Copic Questions

First off this is not a tutorial on Copic markers I'm simply sharing what I know and making an attempt to answer some of the questions I've had lately. If your not familiar with Copic markers, they are an alcohol based marker which blend and shade beautifully and come in a large variety of colors and pen styles. I use the Sketch Copic markers mostly because I like the paint brush tip to color with, it does take some practice to get used to coloring with Copics because the second you set the tip of your pen down the color starts to flow.

The chart above is my Copic Color Chart that I printed off from the Copic Marker site here, I recommend that you print this chart off on the white card stock you would normally be coloring on. As you can see I don't have all the colors but I'm happy with the ones I have slowly collected. One of the most wonderful sites to get information on Copic markers and coloring with them is I Like Markers with Marianne, I'm sure that those of you that have Copics already know about her awesome site because its packed with great information.


This next chart to the left is a simple one that I printed off in Excel just so I can use it as a color/blending reference (a suggestion that Marianne makes on her site). This chart does not have all of the colors that I have on it but just shows which colors blend nicely together starting from light to dark. In the far right column are colors I use for skin tones and hair. I'm sure there are hundreds of color combinations but these are the ones I use the most.




The color chart below is my messy chart that I actually took to the store and filled in colors that they had (yeah that sounds bad) but it is soo hard to choose a Copic marker color by looking on line, a book or even at the caps of the markers, so whats a girl to do! Doing this really helped me on choosing the right colors for me to use, that and since Copic markers are on the expensive side I didn't want to waste my money on buying markers I didn't need. Which leads to the next question, yes I bought the Copics I have individually from a variety of different places but the majority that I have were all bought on sale at 30-40% off and I was able to hand pick the ones I have.
On to answering a few more questions.
Samara asked:
Where does one start in their purchase? Honestly this would depend on what type of images your interested in coloring, for instance if your looking to color images of people I would suggest starting with skin tones and hair colors. (For a great tutorial on coloring skin and hair visit my talented blogging friend and design team leader Suzanne). If you know that most of your stamps are flowers choose floral colors. It sounds crazy but most of my colors are pinks, reds and greens and those are my favorite colors and I tend to use them the most. I've looked at the site and am totally confused with all the colors and kits. Can you help? If you know that in the long run you would like to collect majority of the colors that Copic markers come in, than starting off with a kit would be a good way to go. If you've never used Copics before I would defiantly suggest purchasing a few colors just to get your feet wet and to practice, practice, practice. Having an art back ground and college degree in commercial art defiantly helps me when it comes to coloring but with practice anyone can become good at what ever they'd like to accomplish. If one has all of them, how do you choose which to use with their elements so close in color?
The nice thing about using the Copics is that they offer so many colors within a color family, this helps when blending and shading an image. I always start off coloring with the lightest shade of the color I'm using and add at least one or two other darker shades and then go back in with the lightest color again to blend so that I get good light to dark contrast in my image.
Another question I've been asked a lot is what colors do you use to out line an image with.
This depends, most of the time I use the color T0 which is a light grey but if the image is one that looks like it could be outside in nature I tend to use B000 or B00 which is a light blue color. Like I said before I'm not an expert in using Copics this is just what I feel works for me. I would love to become Copic certified if the classes were offered any where in my area but they aren't.

For more Copic tutorials from Suzanne (other than the link above) please stay tuned to our Follow Your Heart store blog for Susana's Custom Art & Card Design where Suzanne will be sharing some more fantastic Copic marker tutorials!

Sorry for such a long post. I hope this helped to answer a few of the questions I've been asked about Copic markers.

Thanks

Julia - Thinking of You

This Rubber Romance Julia stamp from Susana's Custom Art & Card Design is looking so fine with her red velvet dress on and her sparkly gold bag, just sitting reading a book and sipping her cup of mocha. Makes me wish I was her right now, lol. I love going to the book store, some day I'm going to go and buy a book and sit in the coffee shop area of the book store and read and sip on coffee (I wouldn't look this good but I'd be enjoying myself).

