COPIC COLOURING TUTORIAL - FLAPPER TWIRL

Another video upload, this time I am colouring the digi stamp 'Flapper Twirl'.

COPIC COLOURING TUTORIAL - SWING GIRL

Just updated my channel with a new speed colouring video using Copics! I am colouring a simpler image called 'Swing Girl'. Do check it out!

VIDEO: INKING MY LINEART & NEW DIGI!

Just made a new video while inking my sketch, this one will be titled 'Idyllic Garden'! It is the next digi stamp coming up. You can click directly to Youtube to view it in high resolution and subscribe to my channel if you wish!

New digi 'Idyllic Stroll' listed in my shop! You can get it here:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/385161508/

Idyllic Garden is now available!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/386125944/

MONAMI BAUHAUS COLOURED PENCILS DEMO & REVIEW

Made a short video demo / review on Monami's Bauhaus 36-clr Coloured Pencils. Hope you find it useful. Monami is a Korean stationery company and these pencils come in a pretty tin box. They are wax-based. If you are in Singapore, they can be purchased from Popular bookstore. I personally only use them for simple colouring as the leads are too waxy for me.

VIDEO TUTORIAL: HOW TO COLOUR WITH COPIC MARKERS ON ISLANDER DIGI

This is a digi stamp just released called "Islander". I made a video demo / tutorial on colouring the lineart with copic markers. Printed with Epson inkjet onto ordinary cartridge paper (like cardstock). The background is made with coloured pencils and then I added a sky digitally. If you are using her for cards, just ignore the background.

Part 1: Face, Dress, Accessories


Part 2: Hair, finishing & background

Hope you find the video useful. I am not a pro with markers and tend to avoid high contrast shadows, also I don't have that many colours lol. You can view it on youtube if the resolution here is too small. Sorry about the lighting and exposure. It was getting dark.

The lineart is available here:https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/265479600/

COLLEEN COLOURED PENCILS REVIEW

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year! What did you do on New Year's Eve? Well I made a short video demo with Colleen coloured pencils if you ever wondered about how they perform. Yup while the fireworks were going off in the horizon lol.

Colleen pencils are considered student's grade within the low price range, and are mostly used by childen in Asia. Since colouring books are quite popular now, adults and even artists worldwide are starting to discover them. They used to be made in Japan but are currently based in Thailand, of which the quality feels the same. You can get them on Amazon or Ebay.

They are much waxier, smoother and softer than my other pencils like say... the Luna Staedlers which I had as a child. I don't know exactly how good they are for professional work, because colour pencils are not my forte and I have never tried out professional grade pencils. I DO know I have a soft spot for them as they had the cutest, prettiest packaging back in the 70s-80s and all the cool kids had them in school because they were pricey back then, even the ones in default orange cartoon cardboard packaging. My absolute faves are the ones with shoujo illustrations on tin.

https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/215603558/vintage-1984-little-twin-stars-sanrio
by Lemonshortbread on Etsy


Takahashi Macoto's shoujo girls were featured on many of the boxes. Can you tell why I am biased much?!

https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/247546167/vintage-colleen-japanese-makoto-1980s
by PreppyPastel on Etsy


One of my fave shops on Etsy!

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/240463119/vintage-cute-japan-rare-macoto-t-art
by GGdolls on Etsy.


This was the one I've used before in kindergarten or sunday school, unfortunately it wasn't mine but school property. All I did was stare at the packaging, I am not kidding.

This is a very cool site if you love vintage shoujo!
http://www.harapekodoggybag.com/vintage-macoto-takahashi-makoto-lady-12-color-pencils-colleen-stationery-retro-girl-big-eyes-1970.html

Think I've strayed off topic, anyhow I will post another more in-depth text review. Hope you enjoyed the video anyhow, 'like' and subscribe on youtube if you wish!

DECORATING A MIRROR WITH VINTAGE

Here is an old mirror which I decorated with vintage necklaces and assorted craft materials... how kitsch is this! Definitely one-of-a-kind. If you are feeling crafty, you can decorate your boring old mirror too and give your dressing table a touch of whimsy!

I purchased this plastic mirror last minute for a jewellery booth many years back, and since I disliked how tacky it looked, it was immediately put away after that event so I didn't have to look at it lol.

