 Hey stampers! Welcome to another week of Watch It Weekly Wednesday. I'm Aubrey and today I'm excited to share with you some information about our Stampin' Blends. It's been a while since I've shown you some projects with the Stampin' Blends and I just wanted to kind of go over some things with it. I was searching on Facebook the other day and I came across a post that said I haven't been sold on the Stampin' Blends. Who can tell me why they love them and why they're so great? And I was just like, I want to tell you all about how amazing they are. But as I looked through, her question had already been answered and somebody had showed her the difference between our regular Stampin' Wright markers and the Stampin' Blends and how different they look on different projects. Now, our Stampin' Wright markers are fantastic and they have a place, but our Stampin' Blends have their own value too. And I just wanted to show you a little bit of the difference between them when you're coloring an image. I want to show you how different they can look on a project. So that's what I'm focusing on today. I don't actually have a card to show you, but I'm really excited to show you the technique of the Blends and how you can use them to beautify your projects. So first I want to tell you which stamp set I'm using. I am using the Humming Along Kling Stamp Set. I thought this was a really good one to show you how to color these really big images here, this cute hummingbird and the flower here. One cool thing about this stamp set is that there are framelets that coordinate the hummingbird framelets. Let me show you this. This is what they look like cut out and it has this cute label that you can cut the sayings out on and cute details here. So this is a really fun stamp set. So if you want to play with that, I encourage you to do so. So let's get started. When you're using Blends, the best ink to use is the Memento Ink Pad. It's good because the Stamp and Blends are an alcohol-based marker and the Memento Ink Pad is a water-based ink. So when you use them together, the lines don't run. So just keep that in mind if you do use the Stamp and Blends. So I wanted to pull in some of the images here that I've already stamped and colored and I want to show you the difference between using the regular Stamp and Right markers, which this is what they look like here. They're awesome. They're double-sided. They just come like, this is the Bermuda Bay one. You just get one color in it. And here's the difference between the Blends. They're also double-sided, but instead of just getting one marker, you get a dark marker and a light marker. So and those go together to blend the colors. So here is a hummingbird from that humming along set. I colored this hummingbird with the Stamp and Right markers. He's super cute. I used Bermuda Bay and I used Mango Melody on him. Really, by himself, he looks great. And you could put that on a project and it would look fantastic. I just wanted to give you a look of what the Stamp and Blends look like. Let me tear this off here. You can see this is what the Stamp and Blends. The difference here is you can get a lot more depth from your image. You can use the Blends to add colors and to then you can also use the color lifter to kind of take some color away in places that you want. You can get a more realistic look with the Blends as opposed to the Stamp and Right markers. So there's our hummingbird. The next one I want to show you. This is that pretty flower that's in that humming along set. This is colored with the Real Red marker and some Old Olive Stamp and Right markers. You can see there. And then let me pull off here and you can see it colored with the Stamp and Blends. So again, you can just see so much more depth in that image. Jill actually colored this one for me and she used again the color lifter just on the edges here to just give it a little more detail on the edges of the flower there. And you can just see the difference of what that image looks like. And one thing I want to point out, when you color such a big space with the Stamp and Right markers, you kind of get these lines in here. That is something you're going to get with any water-based marker. It just happens. But with the Blends, you don't really get those lines because you blend them all together. So let me show you one more here. I used this. So on this one I used Petal Pink Stamp and Right marker and Calypso Coral just here on the lines. And this, I think this flower is beautiful. I think you could put that on a project and it's really cute. Let me just show you what I did with the Blends. Oh, and this is Old Olive for the Stamp. And here's the blended one. Now the cool thing about this, I still used Calypso Coral and Petal Pink on this flower. And I was able to blend those two colors together. So let me show you. I used Light and Dark Petal Pink and Light and Dark Calypso Coral on this project. And I blended all four of those colors together. That's another really cool thing about the blends. You don't have to stick to just the two Light and Dark colors. If they're part of the same color family, like these are all a pinkish color, you can blend those together. Calypso Coral is one of my very favorite blends. They blend really beautifully together. And I've been informed, for ourselves at least, from Stamp and Jill, this is one of our most ordered blends color too. So it's a very popular one if you need a place to start. Calypso Coral is a great one to start with. So I just wanted to just show you a little bit what it looks like to use the blends on a project. And I'm just going to start here with the flower. And I'm going to use that Calypso Coral and Petal Pink together just to give you a look of what it is. Everyone kind of has their own way of using blends. I personally start with dark and work my way to light. You blending the dark in with the light. Some people do it differently, but that's what I find works best for me. So I'm just using my dark Calypso Coral here. And I'm going to just outline these lines in the flower and kind of give it a little bit here. Just some color there in the middle, like that. And then I'm going to take my light Calypso Coral. So that was my dark Calypso Coral. Here's my light. And I'm just going to color right around that. Just blend those colors together. And something to know when you're using blends, they do bleed. So like on the back side, you're going to get this bleeding. So make sure you have a scratch piece of paper underneath. And just like that. And then I'm going to go to my Petal Pink. This is my dark Petal Pink. And I'm just going to blend those colors together. Now, these aren't the exact same color. It's much lighter, you can see. But the more you work it, the more those colors are going to blend together. Sometimes it takes some time. But you can see it starting to work. I go in a circular motion so that I don't get straight lines. And I just work my way out. And then I'm going to take my light Petal Pink. And I'm just going to, again, blend right over it. And you go right over the colors you've already done out to the edge there. In a circular motion, blend it all together. Just like that. So I guess what I would, for somebody who is asking why blends over regular markers, if you're not sold on them, you can't do this with a regular marker, any regular marker. An alcohol based marker is the way to go. If you want to get that extra detail, that extra depth in your projects, it's a little bit more artistic, but it gives such a beautiful look to your projects. If that's your question, why the blends, that's my answer. You can get such a different look with blends as opposed to just a regular marker. So I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial on how to use the Stampin' Blends. If you have any questions, please post them below. We'd love to hear from you. And if you like this video, make sure you share it with your friends and give us a thumbs up. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next week for another Watch It Weekly Wednesday.