Printable Halloween Tags to Color

I've worked my way through almost all of Sarah's coloring videos and have learned so much! I mentioned awhile back that I'd found her video about the best paper for printing coloring pages to be extremely helpful. Based on her recommendation, I ordered a pack of Neenah Bristol Vellum (affiliate link here and below), waited impatiently for it to arrive, and crossed my fingers that it would work with our printer. I'm happy to report that it does! 

My first project was making Halloween tags. 

I started by designing the printable using PicMonkey. I printed the text at 100% but faded the borders and the graphics to 60%. (You can download it (for free) here.)

I used my Prismacolor Premiers to color the images and was delighted with the way the colors laid down on the bristol vellum. I was particularly pleased with the shadows on the candy corn and the hat, as well as the shading on the 'white' ghosts. My plan was to add a watercolor background to the tags... 

... which ended up being a not-good idea. When I tried to go any sort of blending, the paper pilled. And my subtle grey shadows ended up looking weirdly white. 

But no matter. I learned a lot. And by matting the tags with black cardstock and adding coordinating ribbon, the tags don't look half bad. 

I'm going to have to do some experimenting with watercolors over colored pencil using a more appropriate paper for wet media. I also want to try using the colored pencils over watercolor to see the difference.