Anyhow I re-found it and decided to 'deco-den' it just because. This is not my original idea by the way. When I was an intern (around 1999) at a local bags & accessories company, the boss requested me to decorate two table mirrors as frou frou-ish as I could, with cabochon and ric rac samples and scrap pink feathers because we had just revamped the stores with a fixed colour scheme. Haha, good times. Best thing was customers asked if they were for sale... unfortunately no. The mirrors did manage to get customers to stop by the shop so that was good.

This is the mirror before embellishing. It is red and silver. I guess it was meant to be futuristic but it doesn't fit my vintage shop. Only bought it because I needed a mirror with a sturdy base and a mirror face that stays put when tilted. Dug about my junk jewellery lot and found 3 beaded necklaces that was flat enough for securing. Actually I don't have an idea what I wanted at this point.

These are from the 1970s. I dismantled the clasps, and removed the cross off the faux pearl beaded one. Also cleaned the mirror and necklaces with alcohol.

Glued the hippie looking necklace from the bottom and ran it around the circumference. I used a normal hot glue gun.

Joined the second one where the first one ended. Unfortunately the necklaces were not long enough so I had to find something to hide the uncovered parts.

These are artificial flowers, fabric leaves and floral tape. I had them leftover from making bouquets for my dolls.

Assembled a small bunch and wrapped them with floral tape. Since the flowers have wire stems, they can be curved to fit the shape of the circumference.

Glued the whole bouquet down. And another bunch at the bottom for some balance.

I added the green leaves on the tops to hide some of the uneven spots, then used the white beaded dismantled necklace on the inner circumference. It was not long enough because that is just one side length of the necklace. The other side was used on the bottom rim. Then added some plastic jewels that came free with a package I bought, these have scratches on the surface so I can't use them anywhere else.

I decided to dismantle the beaded cross pendant and replicate the weave to finish that missing spot, unfortunately after gluing it down, I realised the beads were larger than the rest! Oh well. I might add a ribbon or something but the odd-sized continuation is partly obscured by the flowers, so will leave it for now.

Got these from Daiso. One is a black spangled sequins (has a hologram effect) and the other is black frilly lace.

Glued the frilly lace on the circumference to hide the backs of the bouquet. The width of the tulle was trimmed down as it was far too wide. I glued the sequins all around the mirror's base till it was fully covered, and done! Hope you like it, I will be displaying this at an event this June so customers can enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror while trying on my jewellery!

COLOURING WITH MARKERS ON INKJET DIGI STAMPS

I am going to do a quick tutorial / experiment on alcohol-based markers coloured on inkjet printed digital stamps. Some crafters hesitate to use digi stamps and rather stick to rubber stamps because of the issue of smearing or smudging of lines when they use markers on printouts. It is a bit of trial and error, to each his own! Previously I thought a laser printer would solve the problem of smeared lines when using my Copics but the smears persisted. My initial impression was alcohol-based markers dissolves toner so don't know if I didn't wait long enough or needed to heat set it further. Some people have had luck getting laser-printed lines to stay put, you should try both out anyhow.

Since most inkjet ink is water-based, I also worry about it smudging. I am currently using an Epson inkjet printer (XP-402) with its Epson Home Claria inks (model 177) - thankfully I did not have any problems! In fact I sprayed fixative at first to seal the lines but that seemed to make blending difficult. In this blogpost, I did two tries - one with fixative and one without.

First let's look at the one sprayed with fixative. You may get different results depending on the inks and markers you are using. I am using ordinary cartridge/ cardstock paper in A4 - it is called Drawing Block paper here in Singapore, the inexpensive common kinds they use at school.

I use the Workable Fixatif by Krylon, sprayed it on the printout, and waited for it to dry.

Copic and Prismacolor markers.

I coloured her skin first. The photo doesn't show it as obviously, but the colours don't blend, especially if the colours are from different hues. I used Copic 'Pearl White' (yellowish) with a layer of Copic 'Skin White' (pinkish) and did not like the effect at all. After that I tried out the blender directly on it (I know, wrong way of using lol) and made things even worse! I can't tell for sure if it was due to the fixative sprayed earlier.

If you look at the flower headband I used two pinks from the same family, so they blend okay. In this case perhaps dry media work best if you need to use fixative. Or just use one tone of marker colour. Anyhow I ruined the picture (see the disaster on the arm on the right and part of her face ) and decided to experiment with some colour pencils and soft pastels while I'm at it.

My colour pencils (just ordinary ones) are waxed, so the pastels do not stay on top of areas that has pencil marks on it. Put the soft pastels on first and then pencils. Again, I did not like the effect lol. My pencil leads are hard from being old, I might get new better ones.