This was a fun card to make because after I stamped and colored this Julia image with my Copics I used some Ladybug Crushed Velvet on her dress and some Scattered Straw Designer Stickles on her bag.

Supplies: Julia - Rubber Romance, Warmest Regards - SU, BoBunny designer paper, Ribbon, Brads, Crushed Velvet, Designer Stickles, Piercer w/mat, Pop dots, Copics: E00, E21, R11, T0, R27, R29, YR31, YR23, YG95, G99, E31, E35. Colors: Basic Black, Real Red, So Saffron.

Take some time for yourself today!

PS hop on over to the Follow Your Heart blog today to see a fantastic tutorial on Stamping on Candles by our fellow design team member Susan!

SC213 - Unforgettable Friend

This card is for today's Sketch Challenge #213 over at Splitcoast Stampers. I was so happy to see that Stampin' Up kept this adorable Happy Heart Day stamp set and didn't put it on the retired list. The elephant on this card was paper pieced and all the designer papers are from the Love You Much Bundle. I used my Copics to color the remaining parts of the image and Nestabilities square die to cut and emboss.

Supplies: Happy Heart Day, Love You Much designer paper, Ribbon, Copics, Pop dots. Colors: Close to Cocoa, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White.

Valentine Bee

Today started out early with taking my mom to therapy again, she's doing really good with getting around which amazes me considering she had her whole knee replaced about two weeks ago. Luckily she's in good health and is healing well which is great!

This sweet little bee image from Tammi was calling out (yeah scary) to be colored and made into a Valentine card yesterday! After staring at the little bee for a minute I thought, sure why not color her pink after all shes a Valentine bee. Of course after coloring I had to add a whole bunch of Dazzling Diamonds to the hearts, wings and body of the bee so the card would sparkle.

Supplies: Stampendous bee image and saying, Doodlebug (how appropriate, lol) designer paper, Ribbon, Scallop edge punch-SU, Heart punch, Gems, Dazzling Diamonds, Copics: B000, T0, R27, R29, R81, R83, R85, RV14, N7. Colors: Basic Black, Real Red, Pink card stock.

Tonight's a TV night with the show Life On Mars starting back up, one of my DH's favorites and me being sucked back into watching Lost. I hope I don't get lost again when I'm watching Lost tonight, lol.

Hope you're having a Bee-utiful day!

Try It Out Tuesday Challenge #3 - Violet Cupcake Box

Today is Tuesday and do you know what that means? Yep it's time for another Try It Out Tuesday Challenge over at the Follow Your Heart Blog! This weeks challenge was to use any supplies from Susana's Custom Art & Card Design store and a *NEW* Karen Lockhart image to create a package or a small gift (ie. bags, boxes, wrapping--the sky's the limit).

So for the challenge today I created a small gift box and used the Karen Lockhart stamp Violet Cupcake for the top. It's difficult to see from these photos but after coloring the cupcake with my Copics I used a Clear Spica glitter pen and colored in all of the flowers to make them glittery. I made the 3"x3" box from a tutorial on Splitcoast which you can find here.

Supplies: Violet Cupcake - Karen Lockhart, Basic Grey designer paper, Nestabilities, Scallop edge punch-SU, Ribbon, Pop dots, Tacky Tape, Spica Glitter pen, Copics: YR31, YR23, V12, V15, V17, YG03, YG07, G07, B000. Colors: Lavender Lace, So Saffron, Whisper White.

Love You Much

These cards are the last two projects from my Stamp Camp last Wednesday and yes as I wrote in my last post about this months Stamp Camp projects these two cards were also semi cased cards. For the top card I was inspired by a card from the SCS gallery from StamperJen0 and for the bottom card from RDiehl ,I thought both cards were fabulous.

