Just Adding Colour...

Time to catch up on some colouring pages...I always a few books by my side so that even a few minutes can be translated into a refreshing colourful little jaunt!

These pages are from 'Tally Ho!' by  Lizzie Mary Cullen. I really like her drawing style and liked the idea of English/British images in the book. I enjoy it when colouring pages have little items to find or identify on the pages and this one has little items tucked into the drawing that relate to the quote. I enjoy looking for those!

There's a few books in the series, but I thought this one would give me plenty to colour.

I was particularly keen to do these 'Canterbury Tales' pages. I took my time and enjoyed the journey. No pun intended!

This was the first page to colour as we had  visited the Isle of Wight and Osborne House, just prior to me getting this book. It seemed the 'right' place to start in a book about the UK.

I don't agree with the sentiment of the 'saying' or quote on this one, but I did want to colour the picture....

Tally Ho by Lizzie Mary Cullen  The current price on Amazon Canada is insane, but this is what the book looks like. The price on ABE Books is much better.

Common Blackbird - Colouring

This one was a quick and fun colouring page. It is the Common Blackbird. Such a pretty bird with the bright beak, eye rings and legs that contrast so well with it's pitch black feathers. I added lighter areas of black to help define the bird better.

 It is from Millie Marotta's 'Beautiful Birds and Treetop Treasures'

Colouring - Curious Creatures

Went shopping at the Book Outlet.

Wonderful place if you like books as much as I do, but can be dangerous. Good opportunity to exercise restraint though!

I was delighted to find Millie Marotta's ' Curious Creatures' Colouring Book there. For an absolute STEAL.

I joined a Facebook group for a colour-by-numbers challenge. You choose the numbers and random colours that match the numbers are assigned. I was allowed to add one darker shade of either the purple or the pink as well. It was a very enjoyable picture to colour and I like how it turned out! I used Ohuhu pencils that I bought off Amazon for this. The pencils are hard, but the smooth white paper took it very well.

While I had this book out I decided to colour another critter. I love chameleons, we used to play with them when we were kids. They are adorable and those little feet tickle when the crawl on your finger. I also like that Millie gives some information about the critters in the book, it is so interesting to learn more about the creatures in creation this way.

A close-up of the flowers and the little bits of gold marker added to the flower stamens. Just because.

Colouring - Escape To Wonderland

I'm still colouring in 'Escape to Wonderland' by Goodwives and Warriors. I posted the first batch of pages HERE.

Here's a few more pages - I've used a combination of water soluble pencils (Derwent & Inktense) and Crayolas for most of them. I find the paper takes water well, it buckles but not so much as to make the reverse hard to colour. I also find that I prefer the more waxy pencils for this paper. They seem to lay down better than the harder leads do.

This double page spread was quick to do with all the black ready printed. I will add a bit of glitter glue later on when the bumpiness of the glitter will no longer interfere with the colouring of subsequent pages. This stars will need some sparkle, but I would actually like to get my hands on some glow-in-the-dark paint for those.

A riot of colour. The only way I can work in a limited palette is to choose colours and then hide the rest of the box. For this one I just reached for whatever colour I fancied most at the time! I did doodle a frame around the text. Just because.

Tiny areas to colour, so I did a quicky with water colours rather than spend lots of time sharpening pencils

For this Cheshire cat one I was considering giving it a solid black background to make the colours pop. I still think a deep purple or indigo blue background could look really nice with this, but for now I'm leaving it as is. I doodled a basic banner around the text. 

With great effort I kept this 'coin' within a limited palette...

This one was fun to colour! Such a goofy image for a goofy concept - I mean do fish walk on their tails or do they hop?

I intended to lay down a wash of colours and then added pencil over top of that 'snakey Alice' but then I liked it well enough as is and decided to leave it. A sky behind might look nice though and it will hide the faint shadow shining through from the other page next to her head.

A great page for colouring. I like the perspective and the large shapes. Reading that line in a normal voice is almost impossible...

 I hauled out my ink filled waterbrush yet again for the background on this page. Love how it turned out. The black makes all those colours shine. And I used every colour in the box for this one. And then some. Including gold.

And so the fun journey continues in this and other books...

With Love Sprinkled on Top...

