To Copic or Not

So To Copic or Not is the Question - right?

I've resisted the Copic wave for a LONG time - basically due to the cost of each marker - and if we must be honest - I didn't think I had the talent to make them work

Well - to be perfectly frank with y'all - I've always been a SU! kind of gal - I started stamping with SU! (didn't most of us?) and it usually works out that my demos are my good friends (shout out to the former demo and great friend Jo and the current demo and great friend Sharon). I love their coordinating colors and quality of c/s.

So a while ago I had heard that BIC markers were good so on sale a while ago I bought BIC markers

Yesterday I went to the Heirloom Stamp show and picked up some Copic markers - as well as a few on sale over the last few weeks at Hobby Lobby

so today I did a little comparison to see whats up with each type of marker. Let me just say - I have a new respect for those on blog land that can upload pictures that look good and have titles embedded in them - I am soooo NOT techocrafty!! LOL






Maybe another day I'll take better pictures to illustrate my point but here goes.


the image on the far left is SU! - sorry to say I don't like the markers for coloring at all. They are great for coloring directly onto the stamp (rubber or clear) but not so much for coloring...see the streaks and some of those lines were my attempt at shading - not nice at all. If you leave them w/o any shading you still see the streaks. My markers are a few years old and I didn't like the feel to the tips - to mushy.

the middle pix is the Bic Markers. There were some positives to the bics. - They went on smoothly. Easy to stay in the lines. There wasn't any streaking when I colored in a larger spot. But there isn't really any way to blend the shading so it doesn't look like an obvious line.


the far right is the copic markers.
I hate to say it - cuz I resisted for so long - but they are the best way to color. Especially for someone like me who isn't an artist - the color goes on smoothly. Its easy to layer colors. Easy to shade and blend with the lighter color. If you go out of the lines a LITTLe the colorless blender can push most of the color back into the right spot. (ps the title should say copic but when I tried to fix it in paint it wouldn't let me and this was like the 4th attempt and I gave up rather than create a whole new image tee hee)

So the next challenge for me is to be content with the colors I have and not covet lots and lots more shades of copics LOL

Just an aside - coloring with pencils and OMS/gamsol or blender pens is nice too -- but I have a limited selection of pencils and for some reason - for right now at least - I'm prefering the copics.

Thanks for listening if you make it this far - I have a card to post with copics later but its cloudy and grey here and the quality of the photo is even worse than my usual ones....