On the top card instead of using the circle/heart image to the side of the Top Note cut out I used the birds from the stamp set and placed them in the center and on the bottom card I used the small heart from the scallop circle stamp to cover the flower on the Love image but other than that these cards were totally inspired by the women above so please visit their cards and leave them some love.

All of the projects from my Camp used the SU Top Note die and the Love You Much Bundle which is on sale at 20% off until Jan. 31. If you are interested in purchasing the Love You Much Bundle please contact me here.

Happy Mail

Look what came in the mail, it's the blog candy that I won from Tammi! The card that Tammi sent with the blog candy is so pretty and I'm so excited about the huge stack of the stamped images, Basic Grey papers, brads and all the fun things that she sent me! My DH ate the Reese Peanut Butter heart candy that she sent even after I told him about the peanut butter recall......he's still livin', lol.
Thank you Tammi!

Anything Goes Bellaholics Challenge - Tag You're It

Yesterday was suppose to be my day as the Anything Goes Bellaholic Queen to issue my challenge, well with all of the running around back and forth to help my mom out this week and trying to keep up with everything at home I forgot. Sooooo even though I'm a day late I still wanted to do the challenge!

For this weeks Bellaholicsanonymous Anything Goes Challenge create a card or project using any Stamping Bella rubber stamp and incorporate a Tag. You could stamp directly on a tag, use a tag for your saying, create a pocket with a tag, you name it but your project has to have a tag on it!

I have to say that this card was a huge pain in the butt, lol, the Stamping Bella stamp that I used is awesome I love it and was given to me by my sweet Bella Sistah Kimmie but the paper and the putting this together really stunk, not because of the directions but because of me. Originally I had different paper I was going to use and decided to scrap it after realizing that the flowers didn't really go with my winter theme, crazy. Oh well I think I'm just tired and need to get to bed early tonight, like Scarlett O'Hara said "tomorrow is another day".

For directions on how to make a Free Standing Pop up Card click here. I would not recommend using designer paper running through out the base of this card like I did.

Supplies: Daisyboardabella, Warm Hugs - Stamping Bella, Cabbage Patch Kaisercraft designer paper, Large oval punch, Circle punches, Tag corner punch, Rhinestone brads, Liquid Applique, Eyelet, Ribbon, Dazzling Diamonds, Copics: E00, E21, R20, B000, E35, E57, E37, E29, E47, N7, N9, B21, B23, YG11, YG07, G14, G07. Colors: Chocolate Chip, Brocade Blue, Garden Green, Whisper White.

TECC - Anniversary Celebration!

Today is a fun blogging day, Taylor VanBruggen is celebrating the one year anniversary of the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge! Each of the ladies on the Weekly Cupcake Crew has designed their own sketch for the celebration. I'm featuring Monika Davis' sketch challenge. You can check out the sketch on her blog and find out about the prize you can win by participating!

Don't forget to check out Taylor's blog, the anniversary celebration headquarters, for all of the sketch challenges as well as an awesome grand prize for one random winner who participates in ALL 9 sketch challenges! We hope you'll help us celebrate this yummy occasion!

Please be sure to stop by and check out these talented women who are also featuring a card using Monika's sketch for the celebration today:

Lori Craig: Make a Difference

Frances Byrne: Stamp Owl's Studio

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Friend to Friend Valentine

This was one of the cards that I had prepared for my Stamp Camp last night, the original idea for this card was found on Splitcoast from trbauer except I had the ladies from Camp heat emboss the large hearts with white embossing powder and I switched the papers up a bit but I thought her card was excellent so I cased it to use for my Camp. The wonderful thing about Splitcoast is all the inspiration you can find, but I think its important to give credit to the original creator. With all of the running around and helping my mom lately I really needed some inspiration from others to help me put my Stamp Camp together this month. What would we all do with out Splitcoast Stampers?
The Pink Pirouette embossed heart was pop dotted for dimension and the friend to friend was stamped and punched out using the word window punch and brads were added.