For once I made a card 'just because' with no particular person or purpose in mind. I should do it more often...it was rather fun

I used a digital image from Tiddly Inks 'Happy Bugg and Extras  I coloured the little 'bug' with coloured pencils and added glitter to her wings and the cup cake. A strip of patterned paper makes the wooden floor for her to stand on.

All in all it was super quick to finish and a great little project to colour when you have itchy-fingers-for-colouring and only a little time to spare.

I did a sort-of imitation of the font on the inside of the card. The sentiment is included with the digital set if you prefer to print it. And some fairy dust ended up scattered all over the inside of the card as well...

A fun and quick card, perfect for colouring on the go!

Colouring - 'The Magical City'

Taking a look at 'The Magical City' by Lizzie Mary Cullen this week. I got my book as a gift, but as far as I can tell, Amazon carries it in most places.

I started with this page of 'Baker Street' or Sherlock Holmes, whichever way you want to look at it and found it to be a most enjoyable colouring journey. I really like the intricate line work and the overall design is first class. I started this in the holidays and enjoyed taking my time in colouring all those tiny areas. The paper is quite smooth and white, which makes it great for harder pencils and seeing as the harder ones keep a sharper point I found them a pleasure to use in this book.

For this delightfully quirky version of Bruges I used Crayolas and added some loosely drawn lace to the bottom corner as I simply cannot think of Bruges, but remember the gorgeous Belgian lace produced there.

Trying out the Prisma Colour Scholars on 'Amsterdam' below. I was not planning on buying these yet, but they were heavily discounted and hubby said 'why don't you get them?' I couldn't really find a good excuse (how hard did I try, you may ask?) so I did and although I have not done a whole lot with it, so far so good. They are definitely superior to the Crayolas, that much is obvious. But again, this smooth paper really likes the harder pencils. The wax from these soft ones builds up quickly on the slick surface.

I tried wet media on the paper and it worked well enough - seeing as most of the illustrations cover the whole page, a bit of wrinkling and buckling will go largely unnoticed I think. And it doesn't bother me at all.

For this 'Castle on the Hill' page I used Inktense and Derwent water colour pencils. However I messed up big time on the little stream and surrounding areas, and this was as much as I was able to rescue it and fix the mess. For now anyway. There is no glass for this to hide behind so if I think of something else to try, I sure will...but just look at that nice image to colour! Just looking at it makes me want to pick up pencil and book and colour the afternoon away!

I did add some dry pencil to this over the wc pencil layer (mostly Crayolas) just to add a bit of depth in places. Once the water media dries, the paper has basically no tooth left, so there is not a lot of detail one can add with dry pencils.

I'm busy on a few more pages in this book, so we'll revisit it sometime in the future.

Colouring - Alice in Wonderland

Ever since I first read it, the stories of 'Alice in Wonderland', and 'Through The Looking Glass' have amused me (I cannot say the same of the recent, and few years older movies based on the characters - but I shall say no more about that here) What amuses me is the seemingly randomness of the connections and the crazy reasoning she get's up to in the stories. Reminds me of the sort of thing that happens in my dreams.

Naturally I was interested to try the 'Escape To Wonderland' colouring book by Good Wives and Warriors. I got mine from Amazon. And although I cannot say I like every single page, I certainly like the majority of them and am enjoying the process of colouring the story in sequence, which I thought might be a different way to go about it, rather than the random way in which I colour through other books.

I took the book and a pack of 24 Crayola Pencils (I know right?!?) with me when I traveled last year and I had a blast. The pencils performed beyond what I expected, and together with a 12 colour set of water colour crayons (Caran D'Ache) I was set for any picture in the book.

The title page - I did this one before leaving home to experiment with different media and pencils to see how the paper would handle it. I really like the paper in these books. It is sturdy, and off white, takes limited water well and stands up to some rougher treatment just fine. I also like the size of the book, which was a deciding factor in my taking it along while traveling.

This double page spread is so far definitely my favourite page. I think the design is outstanding and all those flowers were a joy the colour. The solid black background really makes those colours pop. I often add a very dark or black to the background of a page, and really have to watch myself that I don't do it too often

Here is a page was done using the water colour pencils - sometimes I just need to get away from my usual bright, saturated colours. I also find it much easier to do the details with a brush than to have to continually sharpen pencils to get into those tiny places.

