I’ve been using the sketch feature on my Silhouette Cameo machine much more often recently and have been building my stash of gel pens as a result. In today’s video, I’m testing out a set of cheap gel pens from Smart Color Art to see how well they work as sketch pens.
Overall, I was happy with how the pens performed. When I was swatching them out, there were a few pens that were dry and scratchy, but the set comes with refills for all of the pens, so I’m hoping the refills will work better.
My biggest disappointment was that the pens weren’t as opaque as I thought they would be. The metallic pens are the most opaque on dark cardstock, but the milky pastels were kind of streaky and not as opaque as I expected. Also, while the glitter pens have a nice, subtle glitter payoff, the inks aren’t opaque at all, so only the glitter and a hint of color shows up on dark cardstock.
At the under $20 price point, I’d defintely purchase this set again. I really like the range of colors, and they work well on white cardstock. The pens that I tested also performed very well as sketch pens, much better than I expected. However, if you tend to use black or darker colored cardstock for sketch, I don’t think I’d recommend this particular set because, except for the metallic pens, these gel pens just aren’t that strongly opaque and don’t tend to show up that well on dark cardstock.
Swatches
Sketch Pen Results
Check out the video below to see the swatching and testing process:
Supplies Used in This Project
The following supply list contains affiliate links. I make a small commission if you purchase through these links, and I really appreciate it if you do!
– Sprinkled With Love Sketch Phrase
– Smart Color Art 160 Colors Gel Pens (unfortunately, these went out of stock right after I made the video, so I’ve linked two similar sets from Smart Color Art below)
– Smart Color Art 140 Colors Gel Pens
– Smart Color Art 320 Colors Gel Pens
– Silhouette Cameo 3 Electronic Cutting Tool
– Silhouette Studio, Designer Edition (optional)
– Chomas Creations Adjustable Marker Holder for Silhouette
– Bazzill Smoothie Cardstock, Coconut Swirl
– Bazzill Cardstock, Licorice Twist
Please do a video on the pause function.