Well whatever I've picked up is thanks entirely to Linda............. and her bestest tip of all is hold the pic away from you - no-one is going to look at it as up close and personal as you do when you are colouring it. It does help too. If I can get a half way decent result then anyone can - my colouring in and shading was around the level of a 5 year old until I got my hands on those yummy lyras and these pens......... now I think I'm up to about age 10!

As for the blender........ well it kind of bleaches the colour - the best bit to see what it does on this pic is on the left hand side of the little chick in the girl's hand - I was trying to get just a paler yellow but got more of a lighter line........ so I think I'll use it more like a highlight pen. But it came into its own for the skin colour - I used pastel pink which is much to pink for skin - went over the whole area with the blender and it took a lot of the colour out and made it much paler - it's still not really a skin colour but it's better than it was. Have to say I'm not sure that it "blends" colours as such.

C xx