Big Wave & Prizes

We have a lot of stuff to cover today, so let's start with winners!!

Winnipeg Certification Giveaway Winners
Congrats to our two lucky winners!!!

Linda Shewchuck
and
Gail Neduzak

Thank you both for your fabulous e-mails and we know you will both have fun learning more about Copics. You get to enjoy a great class taught by Sherrie Siemens in just a couple weeks.
Ready for the next giveaway in my week of Prizes? Check out Sharon Harnist today for a chance to win something really neat. I won't spoil what you win, but it's worth stopping by. You have until this evening to enter to win on Sally Lynn's site as well.

Certification Update
Salt Lake City, UT on June 11th taught by Marianne is now open to the public. As is the Belmont, NH class tauught by Sally Lynn on June 14th. Here is a rundown of the status on all upcoming classes:

Smithville, OH class on May 31st taught by Sally Lynn is Full.
Winnipeg, Manitoba class on June 6th taught by Sherrie Siemens is open to the public.
Salt Lake City, UT class on June 11th taught by Marianne is open to the public.
Belmont, NH class on June 14th taught by Sally Lynn MacDonald is open to the public.
Durham, NC class on June 28th taught by Sally Lynn is open to Stores, Teachers, & Design Team members only.
Orlando, FL class on July 27th taught by Marianne is open to Stores, Teachers, & Design Team members only.

Get on the mailing list for upcoming Summer classes (sign up on the sidebar of my blog):
Vancouver, BC August 15th taught by Sherrie.
Eau Claire, WI August 16th taught by Sally Lynn
San Diego, CA August 17th taught by Marianne
Calgary August 22nd & Edmonton August 29th taught by Sherrie.
Coconut Creek, FL August 30th taught by Sally Lynn
Minneapolis, MN (Date TBA, Mid Sept.) taught by Marianne

Now, for a quick Summer tutorial that may help you make some fun backgrounds for your projects. You may have seen this before, but I figured my project today is perfect for the upcoming Summer Days. On a budget? You can still make a cute card with only white paper, stamps, and markers with this technique.

Wide Water Background
This is a simple squiggle made with a wide marker. Just hold the chisel firmly against your paper at an angle that is easy for you to hold. Make a gentle swatch with a bit of a wave in it. Overlap these and you have a great water background.

You can do this with any marker, but the Wide marker will cover the largest area. I used B32 for this project.

For my very quick final project the only paper I used is plain white, Neenah Classic Crest Solar White. I made the background waves using the technique I just showed you.

Work on a larger paper than you need and trim the uneven marker edges off, or color over the edge of the paper on all sides to make sure you don't get funny blobs where you first hold the marker to the paper.

Now my background paper looks like designer paper with waves on it. I trimmed along the top wave to mimic the water.

The orange paper on my final image was made with a wide YR04 marker so it would match the turtle's shorts. I drew the squiggle, trimmed it down, then added the extra line down the midle with a Multiliner. Other colors I used: B32, B34, YR04, YR07, YR09, G12, G14, G28, YG21, YG23

My final image is from the new, exclusive stamp set I drew for my friends over at eP called Hangin’ Loose with Kona. The character was born on a napkin at Winter CHA when my friend Daisy at eclectic Paperie mentioned that they wanted a surfing turtle. Now here he is, fresh from his napkin and he's wishing Joy Kennedy from eP and Our Craft Lounge a Happy Birthday!

Keep checking this week for more prize opportunities, and head over to Joy's blog to wish her a Happy Birthday

Picking Between markers part 5 - Wide

Today I want to finally finish up my sequence of posts on picking between marker types. The Copic Wide Marker is an oddity in the world of coloring, and very uniniqe.

Wide markers were introduced in about 2002. There are 36 colors and empty markers available to custom fill your own marker. What makes them so unique is that their firm chisel nib is about 3/4 of an inch wide! So what can you do with a wide marker?Remember back to this post, one of my first few showing a fun application for the wide marker. You can make a lovely plaid by touching a second color to your marker tip (or any marker tips for that matter).

See that black band near the middle of the part that holds the nib? That is a rubber seal keeping which prevents these markers from drying out just sitting there. No ink will get wasted if you don't use these for a while.

