Pens & Pencils 101

You might think that there's nothing more simple and not worth talking about than pencils... ;)

We've also heard that watercolor pencils might sometimes seem intimidating.

As all kinds of pens & pencils are one of our favorite art materials, we decided to share some useful tips, tricks and ideas of how to use them in your art projects.

Today we have two of our Design Team members sharing their secrets and also a special discount week on all the materials from our "Pens & pencils" shelf of our store!

For more details about our promo week - read below and now it's time for our girls to share their ideas.

Coloring die-cuts

I have simply colored my die-cuts with several watercolor pencils. I have then added a little water with a waterbrush. I have a whole series of butterflies in the colors of the rainbow.

Highlighting details 

Here I wanted to hightlight the edges of the papers. I have underligned the contours of the different papers to make them stand out, which allowed me to add texture.

Here I have added the rust color to the background:

Using a stencil to create your background 

Same principle: you color the inside each cell of the stencil with watercolor pencils.

Then, use a waterbush or a regular brush to blend colors and make them look more subtle.

You can use Pitt Artist Pens that are just perfect for underlining details or doodling.

Don't you think it all looks easy and really enhances the beauty of your projects?

We also have Riikka sharing her pencil ideas:

There's a number of ways of using a pencil. You can doodle with it, draw and write, of course. You can sketch, trace a stencil and color.

What you can also do, is use it for frottage technique - rub a pattern of an embossing folder for example like I did in my page. Just place something with a raised pattern underneath your paper and rub the surface of the paper with a pencil or equivalent and the pattern will appear.

You can also find the tracing, doodling and coloring in the page I created. Did you also notice the way I added the title? One part of it is written with a pencil and then cut off and the other is written straight to the page itself.

I find doodling on a layout very soothing and also an important part of my process. I usually make doodled rings around the vocal point and then finish the page with smaller doodlings like hearts, stars or just little circles.

A pencil is one of my favorite crafty tools and if you haven't tried one for a while, now's a great time to start! 

As you can see a simple pencil can give you countless creative possibilities...

To encourage you a little bit more, we'd like to offer a 10% discount on all the products from our "Pens & pencils" category in the store.

Which means you can grab some great Faber-Castell products:
(and these are just a couple of examples of what we have there for you :) )
 

a beloved tool of so many scrapookers and art journalers :)

one of our very favorite products - a set of Talens watercolor pencils:


and super smooth gel pens:

To receive your 10% discount on our Pens & pencils it's just enough to enter this code at the chceckout:

haPENS

The offer's valid for one week from January 24th 'till January 31st.
So don't wait, grab your favorite pencils or pens and let's create some great art! :)