Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

no line coloring

For the love of colored pencils….

Good morning! I have a penciled card to share today made entirely of products from a new company… like less than a year old new. I always love finding new companies to, ahem, add to my collection! The Stamp Market. They have some really lovely floral stamps, as well as some gorgeous sentiment sets and an absolutely stunning marble background stamp that I can’t wait to try out. For my card today, I thought I would do some no-line pencil coloring with one of their newest sets: Feeling Floral.

I started by stamping the large floral image from Feeling Floral once onto some masking paper, then cutting it out. I stamped it again on some wine-colored card stock using white pigment ink, then covered it with the mask and stamped a few more blooms and some foliage.

After stamping, I began coloring. I’ve been loving wine, mauve, and gray lately, so I couldn’t resist coloring these beautiful blooms in some pretty shades of mauve, and I thought I’d do something a little different with the leaves and color them a silvery gray. I used the pencil technique demonstrated in this video with my Prismacolor pencils and blender pencil.

After I finished coloring, I die cut the large You three times from white card stock and once from silver foil card stock and layered them all together with liquid adhesive. Next, I white heat embossed the coordinating sentiment from the You sentiment set tucked into the flower bundle. I finally added a few Moonshine sequins to the front to add a bit more texture to this fairly flat card.

Isn’t it amazing how much depth you can get with colored pencils? They’re definitely becoming one of my new favorite mediums. I hope you’ve enjoyed this project from this fabulous new company! I can’t wait to dig in even more… I might have purchased a few more sets recently! Teehee.

Hope you have a fabulous Wednesday!

Merry Christmas in flowers and pencils

Good morning! It’s October. Holy moly, has this year gone by fast! The speed with which this year has moved has made me forget that Christmas is less than 3 months away, and I need to get a-crackin’ on some holiday cards. I have purchased some absolutely beautiful holiday stamps recently, so I will be getting busy with those ASAP. First up, however, is the absolutely stunning Christmas Rose set from Wplus9. These bouquet clusters just beg to be colored with pencils, and I was more than happy to oblige.


I started by stamping the main floral image from Christmas Rose onto some Toned Gray paper using white pigment ink in order to do a little no-line coloring. I then colored the beautiful hellebore and poinsettia blooms in shades of pink and purple using my Prismacolor pencils. Anytime I color on paper that isn’t white, I use the technique that I demonstrate in this video. Basically, I start by laying down a layer of white pencil, then add my colored pencil over the top of the white, then blend it all with my blender pencil. The layer of white pencil beneath the color really helps the colored pencil to pop off of the page.

After coloring the image, I die cut the “merry christmas” from the Wplus9 Christmas Tag die set from some white linen card stock, which I then covered in some Spectrum Noir Shimmer Pen. (Can’t really see it in the photo, but the letters are SO sparkly.) I trimmed a small section away from the bottom of the penciled panel to create a peek-a-boo panel with some shimmery magenta cardstock behind it. I popped up the penciled panel using dimensional foam adhesive, then added a few sequins on the whole piece to add a bit more sparkle.

Well, there’s one holiday card down! I have maybe 7 already in my stash, so I reeeeeeally need to get cracking haha! How’s your holiday card stash?

Have a fabulous day, friends!

Ellen Hutson Pinsights Challenge!

Hi there! I’m back again today (I know, two non-design team posts in one week! I’m shocked!) with an entry for the Ellen Hutson Pin Sights Challenge! Their challenge graphic this month is so pretty:

Those Design Seeds color palettes are just a font of inspiration for me. {Insert all of the heart eye emojis.} I particularly loved the green and pink combination… I don’t use the combo that much as the focal point of my projects, and there’s something so deliciously shabby chic about pink and green when paired together, so I decided to make an antique hydrangea using one of my favorite Ellen Hutson sets: Mondo Hydrangea.

I colored the lovely hydrangea using my no-line pencil technique that I shared in this video. I started by stamping the hydrangea onto some pale spring green card stock using white ink. I then colored the flowers using my Prismacolor pencils using Deco Peach, Blush Pink, Pink, Carmine Red, and to add shadows, Chestnut. (The 150 pack of Prismacolor pencils is at Dick Blick and Amazon for an amazing price!)

