BBNC Publishers sent me a box with 20 The One And Only Big Girls Coloring Christmas Cards by Julia Woning, for which I  kindly thank them. The box has a beautiful design with a luxurious gold foil on which the title is printed and of course there’s a big girl and Santa.

Information from the internet:

The 20 unique Big Girls illustrations by artist Julia Woning provide very lovely christmas cards to color yourself. The Big Girls are sitting at a beautifully decorated Christmas table, are walking through a winter wonderland and put presents under the Christmas tree.

The box contains 20 different designs to color with matching envelopes. The box has a luxurious metallic foil finish. Make your family, friends and colleagues happy this year with a delightful Christmas card!

Julia Woning graduated in 1994 from the Willem de Kooning academy and has been working ever since as an illustrator, portraitist and visual artist. Julia is mainly known because of her Big Girls paintings, which are displayed in several galeries in the Netherlands.

She gets her inspiration anywhere: during breakfast with her children or with a cup of tea the craziest ideas can come up. Previously BBNC published her Big Girls coloring books for adults and her Animal Coloringbook (Dierenkleurboek). More information about Julia’s work can be found on her website www.juliawoning.com.

The box contains 20 double sided cards of thick, white heavy paper with red envelopes. The size of the cards is just about a couple of millimeters less than 15×15 cm.

Video preview

In the video below I’ll quickly show all twenty designs.

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The first card that I picked, one with a Christmas tree and gifts, I started with a couple of greens from the Tombow Irojiten pencils. I had just received these pencils, so it was a nice tryout on a Christmas card. At first I had to get used to the combination. It didn’t feel as smooth as I expected and I wasn’t sure wether it was because of the paper or the pencils.

After a while I noticed that the pencils caused it. The Irojiten are a lot harder than what I’m used to, so I had to adjust my coloring technique a little. The paper is nice to color on, even though I had to burnish most of my work to fill the tooth of the paper.

I didn’t want any paper tooth to show through the colored layers. But again, the blame could’ve been on the pencils. In the meantime I had swiftly colored the ornaments in the tree with a silver colored Sharpie. Christmas trees do need a little bit of bling-bling :).

The circle behind the tree was inviting me to colorize it quite traditionally with yellow, like there was a light shining behind the tree. I’ve done this with Derwent Inktense pencils, which I activated with water from a Koi water brush. The paper handled the water fine (I only use the tiniest bit of water, that the brush is only moist instead of wet).

Way to go for my Sharpies

The first present, the one on the left, I colorized with the Irojiten pencils, just like I did the garlan in the tree. But after that I’ve switched to my Sharpie alcohol markers, since it took me way too long to color everything with pencil.

With a set of Sharpies (i.e. metallic gold, silver and bronze) I got loose in this drawing. I colorized the presents, the angel tree top ornament and the aforementioned ball ornaments all with Sharpies.

The Sharpies did great and there was no bleeding outside the lines at all. Then I also drew a lot of gold stars with the metallic gold Sharpie. Around the stars I used two colors of the Irojiten pencils for the background… cream to draw circles around the stars and mint green for the rest.

All in all this card ended up very vibrant.

Big girls on ice

For the second card I mostly  used the Tombow Dual Brush ABT markers. Except for a few small details. For the whipped cream on the mugs and both girls’ faces I colored with Faber Castell Polychromos and for the silver colored spoon in the right mug I used a metallic Sharpie.

I finished this card fairly quick and I had great fun to color it. The Polychromos did very nice on this paper and working with the Tombows was a pleasure as usual. The paper is really good to use different coloring materials.

With the second card I’ve colored the background with two grey tints of the soft pastel crayons from the Faber Castell Creative Studio box. With a knife I’ve scratched some of the pastel off and with a cotton pad I’ve smudged it on the paper. This way I got the effect I was looking for, of a cold grey day in the winter.

Challenging myself

After that I wanted to color a third one. I picked the one with the girl and the tray with champagne glasses. I started with the Derwent Coloursoft pencils. They were a real joy on this paper. When I had colored the girl and her tray I just felt like something was missing. It looked a bit bare.

So I drew a couple of things myself to fill up some of the white space. For the drawing I used a 6B Staedtler graphite pencil and covered it with a Marvy drawing pen. I started with the window. Obviously it needed snow in the corners.

And the frame needed some wood grains. So I drew grains with the Coloursoft pencils.

Then I also wanted a garland with holly leaves and ball ornaments, so I drew those as well. And after that I also drew a small piece of a Christmas tree, with the tree of the first card as an example. That way I was sure to keep it in Julia’s style.

I accentuated the top of the white snow in the window with a white Signo Uni-Ball gel pen. I’ve colorized the ornaments with a gold colored glitter gel pen. I colored the window, the holly leaves and the tree with a combination of Derwent Coloursoft and Tombow Irojiten pencils.

Lastly the background remained. For that I used the Faber Castell Creative Studio pastel crayons again. I mixed a couple of colors exactly the way I did with the previous card. Scratch some pastel off with a sharp knife and then apply it to the background with a cotton pad.

Coloring Christmas wishes

When all that was finished I colored the letters on the back of the cards. For that I used the Tombow Dual Brush markers again.

Would you like to send something different for this year’s Christmas? Then these Big Girls Coloring Christmas Cards might just be right for you! (Unfortunately they’re no longer available.)

Disclosure: This review contains  products that I received from a publisher or company.
This however does not reflect on my opinion in any way. Also note my Disclosure Promos page!