Coloring with Alcohol Markers

Have you been intimidated with the thought of coloring with alcohol markers? if this is you, then keep reading as I will be sharing with you how to color without any fuss.

Also please know that Today I am participating in “The Joy of Sets” blog hop and this month’s theme is Splish Splash, which is great for Summer. So you will get tons of great ideas to get you inspired and hopefully crafting. Please make sure you visit all the blogs participating on this hop. I know you will enjoy!  So let’s get started!

Coloring with Alcohol Markers made Easy 

Based on our theme I decided to share the cards I made with a beach theme. In this case I used the Seaside Notions stamp set from Stampin’ Up! for the cards you see below! 

So let’s start talking about how to color with alcohol markers! But first things first, we need to go over a few things you need to have handy. 

• A line image stamp, like the one I show for these cards
• Memento Ink
• Alcohol Markers – in my case I used Stampin’ Blends from Stampin’ Up!
• Good Quality of White Card stock – I recommend the Whisper White from Stampin’ Up!

NOTE – Please note that you want to have two shades of the colors you pick for your alcohol markers, this is so that you can make some shading or blending with them. Below the list of colors I used in my cards. 

• Petal Pink (light/dark)
• Calypso Coral (light/dark)
• Crumb Cake (light/dark)
• Soft Suede (light/dark)
• Pool Party (light/dark)
• Bermuda Bay (light)

As you can see not only did I picked the light and dark shades of the Stampin’ blends, but also another color that would be in the same type of color family.  In this case  Petal Pink with Calypso Coral, Crumb Cake with Soft Suede, and finally Pool Party with Bermuda Bay. This will allow you to get even more dept in your color, as you will see on the video tutorial that I share later on in this post. 

Process to Color with Alcohol Markers 

So here is the process to color with alcohol markers, when you follow these steps you will see how easy this gets. Please know that the more you practice the easier it gets! I promise you give it a try and you will see how you will be improving with each piece that you color. 

Also at the beginning of your coloring journey you might want to do some samples to see which colors look great together, and if you like the color combinations, that way you will start building an eye for colors and color combos. You will get that savvy-ness to know exactly how things will look like, even before you color your images 😉

Step by Step Process

1. Stamp the image using Memento Ink – This is super important –  since you are using alcohol markers you want to use a water base ink pad, other wise when you start coloring you will smudge or pull the black color from the image into your coloring. 
2. Add a light hand of color to the image using the light shade of the alcohol markers.  DO NOT saturate the image, this is a light hand of color – in the images I am showing today, the image is in one color, however there are images that have sections that you might want in different colors, so you would follow these steps for each section of your image.  
3. Add darker lines with the darker alcohol marker in areas where you want to accentuate color, or add a shadow. You could use the lines on your stamped image or you can add your own. For the images in these cards, I followed the lines of the stamp itself to add darker highlights. However, you could also follow my simple rule of seeing what is on top of something in the image and then add color to the thing that is under. 
4. Go back with the lighter alcohol maker and in a circular motion start to blend the darker line with the lighter color, so it looks like a gradient going from light to dark. I would recommend to do the blending towards the middle of the image and avoid over saturating the edge of the images, as this could lead to some bleeding, meaning color moving outside the lines.

Once you are done blending, see if the image looks like you wanted, if you need to add a bit more of the dark color you can repeat steps 3 and 4 until your image looks how you wanted it. 

Also remember it is always better to go from light to dark as you can add more color. However, it is harder if you want to remove the color.  

Thinking of you card #1 

 Following the steps I shared above, I colored the sea horse with Calypso Coral, the shell with the star with Crumb Cake and the larger shell with Petal Pink.

You could add little of the Calypso Coral (light shade) to the larger shell to add a bit more of color.

I cut the images and glued them down onto the stamped circle that I used for the background of these images.

 

 

Thinking of you card #2 

For this second card I followed as well the same process for coloring with alcohol markers. 

I colored the sea horse with Pool Party and then added the light shade of the Bermuda Bay to make it a bit darker. 

Then I colored the shell with the star with Crumb Cake, And the other shells with the Crumb cake but I added Soft Suede to make them a bit darker and make them look different. Make sure you watch the video tutorial to see how to color with multiple shades.  

And if you are wondering about the background, I used watercolor to add the blue-ish color. The paper has to be watercolor paper to have this effect, you just color the background and then once it dries, you add some droplets of water and dry it with a paper towel so it removes the color on the areas where the water was. 

The Video Tutorial 

Here is the video tutorial where I show you step by step how to make these cards. On this video I show you how I colored all the images using the process I described above. 

Also if you are interested in getting the supply list for all the products I used you can click here 

Finally as I mentioned at the beginning, this post is part of a blog hop. You can go to next the blog post by clicking on the image below. I know you will enjoy the projects shown in this blog hop!

 

Want to remember this post for later? Save these easy Thinking of You card ideas in your favorite board!