Pencils, Kincade and Mice!

Have you ever had a total "oh duh!" moment? I had one of those in Michaels the other day when I was pricing their Koh-I-Noor woodless pencils and comparing them to the prices online. I have an old set that needs replacing plus a Prismacolor 72 pencil set I bought on ebay several years ago and have never gotten the "full effect" out of them since I can't use mineral spirits or gamsel with my asthma. While I was in that particular aisle, I saw Prismacolor's new "pencil accessory set" that contains their blender pencil, alcohol marker blender, eraser, pencil extender/extension, and some other do-hickey I've never seen before.

What really caught my eye was the alcohol marker blender. I use that to blend my Prismacolor markers!!! Well duh! You mean to tell me I could have been using that blender marker all this time with my pencils? After seeing that set, I got out of Michaels in record time to get home and try it out on a couple of images I had colored when my husband came home from the hospital after having surgery for a broken ankle.

The first image I tried blending was a House Mouse one from Stampendous, and it came out beautifully! Just like I do when I'm blending with my markers, I started with the lighter colors first, beginning in the middle and then working to the outside.

Once I was done blending everything, I then stippled Stampin Up soft sky ink lightly over everything to give a soft "satin" feel to the image and the card once I started assembling it. I made sure the embellishments used were small to match the "size" of the mouse.

Here's a close up of the card details:

After finishing with my House Mouse card, I began to wonder how this technique would look with a more detailed image so out came one of my Thomas Kincade images I had received in a swap. Now this image was a little bit of an unknown since it was stamped in Tim Holtz walnut distress ink so I wasn't sure if the ink would run when the pencils were blended. As you can see, the ink stayed put and everything blended great. In fact, I think this technique works great with Cornish Heritage Farms Thomas Kincade images. With the image below, I didn't color in the sky, but chose to stipple it instead with Stampin Up soft sky dye ink again.

And a close up of the card:

I'm really happy with the way these cards turned out and just wish I had discovered I could use my blender marker a whole lot sooner. Needless to say, I have a bunch of blender markers on order. :)

Stamps: Cornish Heritage Farms Thomas Kincade Church In The Woods, Stampendous House Mouse
Ink: Tim Holtz Walnut Distress Ink, Black, Stampin Up! Soft Sky
Accessories: Stipple Brush, Brads, Photo Corners, Ribbon Bow, Mini Glue Dots, Koh-I-Noor Woodless Pencils, Prismacolor Marker Blender
Cardstock: Mauve Mist, Celery, Soft Sky, White, Close To Cocoa, Going Grey, Garden Green