FrBetty_Goetz@racesmtp.afsc.noaa.gov
of decorator foils from Nasco. These are NOT paper-backed foils, but are colored on one side/silver on the other and are like very thin metallic sheets. These particular foils rolls are 36 gauge. I cut a small circle (using the top of a Jacquard Dye-na-flow jar as template) and stamped the Herbarium hand-with-a-spiral-in-the-palm in black Marvy Matchable. I took a teeny embossing stylus I'd just purchased at The Paper Zone using my 15% off coupon and traced the stamped image. Then I rubbed off the black ink and scored a ring of tiny lines for a frame around the circle. I glued it to the card and it looked much more "done". The balance wasn't perfect and the color wasn't quite as dark copper as I'd like, but it was a fun experiment that I'll probably repeat. Others are probably doing this already, but I hadn't noticed anyone mention this foil on the list yet.

Cynthia
I am a colored pencil fanatic. Most of my work is done using them. Mostly I use colored pencils that are at the grocery stores. I've bought a few artist quality pencils and love them. I'm just always too broke (spending all that $ on rubber) to really invest in pencils. Actually, I used to hate colored pencils in school, but I think I just didn't understand their nuances. I thought I could use them like markers or crayons...you know, just quickly go over an area and it would be intensely colored. What got me into using colored pencils was Roz Stendahl's two parter in RSM... also happened to be in the first couple of issues I got-they were key to my addiction in many ways. They're in issues #72 and #73....Nov./Dec. of 1993 and Jan./Feb. of `94. They're really wonderful and I reread them at least twice a year and I always find them inspiring. One trick to colored pencils that sounds totally obvious, but isn't always and really does make a difference is to keep the pencils sharp. When I get swap cards or stamped cards in the mail, I love the results many artists get using markers. My cards never look like that with markers. Someday I gotta take a marker class at Stampa Barbara or something....with my luck, I'd flunk. I've gotten so much advice on how to make markers really work and I've bought markers galore....all brands....and they just never turn out the way I want. But, on the other hand, I never thought I'd covet colored pencils, so maybe I'll eventually figure out the marker thing...... Another color thing...yes, I know I'm very long-winded tonight...my brain's fried. It's the election. (Hey, I got to vote for the first time!) But anyway....I love sponging. I think it's really cool. It is my favorite background method. I started out using those little cosmetic wedge sponges, but my absolute favorite sponges are those round yellow ones. They're like half a nerf ball? I think Hero Arts sells them. Anyway, those things are great. They apply color so evenly and are easy to hold. Also, I think they get better with age (like us rubberstampers...we rubberstampers? Oh, dear, where's my style manual when I need it? grin). My two sponges I still use most are the first of these yellow ones I got and they are fantastic! Enough! I'm going to bed before someone shuts me in the naughty room for ranting and raving......

Margaret Counts mcounts@bbs.mpcs.com
This is what I try- when using the water collor pencils- I apply the color in a sort of soft rotary stroke, instead of the up and down fill in motion. there really isn't ever any visable stroke to worry about. then when you touch it with the water it just brings it all to life

Diana Stagg
My latest "spree" with color has been with the Water Color pencils. I just love stamping with grey or brown ink then using the water color pencils. When finished and I have used the brush and water...it almost looks as if I had drawn the picture myself. Works just wonderful with those "Stamps Happen" stamps by Linda Grayson. The #2 favorite color "trick" I have been using lately is stamping on heavy parchment or vellum (in brown ink again), then using the Marvy Dual Point or Tombow markers on the BACK side...the color is softened and really looks wonderfu. I cut the image out with the decorative edged scissors and layer on a dark color card. Get lots of comments and questions about this.

PenGwen
This is a great topic and I love to see all the discussion. I don't have a preferred method of coloring stamped images, I find that I use different methods on different papers according to the "look" I'm trying to achieve. One thing I've done with great success is combining methods. For example, I recently made Halloween cards and colored the pumpkin with an orange marker. It looked too bright and flat so I shaded on top of the markered area with a brown colored pencil, making the image darker around the edges. It worked like a charm! I do this alot (colored pencil on top of marker) to add depth and shade to images.

