Come Play with a New Colorway!

It's Colorway week once again for the Dream Team. This time Laura Drahozal had the choice and went with purple and yellow. This was a stretch for me once again. Some of the girls struggle with the sketches, but personally I have a hard time with the color challenges. However, just like the sketches, they can help yank you out of whatever creative rut you may be in. I chose to work with the Thistle stencil, and as I have been wanting more practice in using the Paintstiks, I broke them out along with several stencil brushes in various sizes. It helps to think light to dark and to have a brush for each of the three primary groups...yellows, reds, and blues. I worked with the smallest size as well as the medium size. The Paintstiks are like a firm "lipstick" of oil paint and come in a wide variety of colors as well as metallics. When you first use them, you need to use a paper towel or craft knife to rub or scrape off the top layer or "skin". Then rub an amount of color on a piece of wax paper, or foil, etc. Put together a "palette" of the colors you want to work with, placing like colors near each other. This allows for easier mixing for shading and highlighting. I worked with a yellow, an orange, three shades of green, two shades of purple, a deep blue, and a silver for highlighting. Work the color into your brush by "rouging" on the wax paper (this also warms up the paint a little for easier use). Then you can begin to rouge the color into the areas of the stencil (which should be taped down on your chosen paper). You can build up color in layers, shading and highlighting as you go. It helps to use the "Picasso" to block/mask off areas as you work. When finished, I removed the stencil and used a small amount of the silver to add a little shading under the leaves and base of the blossom. For additional highlights (and to be honest, to cover a couple boo-boos) I used the tip of the small brush handle to add dots of White Copic ink. The card base was yellow, so to add more purple, I added a small panel of purple which I stenciled the Floral Background with Versamark ink and embossed with Stampendous Sunny Yellow Pastel Embossing Powder. I still felt that the card needed just one more touch of purple, so the gorgeous lilac bow was added. Personally, I am going to be very curious to see what the rest of the team comes up with for this colorway, so just like you, I'm going to have to hop around to the various blogs and check them out (listed at right)...of course, leaving some lovin' along the way! You know you'll want to play with the Colorway, so link your creation to the Mr. Linky on the Dream It Up! blog for the rest of us to see!

Dreamweaver:

LL3001 Thistle

LG631 Floral Background

LL332 Picasso

Paintstiks

BHB 1/8" Brush and NHB 1/2" Brush

Plus:

Versamark ink from Tsukineko

Copic White ink

Sunny Yellow Pastel EP from Stampendous

Bazzill Candlelight and Love Potion cardstock

Fabriano Watercolor Paper

ribbon