get out your spirits

Odorless mineral spirits (or gamsol) that is and of course your holiday spirits. I already see the months flying by and before I know it I'm late with holiday cards!
For this card I used the new Fun Circle Christmas stamp! I used pencils (Koh-i-noor) and gamsol with a stump to color in the image. When working with mineral spirits to soften pencil coloring, you need to lay down very little color from your pencil. Just follow the outline of the image, perhaps add a lighter color right next to it and then blend away with your stump. If you want to preserve definite highlights like in the berries on the holly leaf, do add some white pencil at those spots before blending.





Here is how I store my gamsol. You definitely don't want to drag out the big bottle each time you feel like using it. I saved a skin cream container and cleaned it. Then cut a piece of sponge to fit into it, poured some gamsol over that to moisten the sponge. The container must close very well as I have been using this for more than a year so far. I also only use one tiny little stump for all my blending. When switching colors, rub the tip on a piece of scrap until it comes clean. You only need to hold the tip of the stump onto the sponge and it will pick up enough fluid to blend an area of pencil.

I colored the circles behind the images with clear glitter pen for a touch of bling. The sentiment was heat embossed with white powder and the dots around the edges are doodling with white gel pen. If you have never done this I hope you will try out to blend your colored pencils with gamsol/odorless mineral spirits. It really opens up a whole new dimension of pencil coloring. I love combining this technique with regular pencil coloring for different effects.

Tweet

Pin It