April Showers May Flowers and Chalk N Stock Challenge

April showers bring May flowers at least here in Texas with all the rain we've had. We went from a severe drought to too much rain in some parts and just enough to get lake levels back up to where they're suppose to be in other parts. This also means an abundance of wildflowers in every color of the rainbow which gave me inspiration for these three cards.

All three digital stamps come from Bugaboo Stamps. I like the design of each stamp and had fun finding different ways to color each one to make thank you cards. Today I'll be going over what I used to color the digital stamps. 

This first card I used Pebbles Cream Chalks to color the flowers and regular chalk to add a touch of color to the background. The background color is very light and that's why it doesn't really show up in this picture. 

I like using chalks because they give a soft color to your stamps and are easy to add shadows. I find cream chalks are darker than regular chalks so regular chalks were nicely for background coloring.

This flower and background I colored using color pencils. I like using colored pencils over alcohol markers because I have better control of blending. The biggest thing with alcohol markers and colored pencils is getting the proper paper to blend on. There are special papers out there for both but you can use regular card stock. You'll notice the colors will have a different appearance depending on what paper type you use. I would search the web for the proper paper types and where to get the best prices if you want to go that way. I just use regular white card stock for mine.

Finally, I used shimmer watercolors. Yes, they do make watercolors that have shimmer or very fine glitter added to them. This makes the whole card shimmer like you've added a glimmer mist but the nice thing is that you get to add the gimmer in the color you want to just the areas you want. The downside is that it's hard to get those shadow effects that are popular in chalk, colored pencil, and alcohol coloring. I picked up the shimmer watercolors at Michaels a year or so ago so I can't remember how much they were but I know not that much and I probably had a coupon to make them even cheaper or I wouldn't have gotten them to try.

I hope I have inspired you to try something new with your stamping and coloring and if you use chalk or decide to use chalk this month, please enter the May challenge at Chalk N Stock.

If you have any comments, I would love to hear them. 

Thanks for stopping by today.