Hi Friends! Today I am going to share a technique that can help you stretch your supplies and this technique work with any wax or oil based colored pencils, even your kid’s Crayola or Prang colored pencils.
I am using the House Mouse stamp Lily Pad Life from Stampendous. These designs are fun to color, my friend Tracey turned me on to these stamps years ago and I am still adding to my collection, I think they are so darling but any stamp that has areas to color will work just as well. Watch the tutorial to see how it’s done!
Video!
Supplies:
Stamps: Stampendous-House Mouse Designs Lily Pad Life
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Medium: Colored Pencils
Blending Solution: Gamsol
Blending Stumps
If you don’t have Gamsol brand solvent you can use odorless mineral spirits (aka paint thinner), goo-gone or baby oil to blend these:) You can also use clear alcohol based markers to blend the pencils but they do not work as well as the other solvents and it can clog the marker. If you have watercolor pencils you can use a water based blender pen, I prefer a water based blending pen (marker) as opposed to a waterbrush because you can control the color better and it leaves the color on the paper rather than washing it away.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Hallmark Scrapbook and Blitsy, 2 shops that have good prices and selection of the products we use a lot. When you make a purchase through these links we earn a small commission on the sale but it doesn’t cost you more, in fact, I try to find the best price for you:) Tip: Blitsy takes competitors 40% off coupons so if you have a big-ticket item to purchase check there first!
Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
The Frugal Crafter Blog 
Super cute! Thanks, as always, for using our products!!
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Very pretty card. House Mouse are so cute.
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will cling mount rubber stamps stick to the acrylic blocks?
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yes, cling mount has cushion and a film that clings to blocks but they are red rubber, not clear.
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or they might be a different color rubber but they are not clear:)
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Lindsay, Thank you for showing us how you use Gamsol. I chose it with colored pencils because Copics are outside my crafting budget. I have a big scrapbooking question. You have mentioned solvents are not good over time. Are colored pencils safe for scrapbooking if I don’t use Gamsol? Does it matter what kind of colored pencils? Also I have an old set of “Prang Professional semi-moist water colors”, a new set of Daler Rowney tube watercolors from Wal-Mart and old Apple Barrel and Folk Art brands acrylic craft paints. Are these safe for scrapbooking? I’ve noticed most on YouTube give little concern to the archival quality of the products they use for scrapbooking. I wrote on the backs of all my pictures years ago b/c of the concern if the picture some how got separated from the album all info would be lost. (We have many old, old family photos with no idea anymore who’s in the picture.) I used fine point Sharpies as the company told me (about 25 years ago) they were photo safe and that you could write on the back with anything b/c today’s photos are coated in plastic on the back. Now I’ve heard that’s not so. Should I write on individual photos at all? I am so far behind and so overwhelmed, I’m about 18 years behind on my photos. I’m estimating 4,000 printed alone before I went digital. I’m about to give up, except that I want to leave something for my two grown children. I am so happy to see that you get your photos in books for your kids to see right away. My son’s whole life has been sitting in envelopes rarely seen. Having dealt with my parent’s and grandparent’s belongings, I can see what time does to things. I’m asking myself if I want to put a lot of my time into scrapbooks and albums if they won’t stand the test of time. Am I thinking about this wrong? Should I just focus on making them to enjoy for now and forget making them archival quality? I’ve always thought if I went to the effort, I wanted to make them last. Thank you for your time. I’m sorry this is so long!
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Personally I would not use solvents on my scrapbook pages, you can use watercolor pencil for the same look though:) I think your watercolors and colored pencils will be fine, the worse that will happen is they will fad but that is unlikely in a closed book. Many professional pencils have a lightfast rating of 100=500 years under notmal conditions and longer closed away from light.
The big culprit in scrapbooks not lasting is acid and adhesives. Use photo safe/acid free adhesive (I use acid free scrapbooking tape from tape depot on everything anyway) and acid free good quality cardstock. Nowadays you will be hard pressed to find acidic cardstock since it is such a selling point to make it acid free. Newspaper clippings can be laminated or sprayed with deacidification spray to keep them from deteriorating too, then I mount them on cardstock just in case to keep acid from migrating.
You can also take a good photo or scan of any scrapbook page you like and have books made from snapfish, shutterfly or mixbook if you want copies.
I absolutely think it is with the effort to preserve these memories. My husband has been scanning old photos and adding them to online ancestry sites and he has found “new” ancestor photos too! We can’t go back in time, our photos are all we have once someone is gone. It is worth preserving them. Just don’t drive yourself crazy trying to scrapbook every photo, some might just go in a photo box with a date on it or a family name so you can find them later if you want.
I am in the habit of printing as I go so I have the good shots handy and am not SOL if I have a computer crash of my phone dies. It is a habit so it is not a huge task. Remember, you do not have the sole responsibility to preserve everything, just do a little bit at a time.
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Thank you for your quick reply! You’ve given me some ideas and direction. Time to stop driving myself crazy over this! Thanks for your help. 🙂
I love your videos and your approach to crafting. Thank you!
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