new MCP comparison

Last night I said I'd do a more formal comparison of possible blending agents for magic colored pencil. Here it is. But first, a disclaimer! I'm not a great colorer/blender to begin with, so keep that in mind when you look at these images, okay?

I stamped a Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves image four times on a piece of Beckett Expressions cardstock using Archival Jet Black ink.


Next, I pulled out my Prismacolor colored pencils and tried to color each of the images similarly.


I then blended the colors of each image using one of four different blending agents: Goo Gone Mess-Free Pen, Icky Sticky Stuff Remover, Orange Plus, and Sansodor. Like last time, I used a blending stump. Well, except for with the Mess-free Pen. I've listed them alphabetically, not according to the order in which I used them.


In the above photo you can see the results of the blending phase of my experiment. I'll show you which image was colored with which agent in the following photo. Scroll down when you've had a chance to do a bit of independent and unbiased judging of the blending. Or just scroll on down.


Now again, I wanted just a bit more of a comparison. You'll notice that each image has a free flower--the one where I used blue at the center. I colored that one with a different blending agent. To keep things simple, and I do like simple, I just blended that part of the image with the agent that I'd used on its left. So, the single Orange Plus flower was blended with the Goo Gone Mess-Free Pen, the single Sansodor flower was blended with the Orange Plus, the single ISSR flower was blended with Sansodor, and the single Goo Gone flower was blended with ISSR. I hope that made sense.

Let me say now, that I'm not going to review the Goo Gone again since it's been the subject of a couple of posts here already. You can find links to those in my colored pencil sidebar menu.

The Orange Plus did move and blend the pigments, but not as well as the other three. It was also trickier to use. Too much and it tended to break down the cardstock--NOT a good thing! Too little and you had to work at it to get the color to move. There was a small window of opportunity where it worked well, but it wasn't easy to consistently use that correct amount of fluid. It also had an annoying tendency to make the stump squeak when coloring. I think I have a new, more environmentally friendly cleaner that I'll be using here in the kitchen.

The Sansodor did its job as usual. I will say that compared to the others, it definitely was the worst as far as fumes. Nothing else came close to being so... aromatic. ;-)

You can see a closer side-by-side comparison of the Sansodor and ISSR below. I didn't compare these two directly when I mentioned the ISSR before as an alternative, so here's that comparison for you. The Sansodor is upper left and the ISSR lower right.


Both worked as far as moving the pigments. The ISSR colors look a bit more vibrant in the photo. This is true in real life, too. In retrospect, I think I'd laid down a bit more color in that ISSR image to begin with though. And don't forget that the single flower in the ISSR image was blended with the Sansodor, so there's a bit more of a comparison that you can make.

My conclusions after all of this?

Orange Plus--probably a good cleaner, but not a good choice as a blending agent for MCP.

The Goo Gone Mess-free Pen was by far the simplest and easiest to use. No stumps, no dipping, no odor. I'll add here that the lack of odor does not make it safe necessarily, eh? It's still better to use this in well-ventilated areas and not hover directly over you image for long periods of time. But for ease of use, it's hard to beat the pen.

The Sansodor, like Gamsol, has been the agent of choice for this technique. These odorless mineral spirits are not completely without odor though, and despite keeping only a small amount of the stuff exposed to the air, the fumes were noticeable. Then there are the safety issues and environmental issues with those products.

The ISSR with its ability to move and blend pigments, its lack of odor, better safety profile, along with the fact that it's more environmentally friendly seems to make it the best choice, at least of these four that I tested here. I found it in a local grocery store. I'm not sure how widely available it is, though at least you don't have to order it from abroad.

Lastly I should mention that Zest-It has been used for quite a while in the UK by artists as a safer alternative to odorless mineral spirits. A year or two ago I read a discussion about folks using it but couldn't find a vendor for it here in the US. Still can't. It's a citrus zest-based product, but you'd have to order it from the UK at this point. That's still something to keep an eye out for should it become available on this side of the pond though.

Edited to add: I posted an update to this that might be worth looking at if you're interested in using Goo Gone in place of odorless mineral spirits. You can read that post HERE.

Goo Gone follow-up

In the interest of science, I invested $2.97, plus tax, in a Goo Gone Mess-Free Pen to test with the magic colored pencil technique. ;-) It has a chiseled tip, as you'll see in the photo. You press down on the tip a couple of times to get the flow of the Goo Gone going, and you're all set. By the way, there's little odor to this pen compared with working with the bottle of Goo Gone and a stump yesterday. And actually, I had to go back and open up the pen because I couldn't remember noticing a smell when I was coloring earlier. That's a good thing, eh? But how did it perform? I'll let you decide.


