice after she came out with her list. I have a few markers that are not on her list, but for all of them, she has something close enough that I can work with.)
Another common thread among people who have a hard time with markers seems to be that they have difficulty getting black ink to dry, or with getting it not to feather and smear. Sometimes they have used an inappropriate ink. For example, black Staz-On is a solvent-based ink. It won't work with solvent-based markers, even though it's a great ink for many things. Ellen has a very informative post on ink choices here.
Now, even if you have chosen an appropriate ink, you may have chosen an inappropriate card stock. I love SU's Whisper White for solid stamping. In fact, it's my all-time favorite card stock for solid stamping. But it isn't the best card stock for using with a solvent-based marker--just like it isn't the best card stock on which to watercolor. (In SU card stocks, both the Naturals and the Confetti's work well for watercoloring.) On Whisper White, I have a hard time getting black ink, even the best ones, IMO, (Black Brilliance, Ranger Archival Black,** Versafine Onyx Black) to dry enough so that there is no smearing with solvent-based markers. Sometimes it helps to heat-set the ink, but sometimes the ink still smears. And in case you think that it's just because the blacks that I am talking about are non-SU, my SU Basic Black didn't work that well with solvent-based markers either--it wasn't meant to. (For that matter, I can't get Real Red Classic to dry on Whisper White any more in less than 10 minutes. Anyone have a good solution for that?)
Back to the card stock issue: using the right card stock is as important as using the right ink. With Copics, I generally use Neenah Solar White or PaperTrey Stamper's Select. I know that there are other choices out there, but I haven't tried them yet. Maybe I'll even find one that I like better some day! But for now, that's what's working for me. I hope that it helps one of you as well. I truly do love using my Copic markers, and I would hate for any of you not to enjoy them because of the wrong ink or card stock. If you're passing through the U.P. of Michigan, come by and color with me! Thanks for indulging my ramblings.
Tomorrow's post is a criss-cross pocket card using Beate's SCS tutorial from last week and an SU pumpkin set.
**Ellen also recommends another Ranger ink, Adirondack ink pad, Pitch Black, as being a really good one to use with Copics as well. I don't have this one--just the BIG pads of Ranger's Archival Black. I'll have to check with Lisa Strahl to see if these inks are similar.