Supplies: Love You Much Bundle, Top Note die, Big Shot, Ribbon, White embossing powder, Heat gun, Word Window punch, Brads, Pop dots. Colors: Close to Cocoa, Riding Hood Red, Pink Pirouette, Whisper White.

Hope someone or something made you smile today!

SC212 - Be my Valentine

This Valentine is for yesterday's Sketch Challenge #212 over at Splitcoast Stampers. The Karen Lockhart Heart Wreath and be my Valentine sentiment are fun new stamps that I purchased from Susana's Custom Art & Card Design.
After stamping the heart wreath image and coloring it with my Copic markers I used my red Spica glitter pen on all of the roses to add some sparkle. Then the image was cut and embossed with my Nestabilities square die and the narrow stripe of card stock behind the image was embossed using a Cuttlebug embossing folder, I added my sentiment, ribbon and baubles and the card was finished.

Be sure to stop by our Follow Your Heart design team/store blog for Susana's Custom Art & Card Design because Danni (one of our design team members) is doing a fantastic tutorial on paper piecing today!

Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs & Kisses Box

Tonight is my monthly stamp camp and one of the projects we will be creating is this Top Note candy box. I saw this box in the new Stampin' Up Spring/Summer catalog that I just received last week and knew I wanted to give it a whirl. I also found the measurements for the box part of this on Splitcoast from KarenG please go and see her pretty version of this fun box. Karen recommended that you glue your card stock front and back with a glue stick to a piece of light weight card board before running it through your Big Shot using the Top Note die and she was right, it worked great! Thanks Karen!

You want to cut your card stock for the box to 5 1/2"x 4 1/4" and on the piece for the top of the box I scored an 1" all around and for the bottom part of the box I scored 1 1/16" all the way around so that the two would fit together. After assembling the two box pieces I took my Slit punch and punched the ends of the top of the box to make it easier to pull open.

All of tonights projects use the Love You Much Bundle and the Top Note die and I'll be sharing the other projects tomorrow.

Supplies: Love You Much, Polka Dot BG, Ribbon, Top Note die, Light weight card board, Slit punch, Glue stick, Pop dots, Tacky Tape. Colors: Chocolate Chip, Real Red, Whisper White.

Try It Out Tuesday Challenge #2 ~ Just a Note

It's Tuesday and it's time for another "Try It Out Tuesday Challenge", this week the challenge is to create a card or project using any of the wonderful Dovecraft Designer Paper from Susana's store (shes the only one in the US that carries it) and to use only 2 embellishments. So for my card I decided to use one of Susana's Faeries that she carries at her store called Would You Be My Friend and my 2 embellishments that I used are gold ribbon and a flower with a Pink Petals gem in the center.

These Faeries are so sweet and such fun to color and add glitter to, this week I had fun using something I've never worked with before, I used Pink Pointsettia Shimmerz on her dress and all of the flowers. Shimmerz comes in several colors and is a glittery liquid that you paint on with a paint brush. The effect of the Shimmerz is instant and beautiful and now that I've tried it I'm hooked! I need more colors!

To participate in this challenge and to see all of the fabulous projects from Susana's Custom Art & Card Design team members please visit our store blog: Follow Your Heart!

Supplies: Would You Be My Friend Faerie, Fantasy Dovecraft designer paper, Nestabilities, Copics, Ribbon, Prima flower, Pink Petal gem, Elegant Cheer - SU, Shimmerz, Spica glitter pen in clear and gold, Pop dots.

Fun News

This is a quick post and hopefully I'll be back later with a card to share but I wanted to write about two fun things that happened yesterday, the first thing being that I won some awesome blog candy from Tammi, (she's such a talented lady you really need to go see her site if you've never been) I've never won blog candy before so I was so excited to see that I had won, woo hoo! The second fun thing was that the Love You Much heart basket that I created (in the post below) is now the featured SUO (Stampin' Up Only) project on Splitcoast Stampers!!!!
These two things have totally made my week and after the last two weeks or more of being sick, taking care of sick children and now helping my mom after knee surgery I really needed it!

