Quick Review: Zig Clean Colour on Kraft

Zig Clean Colour pens are all the rage at the moment, but I’ve seen very few reviews by amateurs. I decided to buy just a couple to test them before deciding whether to add them to my birthday list. I bought Peach Pink and Sugared Almond Pink as they don’t appear in any of the larger sets, and they looked like they’d match each other. I decided to try them out on Neenah Desert Storm kraft card – many colouring mediums get “lost” on kraft and I’ve never seen anyone else use Zig pens on kraft.

And my verdict? I absolutely LOVE these pens, which allow for really finely detailed painting with ease. These are most definitely going to be at the top of my list! I stamped the Hero Arts Delicate Blossoms image and embossed it with Wow! detail white embossing powder then spent a stress-busting hour colouring. This is the result:

The colours blend beautifully, and even the pale colour holds its own against the kraft (although, as ever, it doesn’t show too well in the photos).  I finished the card off with a die-cut fishtail flag (by Sizzix), a stamped greeting by Clearly Besotted and a little bit of bling. As it fits with the latest challenge over at Stamping Sensations (Anything goes with a stamp and a die) I’m going to make this my third & last entry over there.

Here are a couple of close-ups:

Stamping with Promarkers – Take 2!

This photo was inspired by the sketch over at Inspired by Stamping. I stamped the Clearly Besotted flowers in Versafine Onyx Black ink, then watercoloured them with Inktense pencils, using my Wink of Stella pen instead of a normal paintbrush so they’d be sparkly rather than plain. You can see this a little better in the photo below, although I found it really hard to photograph as it was a very dull day here!

After several failed attempts at making a background, I finally settled on one created with Inktense pencils, colouring through an Imagination Crafts stencil in the Violet pencil then filling in the gaps in a green colour. The greeting was a combination of a diecut word (again, Clearly Besotted) cut from plain white card, coloured with Violet Promarker then given a touch of Wink of Stella again, and the word “With” (by Elzybells) stamped in Violet Promarker. See my previous post for the warning about stamping with Promarkers! I’m also entering this into the challenge over at Simon Says Stamp where the theme is “Sparkle and Shine”.

Stamping with Promarkers!

Yes, you did read that correctly. I will say right from the outset that this really isn’t recommended as it can stain your stamps – you have been warned! But if you ever find yourself in a situation (as I did) where you have no inks of the right colour to match your project, stamping with Promarkers does work.  I used it for the greeting on this card:

Stamping with Promarkers wasn’t the only thing which took me out of my comfort zone with this card; SO many patterned papers on one card – really not my style! But they’re all from the same set (“Here is Happy” by My Mind’s Eye) so at least I knew they were colour-coordinated. The card design is based on the latest challenge over at Your Next Stamp, and I thought I’d met both the colour & sketch challenges until I realised that the grey had appeared as taupe on my tablet!

The image stamp was a freebie from Craft Stamper Magazine; although I had taupe ink which matched perfectly, try as I might I couldn’t get a cleanly-stamped image so I gave up & embossed it using Wow! Platinum embossing powder. The background cardstock is by Bazzill, the greeting stamp (with the afore-mentioned Promarker stamping) is from a long-retired set by Elzybells, and I finished it off with Doodlebug Sprinkles.

Bon Voyage

Crafting has had to take a back seat just lately – a new role at work involving more hours has seen to that. But a friend’s daughter is off to Borneo for a month at the end of the week so I rustled up a quick card to wish her “bon voyage”. She loves Borneo’s orang utans and this card turned out pretty much exactly as I’d envisaged. I combined two free digital images into one; the orang utan started out hanging from a tree but a little bit of photo editing made it – I hope – seem as though he was waving from behind the suitcases.

I coloured both images with Promarkers, adding a little bit of shading with some cheap W H Smith colouring pencils. The greeting was a standard one in Craft Artist Professional.

I’m entering this into the challenge over at Stamping Sensations, where the theme is “Feature a Creature”.

CTS #116

I loved the simplicity of the sketch over at Case This Sketch this week so I decided to play along. The flower stamp is Hero Arts Bold Line Flower, stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black & coloured in Promarkers Tangerine & Canary – a lot more bold than I usually go for but I felt that stamp could take it! I hand drew the square in my Memento Tuxedo Black pen then coloured it in the same Canary pen. The greeting is by Imagination Crafts.

I stamped the greeting crookedly first time round, so ended up fussy cutting the flower & box & mounting it on foam pads for a little bit of dimension.