Celebration of Color - watercolor pencils

Miki here and I LOVE color! Color is fun to play with and makes our designs interesting. One of my favorite coloring techniques is using watercolor pencils. You can find watercolor pencils by Prismacolor, Derwent, Reeves and even Crayola has some great primary colors too. I have a bucket full of all these brands and I love adding new colors when I find them. I haven’t found a watercolor pencil that I don’t like!

You can easily grab a small paintbrush and cup of water but I am a big klutz. I don’t trust myself without a capped bottle of water in my scraproom! I suggest investing in a waterbrush. There are a few to choose from, but the one I have is the EK Success Zig. You simply fill up the end with water and brush away. I keep it right in my cup of watercolor pencils so I can easily grab it. No cups to knock over and no mess to clean up!

Coloring with watercolor pencils is pretty easy and there are lots of different techniques to use with them. I know everyone has their own style of coloring with them. But do you ever think of coloring ON different colors of paper? I know I am guilty of always pulling out the same white when I plan on coloring. But why not use some of the other colors on our shelves? I thought I would show how you can get a different look from the same colors of watercolors simply by using them on different colors of cardstock.

Using the exact same 3 watercolor pencils on each card...

They come out nice and bright on white cardstock.

A bit more subdued on the Kraft.

On black they have almost a stained glass effect.

And don’t forget about using a pencil in the same color family of cardstock.

Supply list

Cardstock: Prism (Sunflowers Light, Desert Coral Medium, Nautical Blue Light, DMD (Kraft, Black, White)

Stamps: Autumn Leaves Nature, Papertrey Ink Mixed Messages, Paper Salon Just a Note

Ink: Tsukineko Versafine (black), Color Box Chalk (colors), Martha Stewart (white)

Watercolor pencils: Prismacolor, Reeves

Tools: Cuttlebug machine, Spellbinders Nestabilities, Zig Waterbrush

Other: Vellum, Glossy Accents

Pull out your scraps and see what you can come up with! I bet you will enjoy the results and at the same time use up some of those other colors of cardstock that we all collect.

I also have a little freebie for you! I started most of my watercolor pencil collections with a set, but I like to fill in with single pencils too. I needed a chart to take with me to the store so that I could see what colors I needed or wanted to fill in with. I couldn’t find anything online, so I made one for myself and thought I would share it with you. I hope you find it as useful as I do. I keep mine in my purse because you never know when you will find them on sale! I printed mine out on plain paper and colored them in dry, but you could easily print it on cardstock and then go over the colors with your waterbrush too. Then you have a chart with what your watercolors will look like!

Download Watercolor Pencil Chart

Happy coloring!