Coloured on Kraft Series | Floral Thoughts of You ft. Stampin' Up "Birthday Blooms"

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

Today I want to share a floral thinking of you card, coloured on kraft cardstock with Prismacolor Premier Coloured Pencils. The more I work with these pencils the more I absolutely love them. I like to look back through my work and see how far my colouring has progressed. As with any other medium the key is practice, practice, practice.

This image from Stampin' Up is perfect for practicing in any medium, and if you don't have it, I highly recommend getting one, or one like it.

To begin, I stamped the floral image from Stampin' Up "Birthday Blooms" and the greeting with VersaMark ink on 65lb kraft cardstock. I chose this particular ink because it doesn't have the harsh lines that stamping in black has, and it is easy to cover up with pencil; creating this beautiful "no-line" look.

I then coloured the blooms with only three shades! All the petals are coloured with PC1032 Pumpkin Orange, PC1002 Yellow Orange and PC915 Lemon Yellow. I start with my medium shade in the areas where I know I want the shadows to be the darkest. I then go to my lightest shade for the for the rest of the petal with an incredibly light hand, finally I add in my darkest shade to deepen those shadows and start to bring out the depth of the flower.

I work back and forth, doing one petal at a time from start to finish until it looks just how I want it to. Each of these petals has 8-10 layers of colour so it is very important that you use a very light hand, as Prismacolor pencils are waxed based there will come a point where you just can't add any more layers because of the waxy build-up. So it will take a while, but with the layers you can get almost any shade between your darkest and lightest pencils.

For the stamen in the centre of the flower I used PC923 and highlighted with the Lemon Yellow.

All of the leaves are coloured with PC988 Marine Green, PC1096 Kelly Green and then PC1089 Pale Sage, working the same as the blossoms, one leaf at a time until it looks just right. Because many of the leaves have texture from the veins, I ignore those until I'm adding the final details, then I gently go over them with the medium and then the darkest shade of green.

I have found that I get the best results from keeping my tip as sharp as possible all the time. This typically means a lot of sharpening, so I use the T'GAAL Multi-Sharpener on setting one to keep a low but sharp point. I can avoid losing a lot of pencil material, because let's face it - coloured pencils aren't cheap.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar or over on Facebook, so you don't miss any future posts. If you have any questions or just want to let me know what you think, please drop me a line in the comments section below. I love to hear from you!

Product Review Series | T'GAAL Multi-Sharpener by Kutsuwa

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

I've done a lot of coloured pencil reviews and as anyone who uses pencils knows, they have to be sharpened.

There are dozens of sharpeners out there, by dozens of companies all promising the best results. Sadly, we know that this is not necessarily the case. They don't all provide excellent results.

Moreover, what works for one person may not work at all for another. For a long time, I was using an electric sharpener. When you have soft-core pencils (like Prismacolor Premiers) it can be very frustrating to get them sharp. The soft core means a higher chance of breaking, and when it comes to manual sharpening it is nearly impossible to hold the pencil still while sharpening and ultimately the pencil breaks.

I have seen numerous colourists and pencil artists talk about the T'GAAL sharpener so I thought I would give it a try myself.

• Quite expensive 
• 5 settings for pencil points
• Self contained - you don't have to hold it over the rubbish bin
• Comes in various colours
• Incredibly sharp blade
• Light weight

This sharpener fit nicely in the palm of your hand and is very light weight. It doesn't take up much room if you are travelling with your pencils. It fits a standard pencil as well as the slightly larger pencil (like Faber-Castell Polychromos). 

It comes in several colours - while not important to the function, it's always super fun to have choices.

Each of the five different settings allows you to change the angle of the point, depending on what you prefer. The first point is very much like the way most presharpened pencils come from the factory, and as the number goes up, so too does the angle of the pencil point.

When I was using my electric sharpener it resulted in what would be a five (shown above). While I loved the point, I found that if the tip broke because of how long the point was I was wasting a lot of pencil to get the tip sharp again. When you work with pencils that are upwards of $2.00 each, it becomes important to keep waste in mind.

Since I switched to the T'GAAL, I'm finding less and less waste as I personally only use setting number one. I like to keep my pencils very sharp which means I'm sharpening them often during the course of a project - setting one keeps a sharp point but short so that I'm breaking the ends less often. Many times it doesn't even feel like the pencil is sharpening and yet out comes a lovely point.

Overall, I'm incredibly impressed by the T'GAAL Multi-Sharpener, despite being (what I consider) ridiculously expensive for a small manual sharpener, I can honestly say it is worth every cent. When I purchased mine from my local art store I paid about $10 CAD, when my husband was looking for a new sharpener, I sent him to get the same one (because I don't like to share) and he paid double that at the same place.

Honestly, worth it. I will not hesitate to spend the same amount for another of these sharpeners. So if you are able/willing to use a manual sharpener for your pencils, I don't think you have to look any further than this one.

I hope you enjoyed today's review. If you have any questions about this product or an idea for a future review, please drop me a line in the comments section below. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar or over on Facebook, so you don't miss out on any future posts.

*disclaimer: I am not sent products to review, nor am I paid to review them. I review the products that I personally use, that I find interesting and that I have purchased with my own money. I receive no incentive, payment or reward to review a product. All reviews are based on my experience using them and are my opinion only.