A Lesson in Colouring

 

So, now for my lesson in colouring.  I love my markers.  I think we kind of get shorted as adults when it's no longer really acceptable to sit down with a colouring book as a pass time.  Ever notice that whenever there's a small child and a colouring book, they never lack for an adult to play along with them?  It's because we want to colour too.  We're pretending that it's just us being nice and playing with the child, but that's just a cover-up for our real motive.

What's the lesson you ask?  Don't cheap out on your paper.  If you do, you will be very, very disappointed.  I'm in market mode for cards for the next few weeks, so I decided I would cheap out and buy a package of white cardstock from Michael's to make my money go a little farther.  It was $4.99 for 50 sheets instead of $8.50 for 40 sheets like I get from Stampin' Up.  Lesson learned.  It's more like thick paper than cardstock, and it's not shiny like the SU stuff.  I hadn't realized that the slight sheen of the SU cardstock makes it a nice base for colouring.  When I applied my blender pen to the cheap paper I wasn't able to blend the colours very nicely.

The one on the left is the cheapy paper.  See the lines from the marker?  I hate that.  On the right, the colours blend more subtly into one another, much like a brayer would do.  This is important if you're colouring a larger image with blender pens.  The dark patches are the actual marker to paper, and there's not a huge difference, but the SU paper takes the ink more evenly.  

You can't really see it very well, but the cheap paper also got wet too quickly and started to peel.  Not a very nice thing to have on a special card you've spent time making for someone.  The texture of the paper was all gross once I swiped the little gunk away.

So, take it from me and stick with good quality paper.  I'm going to get some of the watercolour paper on my next order, and I'm looking forward to using my markers on that.