Review: Chromatek Watercolour Brush Pens

As a crafter and relatively new colourer, there is nothing worse than having a favourite brand of pens you start to use to learn techniques with and learn to became better at your craft, to then have them become discontinued, harder to obtain or rocket in price, my up to now favourite watercolour pens have been Zig but they have become harder to get in the UK especially open stock. So in December last year I started casting my eyes around for alternative brands of water brush colour pens.

First I tried Arteza and they were disappointing on a few levels, the major disappointment was the way they blended (not very well), and good luck finding a colour name or number on the pen barrel to make it easy to swatch or see which colour your using whilst working if shades are similar! Then I saw a set on Amazon by a company called Chromatek. I have to be honest and say that initially I thought that the pens were made by the same company that makes Zig's and were just a budget brand, but I was very wrong!

Lots of reviewers out there focus on colouring with the pens, not being the best colourer in the world and liking to experiment, compare and test as well as seeing what the companies that are getting my hard earned cash are like to deal with, my review is a little different. Before I go any further I must stress that I HAVE NOT been paid to review these pens by Chromatek, nor do I get any kick back or affiliation perks from reviewing them. I paid for the pens myself and my opinions are all my own, that given I believe that Chromatek are a breath of fresh air in the desert of craft suppliers!

From what I've gleaned so far, the customer is very important to them, they seem to go out of their way to provide customers with all the tools they need to explore their creative water colouring side, quality, access to information, customer service is all brilliant.

On their website https://www.chromatek.net/ the first page sets the tone of what you can expect from Chromatek once you've purchased your pens from them, they say that their aim is: -

• To provide you with the highest quality art supplies at a reasonable price.
• To provide you with comprehensive video tutorials and downloads to ignite your imagination and get you colouring, drawing, painting and most importantly PROGRESSING faster than ever before.
• To be here for you if you need any additional support or have any problems with your products.

True to their claim the website has tutorials for using all their products with helpful videos so you can see the techniques in action like the one below, they also provide some downloads and the 26 and 54 set come with a a watercolour pad with 6 lessons in. Mine didn't, I got a pad of high quality water colour paper but not the tutorial pad. I contacted Chromatek via their Facebook page and the friendly person who responded told me there should have been a postcard with the details to access the tutorials on, and they gave me the details of the url I needed to access the tutorials, and also informed me that moving forward they intend to ship the pre-printed tutorial pads with all the pen sets.😁

So to the pens...... Zig Real Brush pens contain water-based dye ink and Chromatek is also the same (although not the same formulation) Chromatek describe what is inside their pens as paint and that's what it is a paint pigment mixed with water. When I use Zig's I usually use the ink straight from the pens, blend colours together and sometimes blend with a sparkle pen, very rarely do I blend using a water brush, so I don't have a lot of experience water colouring with water based dye ink pens, Chromatek pens if you view the tutorials lay down some ink then blend out with a water brush pen to dilute and move the ink and create shades and tones of colour, and that's what they are designed to do. You can of course use them undiluted but just be aware that you will use up the ink inside the pens a lot quicker than if you use them how they are intended to be used.

Crafters that know me, know that I'm a bit of an ink queen, I like to try everything in my efforts to find the best tools for me to use. I now have 3 different brands of watercolour brush pens by Arteza, Zig (Kuretake) and Chromatek. As I mentioned above the Arteza pens were a regrettable purchase, they are something I will let my Granddaughters play with when they visit because I don't like the way they perform at all.

Arteza pens also contain a lot less pigment than Zig or Chromatek and to my mind Arteza blend patchy as can be seen in the photo here. I tried to chose colours that were similar in all three types of pens, which was hard. I don't want this to become a three way comparison, but I thought it useful to share some basic observations between the three brands.

Putting them side to side, Chromatek and Zig pens look very similar, so you can see why I thought they were the same company? The brush nibs on Zig's are finer than Chromatek and appear to contain less in the way of bristles. It's still possible to get fine lines with the Chromatek if you use a light touch. Chromatek's appear to have a little less pigment than Zig's but lots more than Arteza pens.

That said, there is something about the formula of the Chromatek blends that makes then blend out a lot smoother than Zig's. If you check out the look at the 2 thin lines in this photo you can see how much more evenly blended the ink is after being allowed to dry for a few minutes then gone over with a water brush.

The Chromatek do leave behind a line when blended out after allowing them to dry, but they do not bleed colour like the Zig's do! I think that the Chromatek blend out a lot more evenly, although the colour doesn't stay as bright as Zig's after blending, but I think that is a good thing, the images coloured with Chromatek's look more like a water coloured image and less like something done with alcohol markers. Another positive for me with the Chromatek is both the colour number and the colour name can be read clearly on the barrel of the pen, Zig's are labelled but the info is a lot harder to read, clear readable names make it easier for old eyes like mine to be able to grab the right colour and just get on with it!

I did a few tests as can be seen in this photo, all my swatching for this review was done on Crafters Companion Water Colour Card, I know that some of the people who review in the USA use different brands, but they aren't as easily (or cheaply) available here and CC water colour card is easy to obtain for me.

The first is straight out of the box just scribbling on the paper with the pen, the ink flows beautifully and you can do a couple of layers with no piling of your watercolour card. Next I've used the pens to draw lines, the way you hold the brush and how heavy or light your pressure is when you touch the pen to paper will dictate how fine your line is. As I mentioned previously Zig markers have a finer brush so you can get thinner lines, but the Chromatek pens can achieve fine lines as well.

My next test was to blend the No. 38 Azure pen to bottom of my test area and the No. 41 Fuchsia pen to the top then take the Fuchsia pen and blend up from Azure into the Fuchsia to blend them together to make a lovely rich purple. As you can see in the next test area I then took the Fuchsia brush and scribbled on the card stock until the Fuchsia colour ran true again and it didn't take that long.

My next test we to lay down 2 green colours No. 37 Green and No. 36 Fluorescent Green and then use the water brush to blend the colour out. I also turned the green 90 degrees after it had dried and added more water.  Next I took the green pen and just touched the water brush to it a couple of times and coloured that way, a great way to add some subtle colour without the risk of ending with with a harsh line.

Finally I added two green boxes a test area and I then blended out the second box to see how far the ink will travel. You can see with lots of water the No. 37 Green goes a delightful mint green colour. In short I tested the Chromatek pens with all the techniques I'd use and I am thrilled with the results, Chromatek pens also blend well when added direct to card and then blended out with a shimmer pen, one of my favourite techniques 💖

Now to price, a picked up my 54 set for £29.99 off Amazon (a set of 28 contains 27 colours plus 1 water brush), I must add though before anyone gets confused there are only 50 colours in the pack, the other 4 pens are water brush pens.

You can see the official colour swatch from Chromatek here to see all the colours in the 54 set. I would like to see some more greens, blues and more pastel colours, but for the price the colour range is pretty good and you can blend colours to create yet more colours.

As I mentioned above, the Amazon description said that a water colour tutorial pad was included with the set to go along with the online videos, but I got an A5 blank pad (15 sheets) of 300gsm Cold Pressed Water Colour Paper instead. A little disappointing as I was looking forward to following the tutorials, but the pad I got is very high quality. Despite that fact, I think the 54 set is very good value, a set of 48 Zig's costs around £56 and you get no water brushes or card and there is very little support for using Zig's given by the actual company, so less than £30 for a set of 50 pens, 4 brushes, proper watercolour paper to work on AND tailored tutorials and support is very, very good value in my opinion.

By comparison Zig provide a "How to Use" guide on their website, but there are no tutorials or support or further information about Zig's 😞on the other hand Chromatek's website contains so much more product information, but more importantly LOTS of inspiration for using the pens. On top of that, Chromatek offer a money back guarantee, so if you're not happy with the pens (and you have done all the course work from the 6 tutorials and can provide evidence that you have done that) and do that before 30 days have elapsed after your purchase you will get your money back. Which is good, but if you're like me and didn't get the tutorial images and have had illness, Christmas and other things stopping you doing all the tutorials within 30 days its not so good, maybe a little more time would be useful, but its more than a lot of companies do.

As I said above, I would like to see more colours added to the range and would also like to see the pens available open stock (sold individually), the good news is that when I reached out to them yesterday Chromatek responded really quickly and told me that they hoped to be selling the pens open stock in the future YAY! So if you're like me and have favourite colour combo's (in my case blues/pinks/purples). I am so impressed with my Chromatek Watercolor Brush pen set that I'm going to invest in a set of their glitter pens next, for value for money, colour range and versatility, not to mention customer support, I think that Chromatek Watercolour Brush Pens could become my go to pens.

Nuvo Expanding Mousse vs Andy Skinner Lava Paste

I love creating things but for some unknown reason (maybe I was a chemist in another life?) I love to see how products work and I love comparing like with like to see if they give the same results or different, this comparison is all Jen Kray's fault, she asked how the two compare and I wasn't sure so I thought I'd do a test!

As both products were new to me I went in blind with no preconceptions of how the two products would perform, at the start of the comparison I didn't have a preference for either product, but I do now! Before I continue I want to say that my opinions are my own, nobody gave me the products to try or is paying me to try them, I bought them myself and I'm doing this to share with others who are Lava Curious lol! If anybody clicks on my affiliate links below I will get a little money from their purchase but this doesn't cost them anything.

