Review: Neenah vs Craft Perfect Colouring Comparison

In my Halloween Coffin Cards post the other day, I mentioned that I was going to share some tips based on what I discovered whilst colouring the images for my latest batch of Halloween cards, it boils down to another of those I'm so totally rubbish at this, lets give up moments.

Perseverance and a new tack meant that I discovered that it wasn't me being rubbish at the colouring, but it was the cardstock I was using for the job!

I started off using Neenah Classic Crest Solar White card stock that I got from Crafters Companion and My Favorite Things Hybrid Ink pad 'Black Licorice' which works for both water based markers and alcohol based markers.

When I started to colour I was getting frustrated when within minutes the markers were bleeding outside of the image and at that point I wasn't really laying down lots of colour. I tried again this time with Hero Arts 'Intense Black' ink that is specifically alcohol marker friendly and once again the markers bled out of the image and once I'd laid down a darker colour to add depth to the image and I went to blend in, it was dry and wouldn't budge. At this point I was about to chuck in the towel and have a sulk, instead I channeled by Grandad and went and had a cup of tea and thought about the problem.

As I sat sipping my brew I mulled over what I'd done, on the product description for Crafters Companion Neenah it says "This high quality Neenah Classic Crest card is ideal for use with all alcohol based colouring mediums. " Having read that, again I figured it had to be me at fault, I tried again and pressed on and as you can see from this photo CC Neenah card stock is not an ideal card stock to use with Tonic Nuvo alcohol markers!

I decided to have one last go, but this time I opted to change the cardstock to Tonic Craft Perfect Ultra Smooth cardstock, and the difference was incredible! I did the same darker grey line for shading on the Craft Perfect that I did on the Neenah, but on the craft perfect it blended out like a dream, the colours didn't bleed outside the image (see the grey on the Neenah witch's hat) or merge in to each other. Working on the cardstock was different as well, the markers glided across the card and it was easy to control laying down of the colour.

Lesson learned, it wasn't me fluffing up, it was the cardstock that wasn't suited to the markers I was using! If I get time over the next few day I'll try using Promarkers and Spectrum Noir Markers on both lots of cardstock and compare the results. That said, in future when I'm colouring with Nuvo Markers I'll only be using Craft Perfect card stock.

Again I'm thrilled with how the final card came out, my colouring and fussy cutting are getting better and I used up bits from the Maybe Someday box to make the card. A while ago I die cut one of my Tim Holtz dies 'Birch Trees' and I used some black Starlights paint to colour it, when I'd finished and it had dried I decided it was too dark for the project I was working on, so I didn't use it. The panel at the back was another panel I made when I was experimenting with Distress Stains a couple of weeks ago. When the panel was dry I embossed it my Tim Holtz 3D embossing folder 'Lumber', when I accidentally put both pieces together they looked perfect and screamed turn me in to a Halloween card lol! So I did, I have pumpkins on the brain lol!