 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and today I'm going to compare Neenah Classic Crest with Expressit Blending Card by request from a few people that have asked over the last couple months and I'm going to use some Lawn Fawn stamps, the little roar set using this thanks from one Lawn Fawn set and a tree from another Lawn Fawn set combining them all to make one little card. Now this is Expressit Blending Card and I've used Neenah all the time but the Expressit Blending Card I have not used here on YouTube so there we go. The heaviness of the paper is definitely different. The Expressit Blending Card is much lighter and it also has a cooler tone to it but just know that it only looks cooler comparison to the bright white next to it. If you're using the Blending Card you're not going to notice the difference if it's on a card with other colors on it etc. The weight of the paper is much lighter so if you're going to pop it up on a layer or something then you're going to want to layer it on another piece of card stock because it'll collapse on itself or something I think because it's not very heavy. But it is a nice paper it's a little slicker and that's the first thing you'll notice when you start coloring with it and what I'm trying to do is color the image left to right in sort of a nice progression so that we can see apples to apples how one looks versus how the other looks but of course when you're coloring by hand you can't use exactly the same number of strokes or anything so it's it's as good as I can do for now so I've added my dark shadow color and I'm going to use a YG17 to blend the two of them together and see how that works and I use techniques that I've developed using Nina so I want to see if my techniques work on the express it blending card and I'm finding it's not as well I shouldn't say it's not as blendy but it just blends differently it looks a little different than it does on my Nina going over the whole thing again with my YG03 my first color that I put down and when I do that same thing here it doesn't work quite as well if I were to try to make it look like the one on the left with darker richer colors I would put more layers of color in it but I'm going to try to leave it because I'm trying to do apples to apples and there you go so I'm doing I moved up to do the top of the tree I'm going to do that in darker colors I'm using a much darker green for the center and I'm using the same green that I used for the dark in the dinosaur to use for my mid-tone up here and then I'll use my mid-tone from the dinosaur to reflect up here in the trees at their tips and I'm definitely seeing some difference in color that the Nina is definitely richer in color right away and again I could probably go back and add more layers of color on the blending card in order to make it as intense and that possibly is one of those things that would be an adjustment if I were to switch to blending card is that I just have to work with it and develop techniques that are going to make me happy with that paper so whatever paper you are using and if you're somewhere else in the world where you don't have access to Nina then you'll need to develop techniques that are going to work with whatever paper that you have in your country because I know I get people from all over the world and I want you to feel free to experiment so for some papers it might be that you have to put the darkest color down first and then work into your lights or that you have to put more of the dark color whereas with the Nina I can get away with less color or something quite possible so I'm going to color two different colors for my tree trunk on both of them and a little bit on the stamping I stamped my dinosaur first, masked him out and then stamped the tree behind it and the roar means I love you is what the stamp set comes with but I replaced it with thanks so that these could be thank you cards because I am single and I am of an age that I don't have a sweetheart to send it to so I thought I could get more use out of a thank you card and you can adjust with that I love that Lawn Fawn broke up the sentiments so that you can actually insert something else in the middle you could even move them further apart put a nice big thank you die cut in the middle a lot of fun things I wanted to try these dots in colorless blender they on neither one of them they didn't show up very much in the tummies which is where I was planning on putting them but on the back of it where where the dark color would be it's showing up much more on the Nina and it seems to be the the dots are softer but they show up with more difference in them on the blending card I think you get sharper edges to the shapes of the the blobs that you color but there's less contrast less difference now it's very possible that if I were to color a bunch of layers over it make it really dark I would get a little more of the Nina look but again we're keeping apples to apples here just to see what that comparison is but if you look at just one card the Nina is on the left again and the blending card is on the right the one on the right looks like white paper it looks fine and I wouldn't say you can't use it at all it's just a different look and that is the difference between the two of them now I'll probably use the rest of that blending card to do some fine art with because I'm I'm not sure that that's really what I want to do for my cards but I might find some techniques when I'm doing my fine art that I can then teach you as I experiment with it so we'll see where that goes and what kinds of things that I learned so hope you enjoyed this click on the link to subscribe if you have not yet already because I'll put out lots of videos and I don't want you to miss any I'll see you guys next time take care bye