Flourishes Peony.

I'm so excited! I finally placed an order with Flourishes because I FREAKED OUT when I saw this peony stamp set go up for sale. I LOVE botanical stamps and wanted some new floral stamps that I could use for all occasion, especially sympathy, get well, weddings, etc. So I splurged and finally placed my order last week. I got a chance to play with the peony on Thursday and paired it up with some new Pink Pailslee Pop Fashion "Bermuda Shorts" paper that I got from CHA.

I'm gonna admit, I freaked out a little when I stamped this flower and wondered if I'd be able to make it look good. But after I calmed down, I just decided to apply the same principals I use when I'm coloring my Crafty Secrets stamps, and it turned out okay, even with lazy-girl style coloring on it! I always have admired Anna Wight's talent for coloring, and in no way could ever reproduce her style of coloring without some education. I have a couple of principals that are simple and easily used by a beginner when attempting to watercolor or shade with your copics. I thought that since I've been such a blogger- slacker lately, I'd do a short coloring tutorial for you to show you how lazy-girl here colors my images.

First off, I know a lot of people are intimidated by stamps with a lot of detail and shading. I've gotta say that I LOOK for lots of shading in a stamp, because it actually makes your job easier to do, in that you know exactly what spots on the stamp should be darker, and what should be lighter. So I started out by using new leaf copic on my leaves here. I colored the center of the leaves with new leaf. You can color the entire leaf if you want, but I'm going to fill in the edges with a darker color anyway, so I didn't want to use up a ton of ink when I don't need to.

Next, I took a moss colored copic, and following the DARKER black shading on the leaves, I filled in with the darker moss green, leaving some lighter areas in the leaf. I colored right over the black inked shading lines with my copic.
Here's where a skilled colorer would take it a step further; by taking another color of light green and trying to blend the dark green into the light green. LAZY GIRL, HERE, said "ENOUGH" and left it as is. I'm all about QUICK!

That's it! Now you know how to color detailed images! Light colors for light spaces, dark colors for the dark shaded lines! Now we'll apply the same principal to the flower section of the stamp. I took red violet and colored in the whole flower. Looks just fine as is, right? The stamp does the shading for you!

Nah, we'll go one step further. Take a darker shade of color and go over the black ink shadows of the stamp. I used Carmine, R37, and colored right over the black parts of the flower with the darker color. See how the leaves subtly pop out at you because of the 2 tones of pink?

I learned from a drawing teacher that the trick to good art is being able to create gradations of color by blending your dark colors in with your light colors. The gradual shading creates movement and helps your image become more 3-d.

Lazy-girl here, has not perfected this skill. Maybe someday!

After I was finished coloring, I took my hero arts distress background block and inked it up with almost amethyst stampin up ink. Then I inked vintage violet around the edges of the block only, and stamped over the top of the peony with a cut-out paper mask to cover the flower.

For sparkle, I used Stampendous glitter to outline the edge of the flower. On some of the cards, I outlined the entire edge of the purple block with the glitter. That's it! Now I have time to....err....clean? NAAAAAAH.

Hope everyone's having a beautiful Saturday!

L.