PS My mom is doing well but still needs help with meals and getting to therapy three times a week. I'm lucky that my two sister-in-laws and brothers have all been able to help when I was sick and that were all working together to help my mom.

Thanks for the well wishes for my mom!

4 Hearts Basket

I'm back......after being really sick since last Tuesday morning, I'm still sick but the achy fevery feeling is gone thank God. I haven't been this sick in a long long time and even though I'm still congested in my head and chest I think the worst has past. We have been having some bitter cold temperatures with snow here in Michigan as I type this the snow is coming down and its suppose to continue into the night with a total of 6-7 more inches of snow.

I haven't played around with the new Love You Much stamp set that I recently got from Stampin' Up but today I wanted to make something using the large heart from the set, so I made a basket.

Looking at the basket it looks like all I did was stamp four hearts and attach the bottoms of the hearts to a base, but actually I measured out the base of the box on a sheet of Real Red card stock and stamped the hearts to overlap onto the base so that the whole basket would be one piece and be stronger. Then I stamped two hearts onto white card stock, colored the flowers with my aqua brush and taped them over two of the red hearts. The base of the box is 2 1/4" x 2 1/4" then I measured a 1/2" out to create a bottom edge for the basket. I cut and scored the base and cut around the hearts, then punched small holes so that the hearts could be tied together with ribbon. The handle for the basket is 8"x 3/4" and was attached with Tacky Tape which I also used to assemble the base. I used a punched out heart and a flower brad at the base of the handle on each side of the basket to finish it off.

Supplies: Love You Much, Heart punch, Flower brads, Ribbon, Tacky Tape, Hole punch, Aqua brush. Colors: Real Red, Whisper White.

Blog Awards

These are a few blog awards that I have been meaning to post.

This "Nice Blog Award" was given to me by my blogging friends Deb and Susan.

This "One Lovely Blog Award" is from my blogging friends Anki and Berry.

This award called the "Marie Antoinette, a Real Person, a Real Award" was given to me by Jennie.

Thank you all so much for awarding me with these wonderful blog awards, it really means a lot to me. I'm not so great at passing these awards along because so many of you have already been nominated with these awards, so I'm just going to say thank you.

Blogging Babble

Since I'm sick and don't have anything to show you as far as a card or project I thought that I would chat about blogging.
I'm not sure if some of you noticed but a few weeks back I switched my blog template from a two column template to a three column template. I did this so that I would have more room to organize the information I have on my blog and because I felt that the one side bar I had was so long that adding another side bar would balance out the look of my blog. After doing a little research I found a site that helped me create a three column template, if you are interested in changing over to a three column template you can click here. Please follow the instructions to the letter or the change over will not work, the first time I tried I forgot one word and it didn't work, that and please make sure you do step number one which is to save your current template before you begin. Other than that once I found my mistake it was easy and fun to do and I think I'm pretty happy with having more room.

Another great place to get some wonderful blogging tips is Allison's blog, you have to look on her side bar under her categories for blogging tips and there you will find everything from adding a signature at the end of each post and more. I'm sure most of you already know about Allison's awesome blog and her blogging tips but just in case you don't you might want to take a peek!

Another great link is the Top 5 Ways to Improve your Blog's Usability, I'm sure there are more ways that I can make my blog easier to use for other people who visit but this site had some really good tips and I tried to follow quite a few of them.

Something I actually like when I'm visiting someone else's blog and leaving a comment is to have their comment box as a pop up window. What I mean by this is when you click to leave a comment on some one's card, instead of it taking you to a whole separate page to leave your comment it shows up as a little pop-up box. I like this so that I can still see the persons card and comment on the details of their work. To do this on your own blog if you don't have it this way already (if you have blogger), go under your Settings area, then click Comments and then look down under Comment Form Placement and check Pop-Up Window and then save the change at the bottom.

