Wednesday, June 10, 2009

souffle pens

I get asked a lot about my souffle pens, so I decided to do a quick post about them.




The pens are a type of gel pen that are done by Sakura. Sakura makes three types of gell pen (that I know of) Gelly Roll, Glaze and Souffle. I have a mixture of pens because once I realised I liked them I just bought anything I could get my hands on.
What is neat about them is the brilliant rolling end that allows the ink to just flow out magnificently. It makes them brilliant to use in mixed media artwork because they just roll over the top of the different surfaces you have laid down and just keep flowing. The colours are wonderful as well, and they really pop out when you get them on the right background colour.
They do have drawbacks, but they are so cool that I don't mind them. Because they roll you have to slow down your writing to let it flow out smoothly, the slower you go, the thicker the line. You also have to wait for it to dry properly, because it is a bead of liquid. Many times I have gone to work on something else on my page while my souffle pen dried, and I looked back to discover that I unknowingly ran my hand through the paint and it is now smudged. You also have to get used to which colours you can use over which background colours. Some colours will just disappear into other colours, but if you choose the right combination they will sing on the page and nearly poke your eye out!
Here are all the blog posts I have done that reference souffle pens:
Kelly Kilmer is a pen guru in the art journaling world and here is a link to her favourite pens:
Well, I hope that this has helped all you out there in blog and Flickr land. It was a post I should have done ages ago, because I love these pens so much.

5 comments:

Sally said...

Thanks for the visit.

Unknown said...

Hahaha- I am laughing at myself because at first glance I thought this was going to be a post about souffle PANS and I thought, "oh, so she is a gourmet cook too!" hee hee hee ha ha ha ha!

I love gel pens, but hate the smudging. Do you think they could be heat set with a hair dryer? Your journal pages (previous posts) are wonderful. I have kept journals all my life, but somehow can't get myself to journal artfully on a regular basis.

Kate Carvellas said...

I LOVE me my Souffle pens!! And to answer Nathalie...I DO dry mine with a hair dryer! LOL!! I'm too impatient to wait and it definitely helps with the smugging!

Mariann Johansen-Ellis said...

Great, thanks so much for the explanation, will try and find them on the net, with a name like Sakura I imagine they are Japanese, so should be possible to find here in Singapore.... Thank you! :o)

Jeanne said...

I use these pens too. Your comment about writing slowly is a valuable one with these pens and others. If you take your time, you will have great success.
xo
jeanne