Since Wide markers are so large they suck through ink quickly. However, sets of Wide markers come with the matching various ink bottles. See that little curve in the gray part that holds the nib? That is exactly the size of the tip from our various ink bottle. Simply squeeze 3 cc's of ink onto the nib in that little notch and your marker will be nice and full again.

I would not choose a wide marker as my main marker style, simply because they are clunky for coloring details. However, what Wide markers were intended for is backgrounds. A juicy Wide marker makes perfect backgrounds. I would suggest picking up a good assortment of the lighter colors for backgrounds, and this is why the colors available in Wide are so strange. They are mostly earthy or pale colors- background colors or Architecture colors. Ground - E31/E33, Sky - BG10, Water - B32/B34/B24, Cool and Warm grays, then a few other colors that are thrown in for good measure.
Wide markers are commonly used by architects and designers who need to fill in large areas. A very effective way to make a background (which I won't show today) is if you are drawing a building for instance, mask off the main image and make large, flowing swatches for the sky or ground. The blues are perfect for simulating large bodies of water (like a lake or pond) that your structure is reflecting off.

Wide Markers will also come in handy once I get into special effects using the blender solution, but you'll have to wait a while for those posts- I have way too much to cover before I get back into blender effects. For now, here's a simple squiggle background made with 6 overlapping squggly lines from a B34 wide marker. These markers are great for making your own custom papers and simple patterns. Isn't this the perfect background for a mermaid?

In short, Wide markers become a "Must Have" accessory when using Copic markers for large areas. They are also loved by calligraphers- that wide juicy swatch has such life to it- perfect for large, illuminated lettering. Although I am weak on practicing my lettering skills, here's an example of the Wide used for calligraphy. Markers: R27 Wide, R27 Sketch, Multiliner SP Wine Brush pen.

Quick Plaid with a Wide Marker

Since Father's Day is coming up, now is a good time to show you how to make a "Manly" plaid with a Wide marker (you can do this with any Copic marker, it's just more fun with a Wide). Don't forget to post a comment on Tuesday's blog to be entered in our drawing.

Pick a good, manly colored wide marker. Pick a couple manly colors in another style of marker that will match your wide marker. For this first example I'm using R27 and a 100 Black. Carefully touch the black marker to the tip of your wide marker, holding them there for a while until the color seeps onto the wide marker.


With your dual-tone marker try drawing a stripe. It takes a bit of practice to hold the wide marker at the right angle for a smooth stroke, but once you get the hang of it, it gets to be addictive making fun squiggles. You'll also find that the color you add wants to quickly come off the tip, so test how much you need to saturate the second color to get even stripes without it fading too soon.



Next, I added Y15 and I drew plaid. It's that easy. I had to add more ink as I went along, as you can see, the yellow wanted to fade out quickly. Try to do a blended stroke sometime, where one side of the marker is darker. Try different color combos, squiggles, or zig-zags. These markers are loads of fun, and are great for doing some other special effects I'll be showing you in the future.

When you're all done, if there is still any residue of your extra colors on the wide marker carefully scribble onto some scratch paper until it comes out.

Wide markers are great for backgrounds and for filling in large areas. They only come in 36 colors, but each one is about 3/4" wide! Wide markers use a lot of ink, so be sure to get a refill at the same time you get the marker.

I won't usually show finished projects on this blog, but since I had to make a father's day card for my hubby with this technique I figured you'd like to see the completed example. I drew the image myself, since he loves the Lumberjack Song by Monty Python.

Color theory note: I chose to do my ground shadow yellow to tie the card colors in to each other. Since the plaid was a strong yellow I made the ground a grayer, dull yellow. So the shadows are mix of Y23 and C3/C5. Usually I would use a W3/W5 for the yellow ground, but I wanted to tie in the gray of the hat and keep my color choices simple. The cool gray looks a little odd IRL, but not bad (the photo looks stranger)

Image Credits: Paper- Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80# Cardstock Marker colors: R27, R59, E31, E33, E29, C3, C5, Y15, Y23, Colorless Blender Image- Photocopied line art Adhesive: 3M Double sided foam tape