The digistamp "Toga Fairy" is available in my Etsy shop:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/227203390/

Next is the no-fixative-on-printout experiment, pretty straightforward so I'll just show the finished result since it was night by the time I finished colouring. Reprinted the image on a new sheet of cartridge paper and waited for it to dry. Coloured with markers directly on top and the lines stayed put! The Epson 177 model ink cartridges are not too expensive and in the lower priced range. Quite happy with my printer by the way - it's got wifi. This time I didn't use Pearl White for the skin.

This is after I have done all the colouring with markers. I was careful to avoid the lines as much as possible and not press too hard just in case.

This is the finished piece, after adding some pastels and colour pencils. After that I sprayed fixative to secure the pastels.

RIBBON - PAINTING

My latest completed art, entitled 'Ribbon', acrylic on canvas. I've been wanting to do monochromes for such a long time and finally here's one. Hope you like it! The background were originally 1960s style sunburst motifs but due to clutter they were transformed into polka dots. I think it looks much better this way. Available for sale at:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/75719511/ribbon-original-acrylic-canvas-painting

Closeup of the painting after being varnished.

ACRYLIC PAINTING STEPS - NO ORDINARY DUNCE

Hi everyone just finished a painting and thought to show my processes. Still experimenting with the medium so if you have any tips please feel free to leave a comment.

This is my initial sketch on paper. It is entitled 'No Ordinary Dunce'. Started this in Nov last year.

I traced the sketch onto tracing paper. It is similar to those butter paper kinds, fixed the design. The harlequin shapes are not equally sized just estimates within the dimensions of the canvas.

This is a primed canvas that is mounted and stapled on the back. I usually gesso my canvas but for this one I didn't because it was ok as is. Painted it blue and used a carbon paper to roughly mark out the harlequins after it was dried.

Started to paint the diamonds using the markings as guidelines.

Meanwhile watching this. I like zombie shows.

The first layer is done and painted on 4 sides too.

This is what it looks like after 2-3 layers of the same colour, it becomes more opaque. Not perfectly done but don't need it to be right now as I will retouch up at the end stages.

I traced my dunces onto the canvas after the background is dried. There is a carbon paper underneath, 3 sides are taped to the mounts so it won't move.

This is how it looks after tracing, some parts didn't transfer clearly so I drew straight on with my pencil. The background has some smudged carbon prints on the side from pressure; don't know how to fix that except to repaint those areas later on.

I spray workable fixative on the canvas to prevent it from smudging. I use Krylon workable fixative.

Started to paint the first coat of the faces. My mixer is a bamboo chopstick and the palette an aluminum foil over a plate, whatever works? I use a spritzer and spray water whenever it starts to dry out. Although acrylic paint dries quickly, in Singapore it's still wet after half an hour due to our 87-100% humidity here. I also keep paper towels nearby to dab out excess water and rinse the brushes often in a bowl of water because once paint dries on the brushes, it's a goner.

I trace the outlines using a fine nib brush. This is done by a size 3/0 (Spotter) brush.

Continued to fill in the colours using various small flat nylon brushes.

After that ...sorry I left the painting sitting for 3 weeks and forgot I was doing a photolog and continued painting without taking photographs. Anyhow filled in the other colours and did gradients, blending was done by mixing 3-4 shades of colours from dark to light and blending as quickly as possible. The hats were done twice over because the first time the gradients weren't successful.

 With gradients.

This is what the new hats look like, they are a brighter yellow than my previous cream colour. The face also has slight shadows. The outlines are now obscured.

I fixed whatever parts needed to be neat and added the facial features.

Ok after the dunces are complete I redid the whole background, the colour is slightly different from my original background because it's almost impossible for me to remix the same colours. This would hide some of the smudges from the carbon paper I was talking about earlier. Needs to be done very carefully and it took about 4 hours with 3 layers of paint.

Add signature and final embellishments.

I use the Daler-Rowney Artists' Picture Varnish to seal the painting. It took forever to dry with 3 coats of varnish since it was raining everyday, got impatient with the 1st and 2nd so it is not perfect (not going to state what mishaps I had lol) and the last coat I waited about 2 weeks for it to dry properly.

'No Ordinary Dunce' is available in my Etsy shop here: No Ordinary Dunce - Original Pop Painting

Completed on 31 Dec 2010, though the varnish only dried 2 days back. Added a sawtooth hanger on the back.

I hope you enjoyed this!