It can moo like a cow, how about you can you say mooooo?

Ok, sorry, I just had that Dr. Seuss book in my head and couldn’t resist. Can you tell I have small children?

But seriously, I learned soooo much at the Copic Certification class today. It was so worth the four hour drive. I just wish I’d had time to visit with more people in the class and do some of the make and takes next door! But, my kids were waiting at the Great Wolf lodge, and the water slides were calling my daughter’s name. I have an amazing husband who let me go to a coloring class while he was at the water-park with both girls.

So, just a FEW things I learned that a Copic marker can do:

1. Color fabrics. Now you want the “perfect” color of ribbon? Just keep white ribbon on hand and color it any of Copic’s 322 colors. If you heat the fabric the alcohol will evaporate more quickly so it will not bleed as much. The red inks will run, but the rest of them will stay put on fabric! This will not work with the airbrush though because with the airbrush the ink is dry on impact. You have to saturate the fabric with a marker to die the fabric. In the below photo Marianne is proving to us that the ribbon will not bleed when dropped in a glass of water.
2. You can buy an empty set of markers, fill it with food coloring and colorless vanilla, and use the airbrush to decorate cakes!
3. You can mimic “water-coloring” with the markers. Use a plastic palette and pool the color(s). Then fill a water brush with Copic’s colorless blender solution. I only played with it for a few minutes, but it definitely felt like water-coloring. I think this is one instance though where you want to use watercolor paper because otherwise it seems to bleed outside of your lines too easily.
4. You can do all kinds of cool effects with the colorless blender. For example, I brought a bear stamp and we used an old rag with the solution on it to get great “fur” texture. I’d seen Marianne talk about this on her blog, but for me it was a see it to appreciate it moment.
5. You can color surfaces like acrylic and even make custom colored brads!

I will share a few more things from class, probably Sunday because tomorrow night we will be driving back home. And of course I hope to demonstrate more of the techniques as I master them. Some of them are going to require quite a bit of practice!

One Response to “Ohhhh the Wooonderrfull Things A Copic Can Do!”