I took a class at my LSS (Stamp and Scrap Nest in Simsbury, CT) with Dave Brethauer from Memory Box a few weeks ago, and man, was it FUN! He was teaching colored pencil techniques, which I didn't think I really needed since I take studio classes, but I was in the mood for a class and Dave was bringing brand new images to play with. I'm so glad I took the class...he's a great teacher, and I picked up several good tips and tricks.

I just got around to assembling my images into cards last week, and these are a couple of them. Both images are colored and blended with Prismacolor pencils. For the leaves on the branch, we colored green on one end, orange on the other and blended over the entire thing with yellow. The yellow makes the colors absolutely pop!

Except for the scrap of green paper I used for the Cuttlebug embossed mat, all of the paper I used on this card is from Memory Box.

For the bird on the second card, I used the same technique with shades of brown, red and tan, and then used cream for blending. I also used one of my very cool new Cuttlebug border embossing folders on this card.

Most of the paper on this one is from my scrap pile, but the printed paper the image is stamped on is from Memory Box.

So what are the best tips I learned from the class? Well...I think the best was to use another color for blending. Generally speaking you'll want to use a color lighter than the ones you colored with, but get your pencils out and start scribbling. You might be very pleasantly surprised by what you come up with. The other tip I would share is to use your patterned paper! It add so much interest to your image panel and pretty much eliminates the need to do anything with the background.

So get out those pencils are start playing!