Playing with paints and pens (posted by Claire )

Good morning folks, I can't believe it's August already. The year is flying by and it's so exciting to see the fabulous new products that Lesley is bringing us. I love colouring so I was delighted to have a play with the beautiful new Colouring Pages which you can find here in a special kit with a colour wheel and mixing guide.

I'm always happy to play with my pencils and markers but for this page I decided to be a wee bit adventurous and got out my acrylic paints. I used metallic acrylic paints to paint the design, the paper took the paint really well and didn't buckle at all. Once I'd completed the painting I took a black marker to retouch the lines where I'd painted over them slightly. I was pleased with the painting but I wanted a black background to set off the metallic paints. I used Black Pearl PanPastel to colour the background, I applied this quite liberally and then used a battery eraser to remove any of the PanPastel that had gone on the design.

My second page today was coloured with Graph'It markers, and they blended beautifully on this lovely smooth paper. After a lovely colouring session I used Blue Pearlescent PanPastel to create a quick background, this is lovely and shimmery but it's glaring a little on the photo.

I hope you're enjoying the colouring pages if you've got yours yet, if not pop over to grab them while they are still on offer.

Thanks for visiting today, 

Claire xx

Having Fun With Colour (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I am sharing some of my colouring pages from the A4 Colouring Pages Kit with you today, two of which you may have caught on the recent TV shows on Hochanda. These fabulous pages are so relaxing to colour in a vast range of mediums, and Sue's designs will really capture your imagination. The beautiful floral designs are absolutely stunning, and having the practice pages included in your pack of pages gives you the confidence to try out any colour combinations before you make a start on the main designs themselves.

I used colouring pencils on all three of my designs, as I love to use pencils, but I have used different types of pencils on each design, and you can find full details of each project on my blog.

For my first design, I used water based pencils, choosing vibrant shades of blues and plums for my design. I coloured the design in full, and then went over the design with a water brush, to blend the colours, adding more shading with the pencils again afterwards, if necessary.

For my second design I used oil based pencils, blending the colours together for a natural effect in Autumnal tones.

Finally, I wanted to create a project using a colouring page in a more versatile way. I cut the top of one of the pages down to size, and coloured this with cheaper pencils, using a much smaller colour palette, to tone in with the background card that I had chosen. I added a row of faux stitching around the edge, and matted the page and background card onto a large black card blank.

I had a small section of colouring page left, and so I coloured part of the foliage, which I cut out, and added to a strip of the same background card, die cut into a tag shape. I matted this onto black card, and added a sentiment from the Amazing Mackintosh Words stamp set, which had been stamped onto a scrap of card left from another project. I also added faux stitching around the sentiment. Some green ribbon was added to complete the tag:

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx