How to color synthetic materials with Copics.

Hallo Copic fans,

Today it is Sunday again and time for another tutorial.

First I want to tell you how I got the idea to do this.

When you are enthousiast you can say things of which you are not happy about afterwards. Also this time.

We were on vacation and Rob’s daughter Vanessa was also with us. Because she has MS (multiple sclerosis) she sits in a wheelchair.

Her chair had black spoke protectors. One day when we sat outside she told us that she loves to have spoke protectors with butterflies and beautiful colors. As you can expect thinking of a new Copic project I got enthousiast and told her that it would not be a problem to realize such a thing. “I’ll do that just for you!”

First Rob let them spray with white paint so I had a good background to start with. Thereafter I choose some beautiful stamps of flowers and butterflies. Then I made masks. When that was done I could start with stamping. That went very well.

So far so good and the two protectors were ready for coloring. I didn’t made the protectors identically.

Now I needed more masks for airbrushing the background in the desired color.

The edges on the outside and inside are first airbrushed with dark blue. There against to follows an edge one shade lighter.

On the above picture spraying with the airbrush is ready and the masks can be taken off.

But problems started when I took my Copics for coloring the stamps. That was not possible. The first layer remained streaky and when I tried to color the second layer, the first one just disappeared.

What I tried, it didn’t work, al lot of efforts without any result.

So I tried to make the floral hearts with dots, that went well and the result was reasonably.

Before it looks like on the above picture it took a lot of time.

To try to color the flowers otherwise I made new masks and started working with the activator in another way. From a sponge I made little pieces. To give more depth I did the desired color and activator on the little sponge and dabbed the color with sponge and my tweezers on the protector.

I did all flowers in this manner. After that I glued little hot fix stones on the floral hearts of the red and purple flowers.

Now a little film follows in which I show how the little butterflies are colored. For this I used three Copic colors, the activator and a water brush. Before starting I poured the activator, which normally is in a sprayer, from the bottle in a small bowl so it is easier to put the sponge into the activator.

Before that I tried all kind of materials for coloring, but the before mentioned combination worked best.

On the above picture the final result on one of the spoke protectors is shown. I must say that it took a lot of research, many try outs and also lots and lots of energy and frustration.

But still I am proud on the result. Especially when on inquiry is said that it is impossible to work with Copics on synthetic materials. But I did it anyway!

Above a close up so you can see the hot fix stones and stickles in the floral hearts.

For the finishing touch we had to cover it with several thin layers of varnish. After a long search and inquiring we used a varnish based on turpentine. Before spraying the varnish I tried out several manners on the back of the protector. For instance, when I rubbed the varnish with a cotton swab the colors started bleeding. 

But it is the result that counts and Vanessa is very happy with her colourful spoke protectors. She gets lots of compliments, so that’s good.

In this manner we can color all kind of other materials other than paper. I hope that you got new ideas through this tutorial and if you want to try it I found out how to do it (I invented the wheel for you!).