Janet Detter-Margul janet@plano.net
The "Janet quick card." Take a piece of watercolor paper, 9x12 is pretty standard size. Make sure it is 140 pound paper or heavier. Tape it down to your work area using masking tape allllll around allll the edges. Overlap the tape about a quarter inch or so. Now run a piece of tape down the middle vertical. Now do that horizontal. LOOK! You have four squares of watercolor paper showing, divided by the masking tape. Now get the paper real good and wet and then splash and swirl watercolor paint on those squares. Use more than one color if you want. Toss some salt on the wet paint. Kosher salt is a nice size. Now go to bed. Oh okay. You can read your e-mail instead. Just do something else for about an hour. NO! DO NOT TOUCH THOSE CARDS! Now they're dry. Pull off the masking tape and admire your lovely white edges on these cards. Hold the piece of paper over a trash can and brush off the salt that's stuck to them. NOW... go stamp whatever saying you want and emboss it. Since this was originally about my favorite combinations, these are some of my recent favorite color combinations: Darkish blue (Prussian) with bronze embossing powder Yellows and oranges with black sparkle embossing powder Knock your socks off pinks and reds with black sparkle embossing powder Greens and lighter blues with white sparkle embossing powder Browns and yellows with bronze embossing powder As you can see, I either go with similar colors or else with a complete contrasting neutral color. Oh yeah. Before stamping and embossing, cut these cards apart. Those Fiskar decorative edge scissors look nice, but when I'm in a real hurry I just whomp `em out on the paper cutter.

Kate Whitridge whitridg@achilles.net
I love the deep, rich, quiet jewel tones - purple and deep blues and teal and rose and dark turquoise and cranberry... But the longer I stamp, the more I experiment. I am permanently indebted to the person on the list who suggested about two months ago that scenic spaces like grass and sky should contain a variety of colours. When I did the Samhain Swap, I used blues/green/black in the sky, and blue/green in the grass, and blue/green/brown/black for the earth. And the question asked about my card was how did I get the wonderful colours. My skies are often blue, purple, rose, green. Grass is usually green, yellow, brown, purple, blue, and sometimes peach. I find that I'm using more coloured pencils and making masks and sponging a lot, because those two techniques allow you to apply layers of colour easily. Usually, I combine these with pens - my favourite are LePlumes for the tiny, fine tips, although I love the colour range available for Tombows. And I find I'm thrilled when I'm using a not-too-absorpent cardstock and can bring out the Trias - the almost translucent, pure, seamless colour is unbeatable, although they're permanent ink so I don't use them on the stamps themselves. I find that I'm increasingly doing outdoor scenes, so I mostly stamp in black or colour the stamps with LePlumes. When I'm not doing scenes, I like using Top Boss tinted ink, and embossing in gold, or occasionally stamping in black colorbox and embossing with the Ultraclear EP or Spellbinder or Psychadelic. In terms of rainbow pads, I have 5 pads that I use most often: Alice in Rubberland - Icicle (blues), Grapevine (purples through greens), Autumn or Harvest (I've forgotten the name, but it's oranges through greens) Kaleidocolor - Pastel (pink-purple-blue is the general effect when brayered) Abracadabra - Romance (pink, purple, royal, teal green) And I have oodles of Colorbox pads - rainbows, solid, cats' eyes, etc. sitting drying up in my ink pad boxes. I bring them out occasionally, but I just tend to gravitate toward dye ink and embossing in black, gold or glitzy. Paper is where my colour problems start. I layer almost everything - stamped postcard, colourful layer, and bottom notecard, and sometimes a second colour layer. I spent about 40 minutes, getting increasingly frustrated, trying to find a combination that I liked for two birthday cards on Wednesday. I have masses of papers and cardstocks, but I have to try out all of the possibilities. I think it's because both were scenes, and that I need to expand my paper collection some more. But what it really pointed out was that the card I was having the most difficulty in mounting was one created "before colour variation" - I used just one green on the grass, one blue in the sky, one yellow sun. If I'd used more colour, the effect would have been richer and the sponging would have pulled the whole thing together more.

