Coloring a Pot for Mom: Tutorial

Hello! Here is a card I made for my mom's birthday with "Buds and Vases" . I used the Labels Eight Dies to frame up the flowers and pot and a smaller one for the tag. DP is Basic Grey Olivia, and cardstock is Pure Luxury White, Black, and Innocent Pink, button and 5/8" black gingham and Pure Luxury also. Use the Bow Easy for that beautiful double bow! Used "Notes to Mom" for the greeting and "In Stitches" for the stitching.

Here is a brief tutorial showing how I like to color my pot from "Buds and Vases". I will do some separate tutorials for how to color the flowers because there are so many different ways to color flowers, not just their colors, but the way some have petals that are darker on the outer edges than inside , and vice versa, some have stripes, etc. But the pot follows some basic rules! :) I almost always color my images with the light coming from the right, which is what I am doing here. I used only two colors for this pot, and NO blender.

First I colored the entire pot with one coat of E97 Deep Orange (a nice peachy, pumpkin color), moving in circles. Then I go over the area on the left (away from the light) and under the leaves with a second coat. (I masked the cluster of leaves twice for this, so your leaves might overlap in slightly different places, but just trace under them.) I keep a large patch "open" on the center right.

Now I take E07 Light Mahogany, a much deeper rust color, and go under the leaves left side about a quarter inch over. I trace a tiny sliver of the bottom of the pots curve and just a smidge on the right. This is going to really make your pot look rounded. You can even stop at this step if you want very dramatic shadows or go on to the next step for a more blended look.

Now I am going to do some tip to tip coloring to make this third in between shade: touch your lighter marker to the dark marker to pick up some ink and color over the darkest areas and work outward toward your lightest. Isn't that in between color beautiful? Grab more ink from the tip of the darker marker as needed. If you find you've blended too much and really want that dark area to pop, go back up to the second step and retrace those same areas a second time with your dark marker. As you can see I didn't really worry about trying to get the color completely smooth, here it actually adds a bit of rusticity to the Terracotta.
Here it is on the finished card, I added a shadow by making a little oval below the pot with W-33, and then W-1 on the outside of that to soften the edges and diffuse the shadow. I hope this is helpful to you! This is the simplest way I find to color with Copics, the fewest steps with the fewest markers, just thinking about objects you need to shade as dark, middle and light.

I submitted this card for a call but it didn't get picked up. That's okay, it's for my Mom and I know she'll love it! Have a great weekend!