So now I've done my public I'm an affiliate thing, lets start the comparison shall we? I started out taping a 6" x 6" square of black card stock to my glass media mat and dividing it in to two sections. I used a Tonic Nuvo Media Spatula to work with both products, the two products for comparison are Tonic Studios Nuvo Expanding Mouse in Worn Linen (62.5g, RRP £6.99) and Cosmic Shimmer Andy Skinner Lava Paste (50ml, RRP £4.99) both products available from Craft Stash via my affiliate links above.

Consistency wise Lava Paste (LP) is runnier than Expanding Mousse (EM), LP is similar to mayonnaise whilst  EM is more like buttercream, its stiffer to work with and to load on to your spatula.

I first applied the LP to the card and moved on to the EM. I don't know what the actual formulation of either of these products are, but I will hazard a guess that LP has more water in it than EM. By the time I'd finished applying the EM, the LP had soaked in to the card stock a little and I was worried I'd let it dry out too much so I thought I'd start heating the LP first.

Almost as soon as I started wafting the heat gun over the LP it started to react to the heat and 'puff' up there isn't a better term for it its like watching liquid popcorn create a pattern because that's the texture you end up with and its fun!

I've made a little video, this is only my second video so be gentle with me, I have a little way to go yet to get my videos right, the first was just still images with captions, so this one is an improvement and has some real time footage albeit speeded up. I now realise that being right handed the camera should have been on my left, and closer to the piece I was working on and I could do with better lighting and a microphone so I can do some chatting rather than having to caption. I'll get there eventually 😂 For illustration purposes you can see the results, sorry that my hand is in the way and you have to spend a lot of time looking at a large part of me 😊

I put the same depth of mousse/paste on the card using a stencil, it seemed only fair to test them using the same depth of product, I have to say I was amazed at the results. I truly expected them to both perform the same but they didn't!

The EM hardly did anything, you can see from the close up that just a few areas expanded above the initial level, now it could be that you're expected to add a thicker/rougher amount of Expanding Mousse for it to give a dramatic effect, but as I'd be using it with stencils most of the time I tested the products with the things I use them with. There was also a little 'bleeding' under the stencil with the EM, all the heat gun seemed to do on the EM was dry it off, it hardly reacted at all which was rather disappointing and I should add here that both the EM and LP were brand new unopened pots prior to this comparison. There was very little dimension and you could only just feel that there was a difference in texture from the card to the product applied.

Nuvo Expanding Mousse

By comparison the Lava Paste did an outstanding job at rising to the occasion, the same amount of product added as the EM rose to 3 times its height and had lovely popcorn bubble patterns all over, with no bleeding under the stencil, it was easier to apply as well. Once dried it has an absolutely gorgeous texture, its like the kind of patterning you get on blown vinyl wallpaper, you can press down on it (once dry) and the pattern springs back, its a lot more tactile as well, LP invites you to stroke it and play with it, EM left me with a Ughhh what's that reaction, its like running your hand over fluffy hard clouds vs running them over light sand paper, one is nice, the other not so unless you like running your hands over sandpaper lol!

Andy Skinner Lava Paste

If you look at this photo you can see a little more of the dimension of the two side by side, see how much more raised the Lava Paste is compared to the Expanding Mousse? You can also see more of the texture as well.

Expanding Mousse <---                                   -----> Lava Paste

The two swatches and products used.

Once both of the products were completely dry, I decided to add a few mediums to them to see how they would react, I started by masking off a third of the area and spraying it with water to which I sprinkled some Cherry Bomb Nuvo Shimmer Powder on to the surface and gave it another spray of water to move the powder around. The shimmer powder seemed to just sit on top of the dry expanding mousse. On the dry lava paste it sunk into areas, clung to others and allowed the texture to still show through.

Next I painted another third with some Iridescent Red Blue Pebeo Dyna acrylic paint, there was not much difference in how the products took the paint, but it looked less impressive to my mind on the flatter expanding mousse.

The final third of the test swatch I sprayed with Lava Red (how appropriate lol) Cosmic Shimmer Mist and once dry I rubbed a corner with some Empire Gold Pebeo Gilding Wax. You can see from the photo below that the gilding wax covered more of the EM and the card because there was very little texture to hold it above the card stock. By comparison the gilding wax on the Lava Paste gave a much better definition. I just quickly applied both with my finger tip, so wasn't massively accurate because it was just a test piece, I'd be more accurate on a project.

In this photo the Expanding Mousse is on the top of the picture and the Lava Paste at the bottom.

Because the Lava Paste has more texture it seemed to take the things I applied much better than the Expanding Mousse.

It's true to say that there are so many other things I could have tried, gelato's, distress crayons, and a variety of other paints and mediums, and each product may react differently, some things may work better on the Expanding Mouse rather than the Lava Paste and vice versa.

However, the products I've used here are ones I use in my projects (or variations of). One thing in Nuvo's favour is the Expanding Mousse comes in a variety of colours, Lava Paste is only available in the one colour. So me being me I thought I'd fiddle and see if it can be coloured and if it still works in the same way it did in its natural state before being coloured?

I took two blobs of Lava paste out on to my glass mat, and I added a wet medium (Chipped Sapphire Distress Reinker (yes I know I spelt it wrong on my test swatch lol), and a dry medium (Violet Brocade Nuvo Shimmer Powder). Now keep in mind that I didn't use a stencil just wiped on to a piece of card so the depth and coverage was a bit uneven. Both mediums mixed in well on the mat, I applied to the card stock and heat dried, the Lava Paste still did react, but adding the colours in my opinion has interfered with the way the Lava Paste works, so much so it rubbed off the cardstock. The white of the product wants to still fight through as well, giving a chalky washed out look, so I would add the paste neat and colour it afterwards, it gives a much better result.

So there you have it, Lava Paste comes out tops for me and as this is the first time I've played with Mr Skinner's products I can't wait to play some more. I should also add that when I washed the stencil off I used just warm water in the sink and rubbed my fingers on the stencil, all of the Lava Paste came off but some of the Expanding Mousse stayed behind. Sorry Tonic but in this instance you're not my favourite brand. Ease of use,  ease of cleaning and the dimension and texture make Lava Paste the winner hands down. Think I better stock up on the Lava Paste because I can see me going through a lot of it in the not too distance future.

Review: Koh-i-Noor Polycolor, Prismacolor & Spectrum Noir Colour Blend Pencils

When I first got my hands on the Koh-I-Noor Polycolor pencils, it was under the mistaken belief that they were oil based pencils similar to Faber Castell Polychromos pencils (but much cheaper), there are several YouTube videos and tutorials out there that compare polycolor with polychromos which started me off on the wrong path. But as I worked with the pencils and did further research, I discovered that Koh-I-Noor Polycolor pencils are in actual fact wax based, they do have an oily coating to help improve the performance of the pencil though, I put two and two together after reading the product description of the pencils on the Koh-I-Noor website: -

"The key components of POLYCOLOR professional coloured pencils are rich, top quality with perfectly dispersed pigments, carefully selected and purchased from renowned producers around the world. Their light permanency and dosed concentration also influence the final result and durability of the artwork. Therefore, a high concentration of pigment dosing has been prescribed for this product in its entire colour range. The final product is resistant to water thanks to the oily treatment.

This gives our coloured pencils, along with the addition of binders and other additives, an unsurpassable ability to make a unique stroke on paper or another medium. The pencils contain a set of unique components which ensure a convenient, full colour stroke without the necessity of high pressure. This handy feature is enhanced by the preparation of pastels in special oils. Thanks to the diameter of the lead, 3.8 mm, POLYCOLOR coloured pencils provide excellent artistic value to any user. Noble wood, from which the pencils are made, allows easy sharpening." So a better comparison for the Polycolor would be Prismacolor and Spectrum Noir Colour Blend, two wax based pencil brands that are available for sale in the UK, which is good really as I own a set of 24 Prismacolor Pencils, and a set of SN Colour Blend but only about 8 Polychromos, so I can do a few test swatches to share.

Sanford Prismacolor have been around for a while they were first made by Berol back in 1938, then in 1995 the Newell Company joined forces with Berol and merged to become a branch of the Sanford Corporation. Prismacolor are marketed as artist grade premium colour pencils, and have 150 colours in their pencil rainbow. They are sold in sets and come in tins with plastic trays inside the tin that holds the pencils. A set of 72 can be picked up on Amazon for less that £47.00, and you can buy the colours individually for around £1.50 - £1.90 each. The leads in the Prismacolor pencils are 3.8mm and the barrel has a diameter of 8mm, as of today I haven't been able to discover which wood the barrels of Prismacolor pencils are made from, if I do I'll add the info to this post. I do know that there has been a lot of problems with the Prismacolor since the company moved the manufacturing of them to Mexico several years ago and they have fallen from arty favour a little over the past few years.

Spectrum Noir Colour Blend pencils are part of the Crafters Companion family of crafting products and have 144 colours in their rainbow. They only come is sets of 12 and 24 ranging in price from £15 to £25 a set, you can pick up sale and bundle bargains, but if a particular colour runs out, you have to buy another set because they don't currently sell the pencils individually. The lead in the ColourBlend pencils is 4mm and the barrel has a diameter of 8mm, the barrels are made from Californian Cedarwood.

Koh-I-Noor Polycolor Pencils have 92 colours in their rainbow (as of May 2019) 72 of which are available in the coloured sets, plus Koh-I-Noor do a couple of sets of greys and brown tones and some of the colours in those sets (but not all) aren't in the coloured bundles, because of this unless you don't already have the duplicate colours already it may be better to buy the additional ones open stock rather than in the 12 sets.

