Welcome back to the craft room and today’s Flashback Friday Christmas Cards & Copic Markers post. Back in December of 2011, I began my journey with Copic markers. Watching many YouTube videos and following bloggers, I felt up to the task of creating our Christmas cards using this medium. While it was intimidating, I am also very proud of the results. Let’s take a look.
Christmas Cards & Copic Markers
I am way behind on my Christmas cards so today was the perfect opportunity to play with my new Copic markers. Since I am so new with this type of professional alcohol marker, I did a search of my favorite blog, Theresa Momber’s Crafting The Web, for tips on shading an image. After studying several of Theresa’s card projects, I grabbed my markers and got to work.
Here is the completed card:
I started my card front by embossing a piece of Pure Luxury heavy base weight card stock in Ivory with Memento Rich Cocoa and clear embossing powder. The Holy Family stamp was purchased from the Rubber Stamp and Scrapook expo a few months ago. Unfortunately, I neglected to write down the vendor that I purchased it from. If anyone happens to know who to credit this stamp to, please do let me know.
Copic Coloring
I started by tracing the stamped lines of Joseph’s cloak with YG63 .
Then with YG03 I filled in the rest of the image and blended it with the darker outline color.
I repeated the process with Mary starting with B24 to do the outline.
And then filling and blending with B21. I think I need a middle shade here. The difference between the light and darker color seems a little drastic to me.
Following the same idea here with baby Jesus I outlined with Y13.
And then filling in with the lighter Y11.
Finally, I completed the image with E00. Now seems to be a good time to mention how much I LOVE the Copic blender pen!! In all of my research into these pens, the one thing that stuck in my mind was to purchase the blender pen first. It amazes me how this thing will erase a mistake, it is now my new best friend! LOL
Finishing The Card
I don’t own a lot of Copic markers, in addition to the ones used on this card I have Lipstick Red and Cool Gray #3. Because I don’t own a brown color, I had to improvise a bit for the staff that Joseph is holding by using a colored pencil. To complete the card, I used a stamp of the sheet music Silent Night by Morning Star and embossed it with gold embossing powder. This was then layered over shiny gold cardstock and attached to the card base of Pure Luxury in Ivory. Without a coordinating die, all of the images had to be cutout by hand. Not something I do often, but I took one for the team and cut all 34 images by hand.
It was so much fun making this card I ended up cranking out 4 of them today! I’m still a long way from being done with my cards, but this is four cards that I didn’t have this morning. lol
Thank you for stopping by and please do leave a comment if you have any suggestions on how to improve my shading technique.
Thank you for joining me for today’s Flashback Friday Christmas Cards & Copic Markers post. These are still one of my favorite Christmas cards, they turned out so well! I do remember being a little intimidated when I started coloring the image though. Copic markers definitely have a learning curve to them. Even after all these years, I have a lot to learn.
As far behind as I was in my card making in 2011, I am happy to report this years Christmas cards are already in the mail. That is such a relief! I can spend the rest of the holiday season crafting. Do you send out Holiday cards? If so, are they already in the mail or are you still working on them? Let me know in the comments below! If you need a little bit of inspiration, you can check out my Christmas Cards. You can also check out my Copic Marker projects as well and let me know if you think I’ve improved over the years. Until then, have a fantastic weekend and I will see you in the craft room again soon!
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