So, I went to the SU Convention in Melbourne and.......

.....bought home some freebies/presents/paid for in our convention fees/.....whatever.....

One was a lovely new stamp called Blended Bloom.  Obviously intended for the blenders......as we also got a pack of three Blendabilities in the Calypso Coral shades - light/medium/dark.  Now I am a Copic girl - I have some Promarkers somewhere too, and a couple of TH Distress markers, as well as a whole big tray of SU Markers, and my new Gelato's and the Prisma's and some Inktense Watercolour pencils........I guess I like to colour in!

There has been a lot of chatter - I have been part of it - about the new alcohol markers SU are putting out called Blendabilities. I tried them in Melbourne and the stamped image we had to use was little; I got a bit frustrated because we had only the one red shade and one green shade and there was not enough contrast for me.

Today I did an experiment.  I used the stamp and Momento black ink and stamped it four times on SU Whisper White. I chose three colours close to the Calypso Coral range I had in the Blendabilities in Copic; in SU Markers; and in my Gelato's.

Here is what happened - photo's taken inside under a lamp:

Using the Blendabilities - nice nib, goes on well, has to be worked a bit but paper didn't pill; didn't do centre stamens, they are  still uncoloured on all four

My Copic version - richer colours but because I was restricted to colours close together, not a lot of variety; again, worked a lot and no pilling.  You can see saturation is greater.

Took to the second one again and added two colours for contrast - it looks better in real life I may add.  I used the mauve for shadow emphasis

This one is very shimmery and as it is water on Whisper White it did take a while to dry off.  Using Gelato's and water brush. Again, I worked it a bit for contrast. 

The SU markers and a blender pen. Card did pill quite a bit with the blender, but without it the ink just won't move and lays in lines against each shade. It has more of a two dimensional look - should have used the water pen and picked up ink to see if that improved it but ran out of steam. 

All four together. 

This may be helpful for those who are looking for some way of distinguishing between the systems.

Oh,and they did give us lots of other things too - great demo's and modelled how to run sessions, etc. I am going to play with the digital studio one day when I have some extra time on my hands, but it looks fun. There is some lovely stuff in the new catty and my wish list is enormous! I have to save some more money first - car insurance came in today - OMG!!!