This post is in conjunction with the Art 'n Soul Newsletter article "Technique of the Week" This post is less of a technique and more about trying out the new Distress Oxide inks. I was skeptical in the beginning, but now I know I LOVE these new inks. Oxide inks are a hybrid of Pigment ink and Dye ink. Where Dye inks soak into your paper, Pigment inks sit on top and take longer to dry. The Oxides have the best of both of these worlds. They blend like a dream, and they stamp better as well. They also incorporate the best of the water-reactive properties of regular Distress ink. there are 12 colors currently available, and Ranger is overwhelmed with orders, so we have to get in line; but we WILL get them in! Right now we have 8 of the 12 colors for demo'ing at Art 'n Soul, and we will be happy to demo them for you. For my card, I first blended Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, and Broken China, adding a little Wilted Violet at the end. I sprayed the card, using the Tim Holtz spritzer bottle, which makes large and small droplets. You can almost do no wrong with these inks, whatever I have done looks good. However, I wanted to stamp and emboss with White Diamond embossing powder, and I decided that my inks were a little too light for the white to pop out properly. This panel is actually very pretty in real life, and it is at Art 'n Soul for you to see Starting over with new colors was no problem, because playing with these inks is just so much fun. For the second try, I started with Wilted Violet. I added Broken China (I LOVE the combo of these 2 colors), Cracked Pistachio, and Spiced Marmalade. Since the inks have pigment, they are so easy to blend If you compare the colors side by side to regular dye based Distress colors, they will look just a little different. This is because these Oxide colors with pigment sit on top of the paper, and the regular dye based ones soak in. I spritzed it to get the water spots, and decided it was still too pale. I made sure to dry the spots and went over the card with some Faded Jeans, Fired Brick, and intensified the colors in the Wilted Violet, Broken China, and Cracked Pistachio. I love how rich the colors are This time I thought the colors were dark enough, and so I added more droplets with the spritzer, and dried the card thoroughly. I stamped my image and sentiment with Versamark ink and embossed with White Diamond embossing powder by JudiKins. I added a little of the Wilted Violet to the center of the largest flower in the stamp. I hope you'll give these new inks a try. I think you'll find them as fun to work with as I did. As you know, Art 'n Soul is Magenta's Retailer of the Year for the seventh year in a row, and this allows some privileges. The reason I mention this is because we have advance viewing of the new Magenta Spring Collection, and one of the stamps for Spring is a new one by yours truly, a Zen Bouquet of flowers, shown here on my card. I also have several sentiments in the collection, including this one. Since I received my stamps just yesterday, I decided to give you all a sneak peek of two of my new stamps on the post this week. These are available for pre-order at Art 'n Soul now, along with the entire 2017 Spring Collection. Please come by and see our sneak peek catalog and place your order. You can be among the first in the world to receive the beautiful new Magenta stamps! Magenta Products Used: (If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. We are taking orders for the new Spring collection now. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can visit the Magenta online store here. The new collection will be in the online store very soon). 44.024.Q Zen Bouquet 07.968.H You are Amazing Other Products Used: Distress Oxide inks: Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Broken China, Wilted Violet,Cracked Pistachio, and Faded Jeans Versamark ink White Diamond embossing powder by JudiKins

Digital image editing technology -- culturally controversial uses aside -- has enabled us to do some pretty amazing things. In the past, we shared a video

Learn how to color skin tones with colored pencils or markers with these 10 video tutorials. Learn new blending techniques and handy tips for coloring skin.

I discovered copics only in August 2012 and am so glad that I did. They are fantastic markers and some people can colour just beautifully with them (I hope the more I practice the better I get!) Since they come in such a range of colours (and I do have a few now) I have found it hard to keep track of what colours I used for which pictures and what colour combinations I like the best. I found myself (not sure if the word is wasting time, learning or playing :-) ) with my copics for at least 30 mins before I got around to actually colouring my picture because it took me that long to go through my copics and find the best colour combinations I liked for the particular picture I was colouring at the time. So I started a little A5 size book just for my copics where I tried to start keeping track of colours and techniques that I was learning / discovering. Ideally copics need to be used on special card, such as X-Press It blending paper, however, I couldn't find a "book" with just this paper and I was too lazy to go bind my own! So I just bought a plain art diary with 110 gsm card. The copics do bleed through the paper so I either use a scrap piece of card behind the page I'm working on or complete my picture / technique on X-Press It blending card first, cut it out and stick it in my book. Imagine my joy when I discovered that X-Press Graph-X have now released a X-Press It Blending Journal - which is a book full of the X-Press It blending card! Yay! Also, on the Copic Oz blog a Copic Blending Template (get them from this site) has also been released. I have found the templates a fantastic idea. In my Copic book I was just either writing the copic colours down and making a coloured mark below the "number" or stamping a picture, colouring it in and writing down what the colours were. But I have found the template to be one step better, because I can still stamp pictures and colour them in but the template also allows me to show the blend between the colours I used and you can also see the actual colour themselves. Here are some pictures of my journal before I started using the template: As you can see the copics don't blend very well on this plain 110 gsm card. Stamps: Sizzix and Hero Arts Stamp and Die cut set #657852 This tree is one of the digital images you get on a CD when you buy Annie's Attic (Paper Crafts) Copic Colouring Guide Level 2: Nature by Colleen Schaan and Marianne Walker. The colours that I have used are not the same as the ones they show you in the book as part of the tutorial. Stamp: Flourishes "Cherry Blossoms" And now... this is some of what I have created with the Copic Blending Template: Stamp: Sturt's Desert Rose from Flourishes "Bloomin Aussie Florals" I find this sooo much easier to see the difference between the colour combinations and am able to more easily pick which colours I want to use for my pictures. As you can see I have left room for more colour combinations. Stamp: Part of the tree from the Penny Black "Teddy & Company" set Stamp: AnnaBelle Stamps "Ballerina Rose" This is only the beginning :-) Entering this post (showing my use of the copic blending template) in the Copic Oz: Technique Journal #1 Colour Swatches competition to win a free X-Press It Blending Journal! See more of my copic colour combinations and techniques: Skin Colours Colourless Blender techniques Hair Colours More colour combinations Copic combinations added to Journal in 2014 I have also started a Copic page - you can view it here.