I bought the Stampin’ Up! Blender Pens a long time ago, used them maybe once or twice and then forgot about them…until recently that is! Why did I rediscover these little gems? I made a mistake and I was urgently looking for a way to fix it. I needed to make some thank you cards and had not yet used my Dragonfly Garden stamp set. I adore this set and I’m not sure why it took me so long to to use it. But I digress.
I was happily stamping along when I stamped one of the the open-winged dragonflies on top of the smaller group of dragonflies without masking it. What is masking? Making is a technique that allows you to stamp an image on top of the other without the lines showing through from the bottom image. In my case, I wanted the larger dragonfly to appear to be in the foreground, but I forgot its wings weren’t solid before stamping it over the smaller babies in the background. UGH!
Here’s my “oops” image and my “after” image. Drag the bar in the middle to see the before and after. Is it perfect? No, but that’s the beauty of a handmade card and you really can’t tell unless you examine closely like I’m showing you here.
The blender pens work with water-based inks. I started by gently brushing ink that was already on the paper onto the open areas of the wing. I didn’t want my paper to become too saturated so that it would begin to pill and I realized I needed more coverage. So, I transferred some Evening Evergreen ink to the top of the ink pad and then added some ink to my pen and started to color. Eventually, the solution will dilute the intensity of the color and you have to dip back into your ink. What’s wonderful about these pens is that you don’t need one for every color. First, they are double-sided!! Second, you can draw on a scrap piece of paper until the pen runs clear and then use if for another color. Third…they aren’t just for use with water-based inks!!
Once I fixed this mistake, I moved on to my next card and decided to fill in some of the stems, leaves and lightly shade some petals with the same color, just to give it a bit more depth. I love the subtle, almost watercolor look I was able to achieve. For a larger, more detailed view of this image, click here.
My next step is try using the blending pens with watercolor pencils! I’ll keep you posted on how that turns out. Be sure to look for my next post where I show my process for creating these cards. These were the result of another Triple 1 Challenge!