I picked up the 36 set for just over £18 off Amazon when they were on special offer, a 72 set on Amazon is currently £39.96 marked down from £90. The lead in the Polycolor pencils is 3.8mm the same as Prismacolor and the barrel has a diameter of 7mm and is made from Noble Fir.

A lot of reviews for Koh-I-Noor Polycolor pencils say that they are not available open stock, meaning you can buy a single pencil colour instead of a whole set. However, I have found them available for 83p each from Cult Pens, and there are a few other places in the UK that you can find them open stock, that said I like Cult Pens, they are one of the cheapest places online in the UK for brands like Copic Ciao and Polychromos and they have the cheapest prices and a fast and reliable service. The Cult Pens page linked to above has a drop down that lists all 92 Polycolor colours by number and colour name. The sets that come in boxes only have the numbers on, but open stock pencils have the number and colour on them apparently, although I've seen some examples that don't so until I order some more I won't know for certain.

Speaking of colours, for some reason known only to the manufacturers, the colours on Koh-I-Noor's Polycolor Colour Chart run 0 - 72 (0 being the blender pencil), but on the open stock pencils we can buy in the UK the numbers aren't linear, instead they have numbers that leap around. To keep track of my Polycolor pencils I've created a printable document with the 72 main pencil numbers and colours on with a space for adding a small example swatch of the pencil colour. If you'd like a copy you can download it here Koh-I-Noor Polycolor Pencil Colour Swatch Chart.

Again there is a discrepancy in that some English speaking art supply websites list different colour names and numbers for the pencils. I've tried doing some translations of the colours listed in Czechoslovakian on the Koh-I-Noor website to no avail, I need to see if some kind soul can give me some literal translations. If in the future I discover that the colour name I've listed is incorrect then I'll update my chart.

All three brands are blend-able with products like Gamsol, Sansador and baby oil, Crafters Companion do their own blending solution that costs around £6 for 75ml. All three brands are light fast. Koh-I-Noor Polycolor pencils are supposed to provide excellent light fastness and water resistance (although YouTube and various internet sources have people saying that they aren't light fast) however the manufacturers website states that the Polycolor Pencils do have "light permanency").

Furthermore on the colour chart on the Koh-I-Noor website each colour has a series of stars, the stars relate to the light permanency of the colour with 1 star having the least amount and 4 stars the most, you can see which pencil is more light fast by clicking on the link.

Another difference between the three brands is that Prismacolor and Colour Blend pencils have round barrels, whilst the barrels of the Polycolor pencils are hexagonal as per my photo above. Which means, for me anyway, the Polycolor are far better because they don't roll away from me when I put them down on the desk, Prismacolor and ColourBlend have a tendency to roll off the desk, hit the floor and break if I'm not  careful 😢

Additionally, both the Prismacolor and Polycolor pencils have a barrel that shows the colour of the lead as true to the colour as the coating can get, but the ColourBlend pencils don't, the white ColourBlend pencil has a tip where the white looks almost pale grey as can be seen in the above photo and isn't an accurate representation of the colour that the pencil lays down.

It was a little difficult to do a proper hue for hue colour test as the sets all contain different colours, so in the end I went for the lightest and darkest pink and green shades from each set to colour the stamped images.

For my test I used 3 different card stocks: -

White = Crafters Companion Neenah Classic Crest Solar White, 216gsm.

Kraft = Tonic Studios Craft Perfect Brown Kraft Card, 280gsm.

Black = Limetree Crafts 'True Black' black card stock which is 300gsm and my go to black card stock for doing almost everything where I want a black base.

For the image I used a clear stamp that came free with issue 191 of Simply Cards & Papercraft, and for each test strip I stamped the images using a Tonic Studios Nuvo Clear Mark Embossing Pad and added some WOW! Super Fine Clear Gloss Embossing Powder, I wanted to focus just on the colour pencils and not highlight the stamp with gold, silver of black edges. Pencil colours/shades used I'm listing here and I'm listing the lightest first, the colours used were as follows: -

Koh-I-Noor Polycolor - Leaves (22 & 25), Flowers (131 & 177).
Prismacolor - Leaves (True Green & Grass Green), Flowers (Pink & Mulberry).
ColourBlend - Leaves (Jade & Pistachio), Flowers (Vivid Pink & Pink Violet).

I also added some squares of the white pencil for each brand to show the opacity. The top white square was blended with gamsol on all three swatches, the 2nd white is just as it comes out of the pencil, and I added a small swatch of the lightest pink of each brand. In Prismacolor's favour, I think the white pencil in their set is a more brilliant white than the others and I think I'd still use that along side my white Polychromos pencil to add highlights to images.

