Hello Everyone 🙂 happy Thursday! I needed a project today that would consume me for a few hours as letting go of my anger from yesterday has proven difficult. So today I chose a project I’ve been wanting to try out. I’ve seen a couple of tutorials on illuminated letters and it didn’t look too hard (😁 not so easy). I played with different styles and finally decided to just do my own version. My biggest concern is that no one will recognize which letters they are!

My supplies today:

• Black card stock (A4) 8.5 x Prismacolor Premier Soft-core colored pencils :pale sage, Apple green, peacock green, cloud blue, China blue, ultramarine, blue indigo and white.
• Sakura stardust dark blue
• Pen-touch silver pen
• Gamsol blending solution
• Tiny paper stump
• Ruler
• Hb graphite pencil

The design is 5 inches tall by 8.5″ wide. After penciling in the letters, I used the cloud blue pencil to outline the design and then fill all ribbon parts with cloud blue and the straight legs with pale sage. When working on black, layering over white or a light color helps bring out the color of each subsequent layer.

Next I layered apple green over the pale save and China blue over the cloud blue. Then added my first layer of silver with my Pen-touch.

At this time I take the peacock green and give the green parts a nice outline for some depth. Then I used my ultramarine to deepen the blue of the ribbon. Leaving it off any part that will be highlighted.  I used my white pencil to give a good light layer over the parts of blue that are highlighted.

The last steps involved using the indigo blue to shade the blue ribbon, then outlining the part of the blue that is NOT outlined in silver with the Sakura Stardust (glitter pen that uses ground glass in the ink instead of glitter. I did the partial silver outline to bring out the bar of the h. Now I’m hoping you know that’s an H!

The last thing I did is to use the silver Pen-touch to cover the outline again as I frequently make a mess in the lines.  (this is an accommodation for my shaky hands and not required.) And I used my hb pencil to shade the silver where 2 silver parts meet to show some contrast.

One fold later and spray with workable fixatif and call it done. 

My question to you, dear readers, is if the letters are recognizable or not? (okay,  it’s an  L and H 😁)

Leave me a comment on this because i want honest opinions!