Elegant Writer for the Group of Seven Cardmakers

The Group of Seven Cardmakers are trying out Elegant Writer pens this month.

The Elegant Writer is a calligraphy pen that has a pigment that will separate out with water into tones of grey, teal green, and a pinky mauve.  Lydia (Understand Blue on SCS) did a great video on using it (see it here) and I followed her technique for this card:  

I put the stamp in my MISTI and stamped with Distress Vintage Photo.  Instead of adding the Elegant Writer directly to the image and then drawing the colour out with a wet brush, I took my wet brush to the nib of the Elegant Writer, picked up some of the colour and took it to the image on my wet brush.  The more water you use, the more colour separation you get.  I got a nice variation throughout the flower and leaves.

For the stems, buds, seed heads, and butterfly, I used a clean wet brush and pulled out some of the Vintage Photo from the stamping to colour them in.

I decided not to add a sentiment as I love just the look of the image - it's a wonderful collage image of the poppies, the text, and the background dots.  I trimmed the panel and popped it up on fun foam on a kraft card base.

I'm really happy with the CAS vintage look to it.

I then wondered what would happen if I scribbled with the Elegant Writer onto my palette and picked up ink from there.  I laid down quite a lot and it started turning very green/grey on my palette.

 

I coloured the berries with a bright red marker, fussy cut the stamped image, mounted it on a square of red cs cut with a stitched die, and then popped that up on fun foam on a square card base. I finished off by going over the berries with Glossy Accents.

 

I then moved on to trying the method of going over the stamped lines with the Elegant Writer.

For this card, I stamped the image and then went over the holly leaves with the Elegant Writer and then drew the colour out with my water brush.  I started with the middle leaf and was too heavy handed - I got a nasty big blob of black that I couldn't get to bleed out enough so covered that blob with my sentiment.  I used a much lighter hand with both the Elegant Writer and the water brush on the other two leaves, and got just green and grey tones, with a tiny hint of pinky mauve.

I coloured the berries with a Cherry Cobbler marker, trimmed the panel with a stitched rectangle die, mounted it on fun foam on a dark red card base, and added a sentiment cut with a stitched banner die.

I then wanted to bring out the pinks that are in the Elegant Writer:

I stamped the poinsettia with the Vintage Photo Distress ink as I did in the poppy card.  I went back to the technique of touching my waterbrush to the tip of the Elegant Writer to pick up a bit of colour and then watercoloured the poinsettia petals one at a time, blotting each one after I painted it.  This took away some of the blacks and greens and left me with a lot of shades of pink and pale grey.  I lost some of the lines inside the petals of the poinsettia so went over them with a matching coloured pencil.  I added a sentiment, trimmed it with a stitched square die, popped it up on fun foam, and placed light brown pearls in the centre.  There was a bit of Elegant Writer ink left on my water brush so I did a very light bit of splattering. 

I've used the Elegant Writer on the same poppy stamp before.  Here is that card plus a close-up of the flower and a link to the blog post that describes it.  For this one, I added small lines and dabs onto the stamped image with the Elegant Writer, pulled some colour out, but left some white sections in the petals.

  

https://cardmakersgarret.blogspot.com/2023/09/gemstone-ornaments-and-elegant-writer.html

My conclusion from these four cards is I much prefer the method of touching my wet brush to the nib of the Elegant Writer and taking the colour to the image that way (as in cards 1 and 4), rather than scribbling some ink onto my palette as in card 2) or going directly to the image with the Elegant Writer (as in card 3).  If I do go directly to the image, I will stick to tiny bits of Elegant Writer as I did in card 5.

There are additional examples over at the Group of Seven blog, and other videos with lots of tips.  If you try out the Elegant Writer, we'd love to have you post your card as inspiration for others!

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - Carabelle Studio poppy
Ink - Distress Vintage Photo
Paper - hot press watercolour paper, kraft cardstock
Size - 6x4.25"
Accessories - Elegant Writer pen, fun foam

Supplies 2:
Stamps - Serendipity holly
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - watercolour paper, red and off white cs
Size - 4.75" square
Accessories - Elegant Writer pen, Lil Inker stitched square die, red Tombow marker, Glossy Accents, fun foam

Supplies 3:
Stamps - Visible Image holly, Penny Black sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - watercolour paper, dark red cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Elegant Writer pen, SU Cherry Cobbler marker, stitched rectangle die, stitched banner die

Supplies 4:
Stamps - Penny Black
Ink - Distress Vintage Photo
Paper - off white cs, watercolour paper
Size - 5.25" square
Accessories - Elegant Writer pen, light brown pearls, Lil Inker stitched square die