Tip-to-Tip and Palette Blending

Hello Everyone and welcome back to another tutorial!  Today I'm going to talk about Tip-to-Tip and Palette blending.  This is a very useful technique to use if working in small areas where you don't have the room to do the usual blending on paper or feathering techniques.  When beginners first see tip-to-tip blending, they are a bit shocked that you can touch your dark and light markers together (or even a colour marker to your blender) - but it's fine, you won't damage your marker!!  The idea is to use your lightest colour or blender marker as your 'brush' for the darker colour, so that when the darker colour is applied to your project it will fade to the lighter colour (or in the case of your blender - fades to white).

Today I've chosen a flower image from JustRite Stampers' Plant a Little Love set with colours Y21 and R59.  The paper is X-press It Blending Card and the image has been stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black.

Because Y21 is the lighter colour, I 'painted' the darker R59 onto Y21.

As you can see, as you use your lighter marker the darker colour eventually fades to the lighter one. (I actually had a bit of R59 on my Y21 because it took me a while to get the photo taken, so it took a few brush strokes to fade.)

This will in no way contaminate your markers or dirty your nibs - just remember to brush off the other colour off your marker and it will be perfectly clean!

The Palette Blending technique goes hand in hand with the Tip-to-Tip technique, however, instead of applying one marker directly to the other, you add the darker colour to a piece of acetate and use that as your palette.  I find this really useful because you can see how much colour you are picking up and have a bit more control.

Once you've got your second colour on your lighter colour, you can colour your image and it will fade from one to the other without the need of the traditional blending technique!

Another great way to use this technique is if you have a lighter and darker colour of the same shade (for example two greens) - by using this technique you'll be able to create a mid-tone shade to fill in that gap for your project!!

Here's my finished project with my R59 and Y21 flowers, R59 centres, a touch of C1 to fill between the flowers and G21, G24 and G28 for my stem and leaves.

Don't forget you only have a few days left to join in the Masculine Challenge this month and have the chance to win a pack of 12 Spica Pens!!!

Hope you've enjoyed today's tutorial and will pop back next week for the next fabulous challenge being hosted by Debra!!

Hugs
Kathy  :)