How to Color and Add Highlights to Stamped Roses with Alcohol Markers

Hello, Julie here, and today I'm sharing a new tutorial showing how to color stamped roses with alcohol markers. I used the new Sending Roses stamp set from the Greenhouse Society collection, and colored it with Copic markers. I'll show you how to add highlights to your stamped images with alcohol markers such as Copics. Watch the video, or if you'd rather, you can read through my rose coloring tutorial, below.

Step by Step!

I stamped my image using alcohol safe ink on Bristol Board, which I’ve been liking a lot as an all-round paper.

I started on the leaves first, using YG23, yellow green 23. I put down a flat covering layer on all the green areas - the leaves, stems, and sepals. For the tiny spaces, I used the chisel end of the pen.

Next was YG17 in the shadowy areas to add some dimension. Once I had my little touches of the darker color in, I went back in with the YG23 and did some very light and brief blending. I try not to blend too much when I’m working in small spaces like these leaves, because the less you blend, the less likely it is that your color is going to bleed outside your lines.

Once all the green was in and blended, I started in on the flowers with R35, and covered the whole flower, trying to follow the contours of the petals. I do this because there’s a chance that the pen strokes will show up, and if they’re moving in a direction that makes sense, it isn't as jarring. So on the leaves, I mostly brushed out from the base. In these petals, on the parts that are curled, I swept from one side of the petal to the other, following the curve of the petal. Then, for the parts that are flat (or flatter) I brushed up from the base. I’m not always successful in remembering this, but fortunately, this is the first layer, and will end up being mostly covered.

Once the base color was in, I went in with R29 and start the shadow areas.

Once I had all those in, I used the R35 to blend the color out a little. The second layer smoothed the borders of the R29, and added another level of intensity to the color – sort of an intermediate between the R29 and the first layer of R35. I used this middle layer to start the hints of highlights by not covering some of the areas to be highlighted.

Now I used the colorless blender to blend the edges of my colors out. The blender mostly moves the color around, since it’s just alcohol, with no color. It thins the color and will spread it around to a degree. I used this effect to create my highlights, by moving a bit of the red out of the way for the shine. I went back and forth a touch between the R35 and the blender, until I was happy with the highlights.

Then I used Y21 to warm up those highlighted areas. Because this yellow is such a light color, it could be used by itself to add the highlights if you either didn’t have the blender pen, or just didn’t want to use still another pen color. I like the blender for softening the lines between colors without adding more color.

And I went back and forth with marker colors a touch, until I was happy and had my finished stamped rose image, like this. I used the matching Sending Roses crafting die to die cut out my flowers. To finish my rose card, I cut out two labels from the Essential Stitched Labels crafting dies and then stamped a sentiment that was included in the rose stamp set. Then I added some patterned paper in the background and assembled my card.

I really enjoyed working on this project, getting to color the Sending Roses. Of course, these alcohol maker techniques will work on all kinds of flowers like those in the Greenhouse Society Collection. The Rhododendron Flower, Happy Hydrangea, and the Sweet Succulents would all work really nicely with the techniques you learned in the alcohol marker tutorial. In fact, I just might have worked on one of those for a card for my Mom for Mother's Day. ;)

I hope you saw something you can use on your next coloring project. Thanks for stopping by, and have a great day!

PS: If you are a member of the Greenhouse Society auto-ship program, we started shipping the Sending Roses products to you on Friday, 5/10.

Not a member? No problem! You can pre-order these stamps and dies individually now. Or, if you'd like to save 25% off the Sending Roses stamps (and the matching dies), sign up to become a Greenhouse Society auto-ship member!