Here's a good example of a page that was a 'groaner' and I might never have coloured it, had I not decided to do the book in sequence. Now that it is done though I really like it and I must admit that it was indeed enjoyable to do. - Just look at that waxy crayola shine at the top!-

The 'Bayeux tapestry' double spread was a great page to colour...I did use quite a bit of gold gouache paint on this one. I would have liked to add more layers in the back, but the paper had had enough at this point, so I had to move on.

I'll be posting more finished pages at a later date. I'm halfway through the book and still enjoying the journey. I seem to be much faster at colouring than I am at taking pictures....

Colouring - Secret Garden

Of course I had to try Johanna Basford's colouring books, so when I saw 'Secret Garden' at my local store last year, I picked up a copy to give it a try.

I must say that her art work is of the highest quality and I am really enjoying this book.

This double page spread was the first pages I completed - within days of buying the book, I must add...

I used this colour swatch - just love these colours! You can find this one and lots of palettes over at Design Seeds

I basically looked at the pencils I had available and found colours to match as closely as possible. I ended up starting with Derwent Watercolour Pencils, and layering dry pencils over top. Except for the Derwents, most of the pencils are so old, they are no longer available. 

I had a hard time taking a clear enough picture of this page, but you get the idea - I hope.

I added a light line of silver Sharpie marker on the bee's wings. The Sharpies bleed through so one needs to move fast and draw lightly.

I also added a bit of glitter paint to the wings. It is an iridescent paint made by FolkArt. It is hard to capture on camera because it is so subtle.

Finally I added some colour with the water colour pencils to areas in the background. The paper takes water colours remarkably well. I did use a water brush which is not very wet and I also find that over time the slight buckling of the paper flattens back out again. I was very glad for that as I really like working with water colour.

I have quite a few more pages done in this book and I'll be posting more in the future.

Birthday Girl

Something about this little girl reminds me of myself when I was little. Only of course that little dress would have been the worse for wear were it on me...sitting still and staying out of trees was not my strong point.

I got the image at Lili of The Valley. At the time it was a give-away on their Facebook page. I cannot locate it on the website though, so maybe it is no longer available, but there is still loads of others to choose from (and at this posting all are on sale)

I coloured the image using coloured pencils, using colours to match the designer paper (from an old Provocraft pad)

I die cut a little doily for the sentiment and popped it up with a bit of foam tape to give the easel something to kick against.The die is from an Art-C set Doilies and Lace, that I picked up from my local Michaels

And finally a bit of glitter in a few places to make this festive for my little friend on her birthday.

Looking at the close-up I see that it would be good to just retrace those lines on the facial features a bit, so they will be solid black once more, and the card is ready to go in the mail!

Winter Snow Fun

This stamp set -  Winter Wonderland by Penny Black - just begged to be made into a slider card!

I coloured the images with coloured pencils and trimmed the little hedgehog out with scissors. The embossed snowflakes were done with the 'old style' Fiskars embossing plates. I find these very useful for adding selective embossing, exactly where I want them to be. I also drew in more snowflakes to match the flakes in the stamp to complete the image.

I cut the slot for the slider with the Silhouette Cameo. As a weight I used a dime. I like that it is smaller and thinner than a penny. I trimmed the foam to fit the slider nicely - snug enough to add support to the cardstock but wide enough to allow the dime to slide easily. I attached the coin to the little hedgehog image with foam tape. 

The little hedgehog now slides and sometime swirls down the slope. Every time it goes down the bank it ends up differently at the bottom. Which I think is pretty true to life. I must be a big kid but I have sent the little fella down many many times...hehe

On the inside is a bunny friend who ended tummy first in the snow... leaving lots of space for a message...or even a short winter poem!

I added little spots of glitter glue snowflakes on the outside and inside of the card .

The card turned out to be most enjoyable to make...and the critters are very cute indeed. I hope the little ones this card is intended for, will enjoy watching them have a little snow fun.

Last year I used the robins from this stamp set to make decorations for the tree - Tree Decor Wood Slices

Let the snow fun begin!