All 3 brands were blended using Gamblin Gamsol and Spectrum Noir Paper Stumps. I laid down a single layer of each colour starting with the darkest first then shading the lighter colour around it before using the paper stump and gamsol to blend the pencil colour smooth.

You can see the results of each colour pencil on the 3 different card stocks above, I want to focus on the results obtained on the black cardstock and specifically the opacity of the pencils. Once the applied gamsol had dried out the pencil with the most vibrant colour was the Polycolor, something I did notice was when I blended the Prismacolor and the ColourBlend with the Gamsol, the colour lifted off and resembled small flakes, the kind you get when you've used a rubber on pencil. There was no flaking with the Polycolor, the colours blended smoothly in to each other.

The Prismacolor did keep more of the light to dark gradation, but they were not as opaque as the Polycolor. The ColourBlend pencils are a lot more translucent than the other two brands, they work better on the lighter coloured cardstock, and personally I don't think that they are a good choice for using on darker cardstock, not unless you are going to add a layer of white first and build up a couple of layers of colour, which is fine if you want to take the time, but not if you want to do some quick colouring.

Polycolor pencils on Kraft cardstock

I've been using the ColourBlend and the Prismacolor for a while off and on, and until now Prismacolor were my go to wax pencils over the ColourBlend due to the opacity of the colour that Prismacolor has. But I'm afraid the Prisma's are going to get a lot less use in the future now that I've discovered Polycolor pencils!

Polycolor's lay down a nice amount of colour without the need for applying heavy pressure and the pencils can be sharpened to a fine point, without crumbling, I found the Polycolor a lot easier to sharpen than the Prismacolor and I think some of that is down to the lead being not as soft as Prismacolor and the wood being better quality, the fact you can get a nice point to the pencil when sharpened makes them really useful for adding details and working on small intricate images.

They also don't leave a wax bloom, at least not that I've seen so far, although the Prismacolor and ColourBlend do if you add a lot of colour. The rose example above was worked on Papermania Kraft cardstock using Gamsol and paper stumps to blend the colours.

The colours blend in to each other really easily and I found them very easy to use, they do leave a little dust (bits of pencil lead) if you apply the colour too heavily, but if you use a light touch they go on like a dream. I found its better to lay down colour, blend it out then add more colour on top if you want more saturation of colour.

They have a nice creamy feel and go on really smooth, the fact that there are less colours to chose from than the two other brands isn't really an issue because the Polycolor pencils blend together so well to help you achieve other shades and hues having less colours isn't really a problem. You can also use a standard eraser (the kind you would use to erase graphite pencil) to remove the colour! The colour doesn't go totally, there is a slight waxy residue left, but you can see the results of 3 shades being laid down a pale grey, dark green and a pink and one pass of a cheap eraser.

Two of the colours listed in the open stock Polycolor colours are Silver and Gold, I don't know if they are metallic or not, when I buy them I will update this post, I've now purchased them, and Polycolor #40 Gold and #39 Silver are indeed metallic pencils and work beautifully. I now intend to add all the Polycolor pencil colours to my stash, for the money they are fabulous quality and I can see me getting a lot of use out of them. Prismacolor definitely have metallic colours but only a silver and gold, and ColourBlend don't currently have any metallic colours, although Crafters Companion do do a set of 12 metallic pencils that can be blended with Gamsol, but they aren't part of the Colour Blend family and they are not as vibrant as Prismacolor or Polycolor.

So in summation and sorry for this mammoth post but I wanted to do a proper comparison, if you want a good quality blendable wax pencil with a good range of colours that give brilliant results then look in to acquiring a set of Polycolor pencils, maybe buy a few open stock colours before you plump for a full set, I think they are excellent value for money and they are now my new go to pencil colouring best friend! And before I go, nobody has paid me to review these pencils, nor have a I received any freebies or incentives to review, the review is based on my personal opinion of products I have bought myself to use in my projects.

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!

Review: Canon Pixma TS8151 All-in-One Wireless Inkjet Printer

There seems to be a desert of information when it comes to discovering a printer that is useful for a cardmaker come papercrafter, as I doscovered when I started to look, so I thought it may be a good idea to do a post on my latest purchase and my discoveries.

When I first started crafting in 2014 I had an Epson Stylus DX4850 Printer that enabled me to print on heavyweight card stock, sadly it died a death back at the beginning of 2015, so I purchased an HP Envy 4500 e‑All‑in‑One Printer, the attraction for me was their Instant Ink scheme, you pay an amount per month (I chose the £3.49 plan which allows you to print 100 pages a month), the printer reports on your ink levels and ink is sent out to you before you need it.

