GAMSOL

The product Gamsol is to be used with color pencils. My favorite is Berol Prisma Color pencils. It is a very good quality of color pencil. The price is double what I call "student grade" but the results are worth it. Also, a pencil will last you quite awhile, years really, unless you color every day. Next you should know the term "wax bloom", it refers to the build up of wax one gets when layers of pencil have been built up. Normally for stamping projects you find people will either color very softly or very heavily either technique is fine, it's all about what you like. I do have to say that if you prefer the really light touch then there isn't a lot of wax to move with the Gamsol. It doesn't mean you shouldn't use it but the result will look different. The more color there is, the more wax there is, the more there is to move and blend. In the samples pictured the card with the bear and the cat (both Penny Black images) are colored with a lighter touch. The samples with the paint brushes (River City) and the water scene (sorry, company escapes me)were heavier applications. I know it's really impossible to see the detail in the thumbnail that the web site allows so if you need a larger image you can email me and I'll forward the picture to you. Color your stamp image using a bleed proof ink, DO NOT USE VERSAFINE OR STAZ ON. Recommended is Memento or Memories black. Color your image as desired, shading and highlighting. As we sell the Gamsol with the fuzzy top and the paper stumps you have everything you need. I let the Gamsol saturate the fuzzy top. I roll the stump tip over the top thereby wetting the stump--just dampened. Now use the stump like a pencil sort of. Your goal is to go over the colored area and as you do you will be blending and smoothing. Just like you color certain areas with little circles or other areas with longer stokes, you do the same with the paper stump. If I am going to be changing to opposite colors of the color wheel then I don't really want to blend those colors, i.e., red and green. Or for example if I didn't want the red/brown of the lighthouse to get into the yellow sun on the scenic card, I would switch to the other end of the stump. I don't clean my stumps when they are wet, wait till they dry. Stumps are cleaned by rubbing them on the sand paper pad (sold separately) or a fine grade of sandpaper. Depending on the paper and the coloring style the results can be subtle or quite noticeable. Either with a heavy or light touch coloring, the Gamsol will compensate for the paper tooth, smoothing the color out and subtle blending of the shading and highlighting. The really great thing about Gamsol is you can re-work your project with out bringing up the tooth of the paper like with watercolors. I did that quite a bit with the scenic card. I created the water area using different shades of blue, green and violet worked it with Gamsol then decided that it was too light so I added more color and then reapplied the Gamsol. I worked it quite a bit and I know if I had done it with watercolor I would have been balling up the paper.