Some Odd Girl is BLOG HOPping

Welcome to the FIRST Some Odd Girl Blog Hop! We are happy you've joined us and I know the ODDies have a ton of goodies to show you! So just take the journey thru the blogosphere and not only will you see some lovely projects but you will get some sneaks of our June 15th release! If you just happened upon my my blog please start your hop at the {{ Some Odd Girl Challenge blog}}  and make some ODD stops on each of our ODD Girls' blogs finishing up at Kristy's blog.


Your should have arrived here from {{ Ann's blog }} but should get lost during the hop, below is the list of ODDies in order of HOP :)

Some Odd Girl

Leah

Robin

Jen

Marcie

Ann

Kimmy You are HERE

Kristy

AND if you leave all the ODDies a lil' love you may just win our WHOLE June 15th release! Yup, that is seven (!) Digi Stamps in a total value of $21.00!!!! You would be silly not to get in with a chance here. So you better start hopping.

Before I send you on your merry way to the next stop, I would like to share a little tutorial with you. If you are anything like me, you freak out at the thought of colouring digi images...in particular when you see the amazing work a lot of artists out there produce with their Copics or ProMarkers. But you know what? It is not that difficult...seriously, just have a look:

Please excuse some of the blurry pictures - I only had the chance to to the tutorial in the evening and I just could not get them into focus without the flash (and with the flash you would have not seen the different shades)

** click on any of the images if you want to view them larger **

First off you print you image onto some white cardstock and choose the colours you want to use for the colouring. For my example I am teasing you with an UPCOMING digi stamp....yep, it is true you cannot get this fella just yet: LEMONEY is part of the next release, going live on 29 June 2010....but don't be too sour about it  *giggles*

First, I started with the flesh of the lemon and used the SATIN colour in small circular motion to colour the areas, leaving the pips to remain white. For small areas you want to use the pointed tip of your pen. Both ProMarkers and Copics have a wide and a pointed tip :)

Using the different shades of yellow, I started with the lightest to colour the outside of t he lemon segments, and the further I came to the outside of the slice, the darker the colours I used.

Can you see the little colour marks on the top right of the image? I do that for all images I want to colour - have a few strokes of the shades I have chosen next to another, to see how well they work. Additionally that will give you a chance to see how much your cardstock may allow the colours to bleed - some cardstocks are worse than others.


For the colouring of the lemon at the front, I used the wide tip of my pen, which will prevent uneven colouring. If there are some small white spaces left close to the edge of the image, don't fret about it - your colours will run a tiny bit anyway. You are also very likely to add a darker colour to the edge, so any missed areas will be covered eventually.

If at any stage when you started using darker shades, feel that the contrast looks too harsh: just go over the WHOLE of the area with the lightest colour you used previously. This process will start blending the colours together - the longer you brush over the area, the wetter the cardstock gets and you can pretty much rectify small mistakes with it, as the darker shade as good as blends away.

I like working in a "feathered stroke" fashion when starting to shade. That means that you very lightly use the pointed tip of you pen and work in strokes from the outside in. If your coloured area is still wet, the light strokes will blend into the background perfectly. The above picture was taken right after I applied the strokes and the area was still very wet, hence the huge contrast.


When the area was drying, I found the contrast remained too harsh, so I added more feathered strokes, this time with the lighter colour which was used for the main body of the lemon.

Again, the picture above was taken while the area is still wet to hopefully show you how the different colours now start the blending process. 

Finally I was happy with the shading and after I added some colour for the eyes, I used a grey ProMarker pen to add a slight shade to the left edge of the front lemon - as in a real life picture, it would cast a shadow on the slice in the background....

So watcha think - easy or not? Personally, I think the colouring is MUCH easier than it seems if you only look at the finished project.

Okay then, I have kept you for too long already - head over to Mrs ODD, i.e. {{ Kristy }} now, to finish off the hop and see what she has got in store for you.


Thanks for hopping with us and if you fancy some more ODDness and more chances to win FREE ODD stamps - why not join us RIGHT NOW over at {{ SNR }}, where we are holding our very first DIGI DAY... woop woop!!! We have challenges, prizes, FREEbies and I recall Mrs ODD mentioned the word SALE during one of our email conversations....so you better go check it out :)


Wanna know what the FREEbie looks like? I am totally into retro 50's right now, so I squealed with delight when I saw this lil' lady