RubberStamp Junkie
Science consider the primary colors (wavelengths of light) to be red, blue and green. In the arts, it's the primary colors (colorants that selectively reflect and absorb wavelengths) are red blue and yellow. I ponder: in these two systems the difference between yellow and green is the amount of blue that's added. In theprinting and computer industry the primary group is composed of magenta (purplish-red), cyan (bluish-green) and yellow. Primary colors when mixed together can make most of the other colors. (I also ponder that when mixing the three primary colors together I get brown or close to black; yet black represents the void). Adding black to a color creates a shade. Adding white to a color creates a tint. Adding black and white to a color creates a tone. Secondary color - mix two primaries. Intermediate color - mix an adjacent primary and secondary color. I occasionally use a color wheel to help me choose which colors I want to use. I also use a book which describes how colors can be split into four categories which they describe as the seasons of the year. I find this tool to be very useful for me to choose which colors harmonize with each other easily. So, this may be a very unprofessional approach but it's one that works for me. Also I remember some friends telling me that white contains all colors; and that black is the void and contains no colors. This is the opposite of how I used to think of it; so this is another area I ponder. Sometimes I use just a few colors in a piece of artwork (yes, that's what I call it). And, other times I use many colors. I do so freely because I see all colors in nature. They blend together in nature and I sometimes work to make them blend in my artwork.

Glitz-N-Glitter aka Shey
I took a watercolor pencils class one time with Georgia Cerone. She is a demonstrator for Stampendous and she has a lot of her cards featured in Stampers Sampler. What I learned was when coloring with the pencils dry the colors are very faint. Do not press to hard into the cardstock or else you will get permanent lines that will not go away. After lightly coloring along the edges of your stamped image, lay down ...meaning lightly put a small amount of water into the center of the image. Then using an almost dry no. 5 brush, gently "drag" the color into the center of the image. Then using almost a completely dry brush, go back over the lines left and gently blend them into the rest of the color. I don't know if you can understand what I am trying to tell you. If you need more help, E-Mail me again and I will try to explain it better. Once you get the hang of it, it really looks great. It has become one of my favorite ways of coloring in an image.

Robin (aka Ma Vinci)
Use dark, well, dark-ish paper, but light enough that you can see an image stamped in black. Then color it in using those GREAT Prismacolor pencils! Thos colors really pop out at you when they're used on dark paper! So do white ink and glitters on dark paper! Ooohhhh-weeee, tres cool.

Seagull
I love to use watercolors. Just heard of a new way to use them. A friend of mine took a class from a watercolor pencil pro in Florida And shared this with me ~ Take your watercolor pencils the colors you want to use for your project~ Draw Circles, lines, or squares, on a piece of scrap paper~ Stamp your card~ Use your brush, wet it, and take bits of the color off of your scrap paper~ Do not make puddles of color This gives a very watercolored look,,,diff. shading etc. and enables you to mix colors without any problem. If all of the color is not used on your scrap piece of paper,,,you can use it again~ It also saves on your watercolor pencils

Cheryl Hester stamphersoon@webtv.net
I was taught the best color combinations has a lot to do with how many colors you use. Three is the optimum. Choose three colors - i.e. purple, green, blue and center your card around combinations of these colors. Or you can keep it simple with just these 3 (or any 3) colors and add white(or a variation). It works best if the intensity of the color is varied also. This helps with contrast and interest of the card. I have found if I stamp in a color that is used in the paper or whatever, it brings the card altogether. I would be happy to send you a card or two I have made. I also use unique types of embellishments on the cards - i.e. metal car repair tape, melted plastic beads, floral wire, and tree wrap paper. One of my favorite pastimes is scouring the stores for unique things to use on cards. It helps the mind expand, try new things, and spend money. The last one of course is the easiest.

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Tips & Techniques: Color Theory
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