Alcohol Marker CPR

Coloring with alcohol markers is a bit of a roller coaster for me. One day I knock it out of the park and the next, I’m floundering and losing confidence. Today’s card made it into my CPR – Craft Project Resuscitation YouTube series. 

Read on & watch the video to see how I corrected marker mistakes. 

Stamping

• Stamp Simon Says Stamp Sketched flowers in alcohol safe ink
• Cover the flowers with masking paper and fussy cut the right edge to create a mask
• Remove foam pad from MISTI
• Stamp Simon Says Stamp Sketchy Lines Background Stamp in alcohol safe ink
• Set aside to dry or heat set

Tip: For an artsy look, align stamp so that the unfinished sketchy edge is at the top. 

Altenew Artist Marker Colors

Blue: Desert Night B227, Dusk B313, Ocean Waves B204, & Sea Glass B201 (Set A)
Purple: Midnight Violet R705, Deep Iris R823, Lavender Fields R702, & Soft Lilac C002 (Set B)
Orange: Ruby Red R318 (Set A), Autumn Blaze Y608 (Set E), Mango Smoothie Y204 (Set C)
Red: Velvet R217, Crimson R206, Rouge R301 (Set C)
Green: Evergreen G554, Forest Glades G715, Frayed Leaf G702 (Set A)
Teal: Mountain Mist B802 (Set D) & Colorless Blender 0

Wall of Color

My first mistake was coloring the first purple petal in too solidly. It was dark throughout with a wall of color. Gah! I kept adding color and then tried to lift some color with the lightest marker, Soft Lilac. Finally, I left it alone and movedon.org.

After coloring the orange flowers, I went back used the Colorless Blender to lift color from the purple petal tips. On the darkest petal, I flicked the Colorless Blender further down into the petal. 

I don’t have the colorless blender on video, so I hope the photos above are helpful. Also, take note of how the blue started to bleed into the darkest purple petal (right photo). I’ll need another fix for this later on.

Awkward Drop Shadow

After completing the flowers I decided to add a teal shadow around the flowers, a.k.a. second mistake. Kelly Latevola makes this look really easy. People, mine did not look good!

The tight drop shadow in the left image didn’t seem right, so I started to extend the shadow further up and to the right. Gah, I didn’t like that either, but I wasn’t going to give up. I added long upward strokes with the marker parallel to the page and maybe that didn’t look so bad??

I stopped here and moved back to the purple flower.

Marker Bleeding

The purple flower looked better with some color lifted, but I still wanted it to be brighter and I needed to fix the blue that bled into one of the petals.

A white gel pen was the answer. My Uniball Signo White was giving me grief despite drawing on my fingers like Kathy Racoosin, so I switched to a Sakura Gelly Roll 08. The gel pen easily covered the bleeding and I like how the purple flower looked.

For a more cohesive look, I started to add highlights to the rest of the flowers and went overboard, especially on the orange flowers. I put the pen down and slept on it.

Sentiments to the Rescue

After a night’s sleep I embraced the highlights and I felt I could tackle the weird transition of teal to white at the top of the card. A large bold sentiment seemed to be the answer for the top, but I also needed a sub-sentiment to the lower right in order to cover the transition there. 

Altenew Fine Alphabet Dies were used to die cut “HELLO” and Altenew Label Love was used for “Love U”.  

What I Learned

As always, I’m glad I didn’t quit! That first purple petal taught me pretty quickly that I need to use tip to tip technique with the Shades of Purple Artist Markers. The two darkest colors are very close together in color range and without a transition color, things get real dark, real quick!

I need to practice that whole drop shadow thing before going straight to the card and less is more with white gel pen highlights!

I hope you picked up some tips and tricks during my journey that will either help you prevent similar mishaps or save your card. Thanks so much for hanging in there with me!! Be creative and Breathe · Ink · Inspire. 

Supplies