Free Style and the Black Pen

Some back to basics tips and trick by the wonderful Fabi! 

Free Style & the Black Pen

By Fabi Ormerod

My tip today is simple but sometimes we forget it: it's a black pen.  Yep, just that. And you can have different effects and add a free style look to your pages.  Here are a few of my favorite uses of it, besides journaling...

You can use it to add a fresh look to your chipboard letters, or to enhance it if the color is close the one youre using on the background, as I did here:

This is my favorite use. Just get some scraps of paper and draw. here I made the leaves for my flowers, then I just cut and glued them on my layout:

Here I made a mask with some prima flowers and then used the pen to create a faux stitch. I use this style in many of my layouts as it's a quick and nice fix:

Free style also uses the black pen to enhance patterned papers. You can create frames in your pictures, around the layout or simply draw inside the shapes you've cut:

That was it for today. Hope you enjoyed it!

Thanks Fabi... what a great, simple way to add details to a layout. I feel an urge to doodle!  What have you done with your black pen lately?