The day after my HP purchase I tried to print on some 250gsm card stock and was very soon disappointed, the card went through the printer and only half the design was printed, on some occasions it printed cock eyed, on others it just sucked the card in and spat it out again with NOTHING on it! At first I thought it was something that I was doing wrong, so I investigated every avenue and that's when I discovered that front loading printers like the HP Envy won't print on anything above 200gsm if you're lucky, 160gsm is the weight that is the maximum for decent print coverage.

So for over 3 years I've soldiered on, and if I needed to print out toppers I did it on lightweight paper or card and backed them on to mats to stiffen them up a bit, it was good for printing out backing papers but the colours were never true to the image I was printing. It was what I had, so its what I had to use, then a couple of weeks ago I wanted to print off some photos for some gift projects I was working on and no matter what I did, I could not get the HP printer to print on the photo paper, even the HP branded stuff.

I was stressing out really badly, when hubby appeared and suggested that maybe it was time for a new printer? I didn't want to just go out and buy any old printer, so I drew up a list of requirements, I knew I wanted the new printer to be able to print on 300gsm cardstock or greater if possible and it had to be able to print on photo paper giving good results. It had to be able to feed paper in from the front and rear and also be easy to set up and maintain, I'm tech savvy but not a tech wizard.

The printer also had to work with Windows 10, have easy to use software and a good level of support from the company if something went wrong. I asked around on a couple of card making groups and the Canon Pixma series seemed to be highly recommended. So I went shopping and came home with a Canon Pixma TS8151. The specs for my printer are taken from the Canon website and I've added them here in case they discontinue this model in future.

MAXIMUM PAPER INPUT	Rear Tray: A4, A5, B5, LTR, LGL, 20 x 25cm, 13 x 18cm, 10 x 15cm, 13 x 13cm, Envelopes (DL, COM10) Front cassette: A4, A5, B5, LTR.
PAPER TYPES	Plain Paper Canon High Resolution Paper (HR-101N) Canon Pro Platinum (PT-101) Canon Plus Glossy II (PP-201) Canon Pro Luster (LU-101) Canon Plus Semi-gloss (SG-201) Canon "Everyday Use" (GP-501) Canon Matte (MP-101) Envelopes Other Fine Art Papers Printable Discs.
PAPER WEIGHT	Rear Tray: Plain paper 64 - 105 g/m², Canon photo paper up to 300 g/m² Front Cassette: Plain Paper: 64-105 g/m2.
SHEET FEEDER	Auto feed from paper cassette.

The Canon Pixma TS8151 ticked all the boxes including having the ability to load paper/card from the front and rear which meant it would take card in the rear tray and canon say it works with paper up to 300gsm. It helped that at the time I bought it not only was it on offer in PC World, but Canon were offering a cashback deal as well, which made the deal all the sweeter. This baby also prints directly on to CD's, you can print from an app on your phone, it has a super easy to use touch screen making controlling it is easy. Granted it takes a little time to remember what paper/card goes in the front or the rear (well it does if your a 50 something menopausal women lol!) but its easy to use and gives brilliant results.

When I got back home with the printer, I decided to run a comparison of the printers, all the examples in the photos are printed on Navigator Ultra Smooth Paper 120gsm which gives ultra-bright colours and can be used with either inkjet or laser printers. Its good for printing photos, posters etc and has been my go to paper for a while now, so much so I buy it in bulk. One of the first tests I performed was to print out a backing paper as that's what I print most.

As you can see from the above image the Canon printer prints the image truer to what the image actually is, their is more colour variation, the HP Envy is flat almost 2 colours. Next I opted to to print out some digital images in both printers and colour them in, before I continue I'll explain that on the HP Envy I'd tried to print off digi images and it gave up because I thought I was just rubbish!

On each of the samples I used the same pens a Zig Real Color Brush pen, a Promarker and a Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen, the 3 pens I use most often. As you can see above every one of them suffered from bleeding or smudging on the images printed off with the HP Envy, and was the reason I didn't play with digital images.

The same pens (save for the fact I used a different colour of Sparkle pen on account of the fact that one of my cats Rosie decided to dive on the desk and knock the first pen off and it landed behind the desk where I can't reach without pulling everything out lol! Anyway as you can see the results with the images printed on the Canon printer have no bleeding, there was a little smudging if you went to heavy with the sparkle pen, but not so that it made the image unusuable.

To sum up, I know there are lots of printers on the market, but for the price the Canon Pixma TS8151 does what a papercrafter needs, granted there is a limit on the thickness of paper/card you can print on, but the print quality and colour is brilliant. I now have the ability to print on cardstock again and I can print and colour digital images and print off photos for using in projects. Be aware that the ink is a lot more expensive that the deal I have with HP. What I now do is use the HP for generic backgrounds where the colours don't matter that much and if I want to print on cardstock/paper that the HP can't handle I use the Canon or if I want to print a photo. Not everyone has that option, but it helps keep the costs down.