By posting this information I am not by any means proclaiming that I'm a know it all when it comes to blogging, there is still so much I would like to learn. I just thought that I would share a few things that I found in my search to try and improve my own blog.

I hope this post reads OK since my head is still in the clouds from the NyQuil I took last night.

Thanks for visiting!

You're HOT!

I haven't been able to post all that much with in the last few days and don't know how much I'll be able to this week. Not only have my kids been sick with a bad flu but now I'm sick which really is a bad thing because my mom had knee replacement surgery this last Monday and was counting on me to bring her home from the hospital and I was to help take care of her. Usually I only get sick maybe once or twice a year and of course it has to be now, my daughters choir performance is tomorrow night and I was so looking forward to going to see her sing and dance and now I really don't know if I'll be able to go, she'll be so disappointed. The good thing is that my youngest son Connor is finally starting to feel better which I'm grateful for because he was very sick. The highlight of my day today is that my new Stampin' Up catalogs are suppose to be delivered, I can't wait to get my hands on it and see all the fun stuff!

Sorry for all the blabbing.

The Valentine card above was one that I had done but never posted, its for my HOT hubby! I paper pieced the penguins boxers and used Ruby Slippers Designer Stickles on them and also used Crystal Effects on his Popsicle to make it look wet. The hearts were punched out using my new SU heart punch from the Valentine Bundle (see side bar for more info).

Supplies: Penguin - Imaginisce, You're Hot - Stampendous, Designer paper Doodlebug, Ribbon, SU Heart punch, SU circle punches, Gems, Copics, Designer Stickles, Cuttlebug Divine Swirls embossing folder, Crystal Effects, Pop dots. Colors: Basic Black, Real Red, Whisper White.

Hope your week is going well!

Try It Out Tuesday Challenge #1 - Lockhart Strawberries

Today is one of the first "Try It Out Tuesday Challenges" for our design team over at Susana's Custom Art & Card Design. Suzanne our head designer gave us the challenge to create a card/project using only Black, White or Grey with only a pop of color, so I used a Karen Lockhart Strawberry stamp with the red strawberries being my pop of color along with some Making Memories black and white polka dotted designer paper. If you would like to play along with the challenge and see all of the wonderful projects that the rest of the design team created for this challenge please visit our New Store Blog - Follow Your Heart!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sweet Valentine

Today's card is a Valentine card using one of my favorite Stampendous stamps Tiers of Treats, I know I've said this before about this stamped image but it really is so fun to color. I love to color and I really love to color fun images like this where you can do shading, different color combinations, liquid applique for fluffy frosting, Crystal effects (like I did this time) on the cherries and strawberries to make them look shiny, all of these things make the image pop and give added dimension and fun detail! (see close up shot for more detail)

Supplies: Tiers of Treats, Happy Valentines Day - Stampendous, BoBunny designer paper, Ribbon, Nesties, Baubles, Pop dots, Spica glitter pen, Copics: R14, R27, R29, YG09, YG07,E35, E57, E47, R81, R83, R85, R59, Y21, YR23, YG00, YG03, B000, B00.

Thank you for the well wishes for my son he's feeling a little bit better and is now eating at least but still has a fever and now cough and cold symptoms. I was really wishing no one else would get sick but this morning my daughter woke up with a runny nose and cough, oh boy.

Hey Don't forget the Promo Susana has going on right now!!!If you purchase any 4 regular Lockhart Stamps (any combination) from either the New or Previous collection (NOT including Itty Bittys) you will get to select a free IB from the selection that she has available at the time at her store. You do not need to buy all 4 at once. She has a punch card system and will let you know when you hit the 4 regular Lockharts!!! So stop over at Susana's Custom Art & Card Design before its to late!

Thanks for visiting!