The image above is an Inkadinkado image stamped with Ranger's Archival Jet Black ink. Again, I colored the image with Prismacolor Premier colored pencils. I included the tip of the Goo Gone pen in the shot so that you can see what it looks like.


Here's the owl when I finished with it. What I did was start with the lighter colors and move toward the darker ones because I wasn't sure how easily the tip would clean off. When I finished with one color, I scribbled a bit on a scrap piece of paper to remove any color from the tip. That worked fine. What I'd originally intended to do was to color this entire image with the Goo Gone pen. I'd finished coloring part of the left side when I decided to color the other half using a stump and Sansodor for the sake of comparison. So, as you look at the photo up above, the half on your left is blended with Goo Gone, and the right half is blended with the Sansodor. The blending is comparable and I think the reason why there isn't as nice a transition between the brown and the yellow on the Goo Gone side is operator error--I'd left a bit more white space on that side because I hadn't really been planning to use this for a direct comparison. That's what happens when you're winging it. LOL!

Bottom line, the pen has little odor, blends nicely, and the making the transition from working on one color to working on another is as simple as scribbling on some scratch paper. Seems like a reasonable alternative to me, and one that may be a good one for folks who would like to color using this technique but can't tolerate some of the stronger smells associated with even the "odorless" mineral spirits. It's easier to transport than a bottle of spirits and stumps, too.

Magic Colored Pencil - an experiment and alternative?

I think by now most stampers are familiar with the Magic Colored Pencil technique in which odorless mineral spirits such as Gamsol or Sansodor can be used to blend the colors of colored pencil-colored images. The technique also makes the colors look vibrant. There is some concern about prolonged exposure to the fumes, and crafters are also always looking for alternatives. Baby oil has been proposed as a substitute, but the notion of using something oily on cardstock just isn't appealing to me, though the thought of using something more innocuous than mineral spirits would be nice. So rather than just being critical, I thought I should try to come up with an alternative.

To the drawing board! I remember reading that the success of the technique is due to the spirits breaking down the wax in the colored pencils, thus allowing the pigments to blend. Okay! This is a good place to start. Using a scientific approach, I googled stuff that would dissolve wax. There were a number of things, but I didn't want the industrial strength stuff. Um, and I wasn't interested in eliminating ear wax either. Ick. I found two cleaners that I actually had under my kitchen sink. Perfect!

Test #1: I put a few drops of each cleaner on a junk mail envelope. Both looked kinda oily starting out. This wasn't promising. I let them sit though and when I came back a little while later, one was still showing the oil slick ;-), but the other was gone. Woo hoo! I was ready to put that one to the next test.

Test #2: I pulled out my Georgia Pacific white cardstock and stamped a single image twice. To give proper credit, this is a Hero Arts stamp and I used Ranger's Archival Jet Black ink. I colored both of the images similarly, using Prismacolor Premier colored pencils.


My apologies for the somewhat poor quality of the photos. It's an overcast day here and the light kept changing. The indoor light was coming from the upper left of the image. Both flowers looked closer to identical in person.

I then pulled out my blending stump, not a tortillon, my bottle of Sansodor, and my test cleaner from under the sink.


Here are the colored images. Can you tell a difference between the two? I'm not the best colorer/blender, but really--see if you can tell a difference, and if so, which look do you prefer? The answer is in the next pic, so don't scroll until you've decided.



Yes, my cleaner from under the kitchen sink is Goo Gone. Even taking into account the fact that the light hit each a bit differently, I think the Goo Gone image showed smoother blending, though the colors of the Sansodor image were more vibrant.


Oh, and just so you know, I messed up when I was blending. I'd turned the cardstock to get to my image better and had a brain cramp moment. I accidentally colored two of the blue petals of the designated Goo Gone flower with Sansodor. OOPS! So, to be fair, I colored two of the purple petals of the Sansodor flower with Goo Gone. Hey, it's another way to compare. LOL!

Anyway, it looks like this could be an alternative to odorless mineral spirits and is something that you might already have, if you want to play with this technique. Goo Gone does carry some of the same warnings as Sansodor, that is, that it's flammable and that it should be used in well-ventilated areas. It's also not made specifically for use in art, if that makes a difference to you. Something interesting to note is that the makers of Goo Gone have just come out with a pen so that you can apply it more precisely. It's called the Goo Gone Mess-Free Pen. Google searches are so nifty! Presumably with the pen there would be less odor, too, since you wouldn't have to open up a bottle or keep dripping some of it out the top. At this point I don't think I'd switch from using Sansodor, particularly since I already have a bottle of it and it will last me a good long time, but if I come across the Goo Gone pen, I might have to pick it up and give it a try because that would certainly be less fuss and less muss. Just a thought. :-)

Edited to add: I found the Goo Gone pen. See that follow-up post: here.