Gina K Back to School Blog Hop!

The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to a special BACK TO SCHOOL blog hop! Gina, along with the Cast and Crew, will inspire you with many fun cards and projects for your favorite student, their teacher or your friends that are in the teaching profession!

As you hop through Gina and the Cast & Crew blogs, make sure to leave a comment on each of them because we will choose a random comment and that stamper will win their choice of a Gina K Designs stamp set with a value up to $23.95!  To see if you are the winner, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop.  {The blog hop list is at the end of my post}

There are a number of stamp sets from Gina K Designs that you can use to create a welcome, thank you or back to school card. Today, our featured sets are Melanie Muenchinger’s Basket Additions 3 and Beth Silaika’s Keep Calm. There are lots of great images to color and I know you will find the perfect sentiment for Back to School!
For my project, I used Melanie's Basket Additions 3 set with the super cute school image and sentiment peeking out of my pocket card.  Keep scrolling down to see a fun Spectrum Noir Colored Pencil tutorial.

Here's the gift card tab pulled out of the pocket.

Step 1: First I prepared my pocket and insert.  I also stamped my image and trimmed it with scissors.

Step 2: Select colors for the various items of the image - Pencil: 007, 018; Notebook paper - 004; Apple - 25, 28, 33.

Step 3: When coloring the apple, begin with the lightest shade (025) and color the entire apple.  Then add 028 along the edges and slightly toward the middle.  Then add 033 along the outside edge of the apple.

Step 4: Add shades of green on the apple leaf - 045, 048.

Step 5: Color the entire lunch box with the lightest shade of blue 065.  Then add 069 along the edge and toward the middle & 071 along the very edge.

Step 6: Add shades of gray (118, 119) on the handle and edges of the lunch box.

Step 7: Using shades of green (045, 048, 058) to color the notebook.

Step 8: While the colored image looks OK, the color will blend beautifully with Spectrum Noir Blending Solution and paper blending stumps.

Before...

After!!  So much better ... don't you agree?
(by the way, make sure you use a different paper stump for each color family)

Don't forget to visit all of the blog & leave some love for your chance to win!

Gina K

Melanie Muenchinger – Illustrator of Basket Additions 3

Beth Silaika

Cat Tidwell

Karen Hightower

Kendra Wietstock ~ you are here!

Laurie Schmidlin

Sean Fetterman

Tricia Traxler