Card Design: Rubber Stamping with Colored Pencils and Watercolors

by Dave Brethauer

Gather your paints, pencils, papers, and stamps; then get ready to play Discover how to use watercolor paints and colored pencils to create a clean, colorful, contemporary look in stylish greeting cards for occasions throughout the year.

Find over 100 projects and ideas, plus beautiful close-up photos of projects and techniquesLearn to create washes of color with watercolor brushes, paints, and inks, blend and shade with colored pencils, and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564777804
• ISBN13: 9781564777805
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Martingale and Company
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.4" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

Lots of great card making ideas

This book is filled with wonderful ideas for making your own cards. The two sections, Colored Pencils Basics and Watercolor Basics, provide a good base for understanding how to work in these two mediums. The graphics help to define the written instructions. There are cards to make for every occasion. After each section, the card ideas are shown. The written instructions on how to create the cards comes in a section at the back of the book. Upon reading over the instructions, I found that a glossary of terms would have been helpful. I haven't a clue what tooth, mask and analogous mean in relationship to card making. These words I had to look up. I also would have preferred to have the card and the card making instructions together rather than having to flip back and forth. If you are a veteran card maker, this book will be a dream for you. If you are a beginner, you may want to have a dictionary on hand.

nice inspirations

This book gave me lots of inspiration for making my own cards. The instructions for achieving the desired results for both watercolor & colored pencils were easy to follow. I liked the simplicity of it all. A very good book.

Very Informative

I found this book to be very informative with lots of neat & simple ideas. It was worth the purchase.

Coloring techniques with pencils and watercolors

This is a fabulous companion to Stamp in Color, another great technique book by the same author that is about 10 years old. Card Designs showcases cards that are relatively simple compared to cards displayed in papercrafting magazines, but the point is to show you exactly how the stamped image is colored. There is a technique to coloring well with pencils and certainly with watercolors (he shows you how to use watercoloring pencils, markers, inks and paints). With a little practice and Dave's instruction, you'll feel really proud of your projects and progress quickly. The specific instructions for each card are grouped together in the back, leaving the front free to display the cards more as works of art. Though there are a lot of specific details on each card, there is not as much coverage of basic stamping topics as there was in Stamp in Color (ie. instead of explaining heat embossing at the front of the book, it assumes prior knowledge,) so if you're a total beginner in rubber stamping, I'd definitely recommend buying Stamp in Color: Techniques for Enhancing Your Artwork (Pastimes) or another stamping primer first. Simply Cards by Sally Traidman is a great place to start and covers some of the basics beautifully but is not (and wasn't meant to be) an encyclopedia of stamping techniques. Grace Taormina's book offers very thorough coverage of almost all stamping techniques, but the look of the projects and stamps featured is very dated because the book is probably a decade old. The book features stamps from Rubber Moon and Savvy stamps and cards/papers from Memory Box--product lines you will want to know about if you are someone who likes to replicate a project exactly, which you can here with very professional-looking results. Have fun!

Great book - wonderful photos and directions

This is a great book for people looking to learn more about water color and pencil techniques. The samples have great design ideas and the instructions are clear and easy to read. The colors are vibrant and the photos very good.