It is great really, this 5 year birthday celebration Copic Marker Norge is having. It coincides pretty perfectly with my own 5 year of colouring and creating cards. I bought my first craft supplies in August 2011, set up my blog and made my first card in September the same year, and here I am five years later.
As a part of the celebrations the design team were challenged to re-colour one image to show our colouring progress over the years. I decided to go with an image for a card I put up in november 2011, which is labelled in my files as my card number 14. The new one I will post afterwards is over 400 cards later. That is a lot of cards, I admit. The image used to show said progression is by Lili of the Valley and here is my old card:
As you can see I didn’t have a lot of crafting supplies, but at least I had a couple of shades to go together so that the image isn’t entirely flat. Since then the collection of most things craft related has grown immensely, and I use at least three shades per colour, sometimes more, and ideally going from very dark to reasonably light to get prominent shadows and more depth. Here is my new, re-coloured, version of this image.
It does look like I fell into the contrast well, doesn’t it? Also it would appear that the shadows seem to, well.. make more sense and fall more naturally. Hahaha. I admit it was a lot of fun to view my own progression. We are all very good at viewing other people’s progression and comment and compliment it, while we completely ignore our own. That can be destructive. The past half a year I have struggled with both motivation and inspiration to colour and make cards. I have a feeling that this small challenge might just have made all the difference. All I needed was to take a step back and go “you know what, it’s pretty decent. Keep it up”. One day I’ll make another comparison and hopefully the progress will be equally visible then.
I suggest you all do the same. Pick one of the first images you coloured, re-colour it, and view your own progression. You have probably come a much longer way than you think you. Pat yourself on the back. Be pleased with your own efforts and progression. Because you did that. You. And no one else.
Some of the other bits I used on this card are by Noor Design, Live and Love Crafts as well as Wild Orchid Crafts. And if you haven’t spotted it yet, yes I have used the same snowflakes that I did five years ago, because why not?
Copics used: (bear) E000, E21, E42, E44, E47, E49, E95 (hat) R22, R27, R89, W1, W2, W3, W5, (presents) G82, G94, G99, Y00, Y04, Y17, R22, R24, R29, R89, (sky and ground) B0000, B000, B91, W1, W2, W3, W5, W7 and a white pen.
