By Cheryl HorvathDo we have any golfers or golf fans out there? I am so excited for this year’s Masters Tournament. With the return of Tiger to the playing field and my all time favorite golfer Phil Mickelson doing quite well this year, the tournament is projected to be a nail biter for sure. That is…if you love golf the way I do. I love golf as much as I love making cards…and that says A LOT! I have three T.V’s turned on in our house right now – all of them on the golf channel…so I don’t miss a beat.
Ok…but enough of that and how about a little tid-bit on the new set of Zig Clean Color Waterbrush Pens I got last week. I put off buying these for so long because I already have a set of the Tombows and so I wasn’t really sure why I would need the Zigs as well. But…if you watch all the card tutorial videos like I do, you’ll notice that a lot of the card makers out there use the Zig’s a lot more than I see people using the Tombow’s. So, decided to make a small purchase and I started out with a small set of six just to see if I liked them or not.
So, at first, I was like, meh..I could take them or leave them. Then I gave them another shot and decided they actually were pretty cool to work with. The colors are rich and bright – and don’t wash out unless you want them to. So, much like me with my copics, I have the “full-set syndrome” so I went on the hunt for a few more colors. After some price shopping, I found the full set on Amazon much cheaper than buying individual colors at other online craft supply stores. So, I splurged and bought the full 80-piece set.
After a few days of playing with them, I decided that I needed a color swatch sheet because I found I was making the wrong color choices just by going off the color on the end of the marker. I don’t like reinventing the wheel if I don’t have to, so I went on the hunt for an existing swatch template that I could print out and color in myself. Found this one…(thank you Jessica!) but the only problem is that my printer couldn’t handle the 140 lb. water color paper and it just kept getting jammed. So, had to start from scratch. Here’s a quick photo of the stages. This took me about an hour from start to finish…so not so bad and was actually quite therapeutic for me. And, I got to explore each color one by one…it was definitely a good exercise.
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If you’re interested, the supplies I used to make this swatch chart are the following:
- Strathmore Watercolor paper (140 lb. size 9×12 but cut down to 8.5 x 11)
- Silver Black Velvet watercolor brush – round size 6
- A simple T-square ruler made this SO easy.
- Pigma Micron Archival Ink pen – size 005
Now, I’m off to go finish watching the first round of the Masters! Go Phil!
Cheers,
Cheryl