Copic Technique Journal--Hair Combinations

Welcome to the Third Copic Technique Journal Tutorial here on the Copic Oz Blog, I hope these features have got you thinking about building your own Technique Journal.  Along the way we have provided you with ideas for colour combinations, and skin combinations; and a series of FREE Templates for you to either place in your X-Press It Blending Journal (filled with X-Press It Blending Card) or for you to build your own journal.

With each technique we are also encouraging you to “have a go” and let us know how you have made your Technique Journal come to life.  We provide an InLinkz facility at the end of each blog post, and choose a winner from each technique to receive a FREE X-Press It Blending Journal.  The winner from the Skin Combinations tutorial is Alshandra, congratulations… please email Sascha with your postal address to claim you prize.

This time we are focussing on hair and adding our favourite combinations to our Technique Journal.  I have samples of dark hair, and you will be able to see Kathy’s Light Hair and Kate’s Fantasy Hair samples in the InLinkz Tool below… once again we are providing you with FREE Copic Blending Templates.  Simply print these onto X-Press It Blending Card, and get started:

Hair Combinations Copic Blending Template—Portrait

Hair Combinations Copic Blending Template—Landscape

These print on a whole A4 Sheet of X-Press It Blending Card, simply cut in half and they fit nicely into your Journal.

Hair is always a huge challenge for me, particularly trying to modernise hair on the images I colour.  I have always had hair that is just one colour, as in a solid colour, but today so many people have mixed hair colours, this is what I worked on in my sample page today. 

I have also built my hair samples so that I can reference the order in which my colours are applied, as I regularly forget the order in which you apply the colours, changes the outcome.  I always do a bit of extra blending (and streaking) at the end, but these examples will head me in the right direction when I need it.

Line 1—Standard Brown Tones

Line 2—Brown Tones with a Dark Blonde Under-Glow

Line 3—Brown Tones with Red Highlights

I like to keep “Stamped Examples” close to each of my Technique/Colour Combination Pages, given I chose to use three of the little ladies on the template to show the series of colour application, I opted to stamp my images on separate pieces of Blending Card, and tab them ready for inserting behind the journal page.  This is easily achieved by securing the Hair Combinations Template to the Journal using X-Press It Double Sided Tape, in channels, as shown below.

This creates a perfect cavity to hold the sample, which slides in and out with ease.  A little trick if you plan on storing more than one sample in each slot is to double up the layers of Double Sided Tape, the more layers of tape you use, the more examples you can fit in…. or use foam tape if you intend on storing a thick stash… I plan to put the colour combo that will follow (back onto) this one, on the next page, straight onto the back of this tabbed beauty, keeping the amount of loose items to a minimum.

I used three different Marci Girls stamps from La La Land, one for each of my colour combinations:

Sugar n Spice Marci for Standard Brown Tones

Winter Marci for Brown Tones with Blonde Under-Glow

Marci Ballerina for Brown Tones with Red Highlights

And for some further inspiration here are some links to some previously highlighted hair colour techniques/combinations:
Copic Hair and Skin Wheel
All About Hair Challenge
Have a Good Hair Day

Colouring Hair with Texture

So now it is over to you, similarly to last time, we are calling upon participants to show us how they sample hair colours in their Technique Journal, feel free to use the provided template, or your approach to hair colour combos!  Most importantly, link up using the InLinkz tool below, we will award a FREE Blending Journal to the most impressive entry, and announce the lucky winner in two weeks, at the start of our next Copic Tutorial, Goodluck!!

And for those of you in Brisbane and the surrounds, we are counting down the sleeps until the Scrapbook Expo on June 10, 11 and 12.  Come visit us at the X-Press Graph-X Stand and touch base with all things Copic.

In the mean time I hope you are inspired to get busy building your Copic Technique Journal!!

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Copics are a Die Cut Delight

The next time you have scraps of X-Press It Blending Card put them to good use by matching them up with your Die Cuts, in this case I have matched a flower to background papers by taking perfect white blending card and colouring different layers of the flower to match the background paper.  The outer petals in 100 Black and the inner petals in R12 Light Tea Rose.

Imagine the variety of blossoms you can build by colouring your Blending Card... colour matched embellishments every time!Pin It

Colour Co-ordinate Your Embellishments

I am sure we have all felt a little frustration from time to time over not having the exact matching embellishment for your work… “just the wrong shade” is too often disappointing!!  The Copic colour palette is impressive and your saviour for these situations… flowers, charms, ribbon, pearls and rhinestones are all accepting of a little make-over!

In today’s project I have focused on bringing out the pink tones in the background paper.  I originally selected the Heritage Script 3 and Floral papers from my FabScraps stash because of the little pieces of kraft poking through on the papers.  There was a strong sense of purple in the two papers I used, so to balance that I brought a good splash of pink to the lovely Magnolias by Flourishes, choosing my markers to align with the pinks in the far background.

I masked and added an additional flower and foliage to the main image so that it would sit in the corner and extend on two sides of the focal square element.  This allowed me to build square layers from the inside out, very simply with paper and kraft card.  It is easy to bring contrast and co-ordination to your layering card by applying the Copic colours used in your main image.  In this project, I used three different shades of pink, with the lightest shade on the top layer (RV21), middle on the middle layer (RV32), working back to the darkest shade (RV34).  Because you are layering the FabScraps paper on top of each kraft layer, you only need to use the thickness of the marker around each edge.  The layers are secured with X-Press It Double Sided Tape and once assembled you wouldn’t know that it is just the edges that hold colour.

FabScraps Embellishments are really versatile, and even more so when you use the colours from your main image to bring a touch more life and a good dash of co-ordination to your elements.  For this project I selected a couple of wooden buttons, white pearls in different sizes, a clear rhinestone, and a brass butterfly charm.  It’s great to have products from the same manufacturer that you can customise to suit your papers and coloured image… I added RV32 and RV34 to the pearls and rhinestone, using one coat on some and many coats on others, the more coats the more dense the colour will look.  With the metal butterfly I wanted to keep the brass undertone and applied one coat of R34 to provide a sheen of pink to this element.  The smaller of the wooden buttons was coloured first with RV32 and then I applied RV34 to the centre to provide depth.  The larger of the wooden buttons featured a bright red flower, I stripped the colour from this flower by first using a Colourless Blender and then adding colour back in with RV34.  All little touches of colour that help to both co-ordinate and add variety to your FabScraps Embellishments.

Here are the Copic Markers I used in my project today:

• Image Flowers: 0, R000, RV21, RV32, RV34, RV69, BV29, E27
• Image Leaves: 0, G46, YG63, YG67, E27
• Image Stems:  YG93, YG95, E27
• Image Shading:  B0000, BG000
• Embellishments:  0, RV21, RV32, RV34
• Cardstock:  RV21, RV32, RV34

I hope you enjoyed this little parade of colour, and can see the many possibilities that Copic can help you achieve when co-ordination is next a must!

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