After I had finished coloring the flower, I silver heat embossed the sentiment from Mondo Hydrangea. I trimmed down the sides a bit, then matted the pencil panel with some pale pink card stock. On the card base, I used a coordinating green ink to stamp the individual leaf and flowers in the Mondo Hydrangea set to add some interest to the background. I tied a thin twine bow around the pink and green layers, then added some foam adhesive and popped up my colored panel on my card base.

Not going to lie: colored pencils are not the quickest coloring medium in the world. I could have done this project in about half the time (or maybe even less than that) had I worked with my watercolors. BUT! This card is going to be sent to someone very special to me, so I wanted to add some extra love and care to it, and I think the pencils definitely helped accomplish that.

Hope you’re having a marvelous week! I will be back tomorrow with the Where Creativity Meets C9 team’s final Feature Friday post for Concord and 9th’s anniversary month!

No-line coloring with Prismacolor Pencils+VIDEO!

Good morning! I have been a little silent on the blog over the last few weeks… went out of town, then had some visitors, then my kiddos caught a bug… it’s been so crazy that I haven’t had time to finish editing the colored pencil video that I peeked on Instagram almost two weeks ago! After my company left this weekend, I was determined to get this video finished and uploaded for the beginning of this week. I think they’ve given me a few of their germs (joy), so if I sound a little sniffly and scratchy, I apologize!

Today, I wanted to focus on my favorite technique with Prismacolor colored pencils: coloring on colored card stock. I really adore how beautiful and vibrant the color is on the colored card stock when you have a few tricks up your sleeve. Check it out!

Well, what do you think? I’ll be honest…. This technique is not for the faint of heart or for someone in a rush, especially when you have a fairly large image, as I did here. I had to be very succinct with the amount of time I spent on each petal in the video, as I was trying to keep the time on the video as close to ten minutes as I could, but coloring this image was most certainly a labor of love. If I’ve glossed over something in the video that you’d like explained more fully, please don’t hesitate to ask!

If you can’t watch the video, here’s a brief overview of the project and the technique.

To start, I stamped the image using Papertrey Ink’s white pigment ink, which I find to blend more smoothly with pencils than other white pigment inks. Next, I move petal by petal, first coloring the petal with the white Prismacolor pencil, then going over the top of the white with my colored pencils. (For the anemones, I used Deco Pink 1014, Pink Rose 1018, Pink 929, Process Red 994, Pomegranate 195. For the morning glories, I used Scarlet Lake 923, Pale Vermilion 921, Sunburst Yellow 917, Canary Yellow 916, Lemon Yellow 915, Cream 914. For the leaves, I usedGrass Green 909, Prussian Green 109, Apple Green 912, Spring Green 913, Yellow Chartreuse 1004.) After I had laid down my color over the white layer, I used my blender pencil to blend the colors seamlessly. I find that the white layer really helps keep the color from sinking down into the colored card stock and getting lost. Adding just the slightest touch of black after all of the initial blending helps, as well, to really make the shadows pop.

For the morning glories, I have found that their shading is a bit backwards. Where I would normally have the darkest shading towards the center of the flower and lightening as it reaches the outer petals, with morning glories I start with the lightest shade in the center of the flower and blend outwards towards the darkest shades. I used the same technique of adding a white layer beneath my yellow and orange pencils, then blending with the blender pencil.

After I stamped the greeting from the Kind Soul stamp set and heat embossed it with white embossing powder, I went back with my T-square to add some white lines about 1/2″ from the edge of the penciled panel. When I have a fairly detailed and meticulously colored image, I like to keep the rest of the card fairly simplistic so the focus remains on the coloring! I used my T-square and white Prismacolor pencil to create a frame around the edge of the panel, then added a few sequins to add some texture. Finally, I mounted the card on a black A2 sized panel and mounted it on my card base.

I hope that seeing this technique in action, even if only briefly, has made clearer my technique when using the Prismacolor pencils to color on colored card stock. I know I’ve tried to explain it in blog posts before, but it’s really something that you almost have to see to fully understand. I hope I’ve explained things clearly. 🙂 It’s such a fun technique; I’d love to see what you create if you do try it!

Well, that’s all for me today, friends. Have a marvelous Monday!