If you have any questions about the Canon printer leave them in the comments and if I can answer then I will respond. I don't work for Canon so I can't answer technical questions or techy questions.

Review: Hobbycraft Die Cutting Machine

I'm really getting in to making ATC's and I'm finding that its a perfect thing to craft with scraps and things from my Maybe Someday Box late at night when I can't sleep, but my Big Shot takes up a lot of space on my craft desk and by using it I make noise as the floorboards that side of the room make a noise, which wakes the hubby up and makes him grumpy. So I wanted a smaller machine that I could use on my computer desk the other side of the room and a size specifically for making ATC's.

As I already have a Big Shot Plus and a Big Shot, my criteria for getting a new machine was it had to be universal. What I mean by that is it had to take any make of dies and embossing folders of the size that can be used to make ATC's. It had to fit on my computer desk, be light weight but sturdy and enable me to die cut shapes up to 3.5" and emboss folders up to 5" wide - the size of the majority of my most used embossing folders.

If it couldn't take those it required me to buy smaller folders and meant I couldn't use my favourite embossing folders late at night. If I had to buy smaller ones, it would be more expense and the mini machine starts to become a niche rather than universal machine. I asked people on a Facebook group I belong to what they thought of the top 2 best selling mini die-cutting machines and took their comments on board. I did some research myself and decided then to go along to Hobbycraft and get a feel for the machines on offer that were in my price range.

I ruled out the Tattered Lace 'Baby Blue' machine almost straight away, as soon as I encountered its flimsy plastic handle and when I realised that actually it wasn't wide enough for some of the dies I wanted to use and felt not very stable. I didn't appreciate how small it was to be honest and it just didn't fit my criteria. So I'm glad I went to check the machines out, I struggle with sizes, when something is described as being 3" for example, I don't always register how big it actually is until I see it and I'm often disappointed and moan that I expected it to be bigger/smaller.

Next I looked at the Spellbinders Prizm machine, a little sturdier than the Baby Blue but still a very narrow slot to run things through and my small embossing folders wouldn't fit. I didn't even seriously consider the Crafters Companion Diamond Press because, well it was just too damn small. It looks good for kiddies to make small shapes but not what I would pay £25 for, yes I know you can get it for around £15 in some places, but its still not something I want to play with.

I was about to give up when a display caught my eye in the store, Hobbycraft do their own small Die Cutting Machine and it came with accessories, it was more than I wanted to pay at £50, but it was sturdy and ticked all my boxes, in actual fact I didn't buy it, hubby treated me to it, I know I'm a lucky girl :)

These are the specifications of the machine: -

• Machine Size: 29 x 24.5 x 16 cm (11.4 x 9.6 x 6.3 inches).
• Maximum Cutting width: 14.9 cm (5.9 inches).
• Maximum Cutting GSM: 220 gsm.
• Included in the box - Die-cutting machine, an A Base Plate and B & C Plates for embossing and die cutting, two 15 x 10.5cm embossing folders, six 5 x 5 cm dies, a pack of 9 15 x 10.5cm sheets of cardstock (3 x red, 3 x white and 3 x black) and instruction booklet.
• The machine is compatible with X-cut, Cuttlebug and most other manufacturer's dies. In Fact I've tried lots of dies in it and so far I haven't encountered any it wouldn't cut, although some are harder to cut see below.
• The machine cuts cardstock and paper, and will also cut fabric with the addition of a metal shim, although one isn't supplied and I haven't tried to cut fabric with my machine.

To sum up, I LOVE this little machine, I use it all the time now in place of both of my Big Shots, only using them if I want to work with a die or embossing folder that won't fit in the Hobbycraft machine. It cuts almost almost all the dies I have that fit the machine, there have been some problems with very intricate dies like lace borders, but I've found if you run the die through a few times and use a paper shim the die will cut. I've successfully cut paper, cardstock so far up to 280 gsm, craft foam and felt with it and also cut thicker card around 2mm thick.

I got this machine for ATC making purposes, but its now my go to machine for most things I do, I don't think I've used my Big Shot's since I got this machine. I'm happy with the way the machine embosses and cuts and the real bonus is its small enough to fit on my desk so I can work all in the same space without having to move everything to accommodate the larger machine.

The dies that come with the machine are rather jolly as well and are all perfect for ATC making as well as for adding to cards and projects. You can get replacement A & B plates from Hobbycraft, I would like to see them offer more accessories like a metal shim and maybe a crease plate in the future.

The machine is lovely and solid and has metal rollers and the handle is rather sturdy, not flimsy at all like the Baby Blue machines handle, on the whole for what you get in the box, its super value for money and would make a great beginners machine if you only want to start off making ATC's or cards up to 5" x 7".