October Leading Lady Trina Pham | Take Two

Our October Leading Lady Trina Pham is back for her sensational second performance!  If you missed her smashing debut you must see it...CLICK HERE.   Color me impressed with today's incredible cards!

Ladies and gentlemen, Trina...

Hello again!  I'm back with my second leading lady post for Winnie & Walter (W&W).  But before I get to this week's projects, I want to thank everyone who took the time to leave me such encouraging comments here, on my blog and on my IG account.  It was heart warming and I am so pleased you liked my cards!  Ok, who's cutting onions and making my eyes water? 😂  All right, enough of that.

For this week, I'm dialling back the bright colours and cute factor, and focusing on colouring botanicals on colour cardstock.  It was just a little over two years ago after starting my blog that I learned how to colour.  Terms like shading, highlights, cast shadows, etc. were foreign to me, but they make a huge difference in giving images depth and realism.  I love to colour now and am still learning lots.  So when it comes to colouring on colour cardstock, I think of color pencils first.  However, I am exploring a couple of other methods this time.

COPICS

Who knew, but you can colour with Copics on colour cardstock as long as the cardstock is a light colour!  Copics is my favourite way to colour, so I was excited to test this out.

On an A2 size Smoky Slate panel, stamped and masked the images from In Bloom: Elsa's Flora in the upper right corner with Copic friendly black ink.  Removed masks and coloured the image (except for the mistletoe berries) with Copic Sketch markers R27, R24, R14, YG17, YG03, Y06.  Since there is no white Copic marker, I used a white Prismacolor pencil to colour the mistletoe berries.  I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to blend and colour with Copics.  And the Colorless Blender worked like normal, too! 

Next, I die cut with In a Word: Merry cutaway three times from scraps of white shimmer paper and stacked them for dimension.  The sentiment from In a Word: Merry stamp set was white heat embossed on a black strip.  The panel was adhered to a white card base and clear shimmer added on the poinsettias finished off the card.

DISTRESS OXIDE (DOx)

The second medium I wanted to try is watercolouring with DOx inks.  These inks have both dye and pigment properties and it's the opaque pigment property that allows the colours to show on dark cardstock.

On an A2 size Early Espresso panel, the leaves from In Bloom: Renee's Leaves were inked with VersaMark and heat embossed with clear embossing powder.  Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade and Barn Door DOx inks were smooshed onto my craft mat, then using a watercolor brush, picked up the colours and coloured in the leaves.  As you can see, the DOx inks does show on dark cardstock, but it looked dull and unimpressive to me.  I thought maybe I used too dark of a colour cardstock, so I attempted on Kraft cardstock.

This time I heat embossed the images in black and added Mowed Lawn DOx ink to the colour palette.  It was a bit better, but still too dull for my liking.  So comes out my Zigs and I was a lot happier with the result after intensifying the colours and adding shading.

Added black splatters to give some texture.  Because this is not watercolor paper and I was a little heavy handed in some areas with water, the paper pilled a bit.  If you try this, use water sparingly.  

Completed the card by diecutting In a Word: Thanks from white and black cardstock and offsetting it for a shadow effect.  Adhered it over a torn strip of vellum to make it stand out even more. 

And I tried to salvaged what I could of the first dark brown one.  Used my Zigs on it as well then popped on a bright shiny gold sentiment to finish.  To be honest, I will most likely stick to color pencils when colouring on colour cardstock.

GIVEAWAY

Just a quick reminder, Shay has generously offered a $30 gift card to the W&W store for me to give to one lucky commenter on my blog Phamtastic Design.  For your chance to win, leave a comment on any of my leading lady posts by October 31.  I will randomly pick a winner from all the comments left across the four posts.

Thank you for hanging out with me.  Have a wonderful week!