Tag Archives: technique

Technique Tuesday: Colouring with the Blending Pen

Welcome back to another technique tuesday! The week I am going to show you how to colour in an image with our ink and the CTMH blending pen (often referred to as the ‘magic pen’ and you will soon see why!).

This pen can easily help alleviate the need for MANY markers to go with your inks- if you don’t have it in marker form you can use your ink to replace it!

The blending pen does have two tips- a paintbrush one (like in the picture) and a fine tip one as well).  To pick up ink with your pen just squeeze your lid into your ink pad (when the pad is closed) and then open it- you should see something similar to my image here.  This ink can be used like a palette- just rub your blending pen through it and pick up the ink.
blending pen image

Then take your pen and colour in your image as you would with a marker- you may need to pick up more ink to fill in your image completely.

What is the magic part? When you are done with a colour just drag the tip of your pen on a scrap piece of paper until the ink disappears and no colour comes out of the tip.  Then you can pick up a new colour! My whole image was coloured with only one pen- in face I have only owned one for a few years now.

blending pen image 2

Here is my final image! Love how it all came together- the blending pen and the stamp set are featured below 🙂

waterbrush technique card

 

Screen Shot 2014-03-14 at 10.42.16 AMScreen Shot 2014-03-14 at 10.42.34 AM

Until we craft again, The Brae-er


Tuesday Technique: Paper Piecing

Welcome to another Tuesday Technique! This week we are looking at paper piecing!

Paper piecing is a great technique that can give your projects depth, texture and a look that elevates them above the everyday!  To paper piece you will select an image (and select carefully as images with many small parts may prove to be frustrating for your first experience) and stamp that image on a variety of papers.  Depending on the stamp image you may want to only use papers with a smaller pattern – this will ensure that your image fits and looks nice when complete.  Once you have stamped your images then you can cut out the individual pieces and glue them onto the base stamped image- in the case of my card here I paper pieced the owl and glued all my smaller pieces onto the blue body base.

Yes this can be a timely technique but believe me sometimes it is worth it!

owl card

 

If you try out one of the Tuesday Techniques I would love to see – feel free to use the ‘contact me’ tab to send me a picture of your art (I may just feature it on an upcoming blog post!)

Until we craft again, The Brae-er


Tuesday Technique : Spray Pen

Today we are going to look at the spray pen technique and using it for your cards and layouts!

Spray pens are fairly easy to use and we sell them in a convenient 3-pack- if you care for your pen then it will last you use after use! To care for it just make sure that you clean it after every use- storing any unused mixes in your pen could cause it to clog.

There are two recipes I use for making up a mix.

1. Re-inker and Pearl paint- mix a bit of water, a drop or two of re-inker and a very small amount of pearl paint in the barrel of your spray pen.  This mix will give your spray a pearly-sheen when it is dry.

2. Re-inker and water- mix a bit of water with a drop or two of re-inker.  Perfect for lots of different projects!
IMG_1002

Tips for using your spray pen:

try to keep a box around for using your spray in.  Place your project in the bottom of the box before spraying so that you do not end up decorating your entire table or room!

The first time you spray try it on a scrap piece of paper- holding your pens in different ways (or close or far away) will give your spray pattern different looks.  To ensure you get the one your like you will want to safely try it out ahead of time.

reinker screen shot   spray pen screen shot  pearl paint screen shot

Until we craft again, The Brae-er