 Well, hi there, my name is Sandy Allnach. I'm an artist and paper crafter here on YouTube And I'm going to be doing a fireplace and rug today for a background in my holiday background series This is the fourth in the stamping Bella series for Wednesdays in September And I will continue doing many more backgrounds throughout the fall for your holiday cards I know it's early, but hopefully Since I'm getting these out there early gives you time to get the stamps decided that you want to use for your cards And then figure out if you want to try one of my crazy backgrounds with them So I'm starting with this cute little reindeer. Oh my gosh. He looks like he had a little too much eggnog, doesn't he? cute little guy So I'm gonna color him first and I knew in my mind what I wanted to do a little bit before I started this So I knew that my light source is gonna be off to the left-hand side so like direct side left not top left as much because With the sentiment have a warm and cozy holiday having a warm and cozy fireplace seemed like a good thing to do So I'm gonna be making my My lighting come straight sideways from that left-hand side Which means that all of the right-hand side of him is going to be good and dark And that's where I can jump in with this darker YR24 color and really add some significant color to this and And and give it that strong look you'll see more as that plays out that he does look like he's sitting next to a fireplace and the YRs The Ys and the YRs are good colors to use for animals a lot of times We tend to go for our E markers But don't avoid your Ys and your YRs because there are some interesting Brownish colors in them and they have a little happier highlight colors So if you're looking for a group of colors and you don't want that kind of some some of the browns can be sort of dead Looking browns and it can be helpful to have a warmer yellowish color in order to bring some life to your images So I invite you to give them a try don't always be going for the same colors all the time Just like with my human rainbow series It's helpful to try different markers to achieve the same look and see what we can do to expand The markers that we already own and try them in different ways So I'm just trying to leave some highlights on The left side of a lot of these different parts of him on that foot way on the right hand side There might be a little bit on that toe, but really not much. So the rest of is not in much highlight whatsoever And now I switched over to a wire to seven because I wanted a little more contrast I can still add more contrast later So on an image like this you could always try doing part of it first and then go in and add some Some more serious depth later on if you need it but I kind of knew where a little bit of where I was headed and We'll see if I end up getting to add more as we go So I'm just going to add a little bit less on that foot. That's right by the fireplace I just want to make sure that I had that yellow highlight on the tippy top of that foot So it looks like he's all toasty warm and the yellow color here also is going to help with that That feeling of the glow of the fireplace. So that's another reason for When you're doing something with a fireplace image To keep some yellow highlights anywhere you possibly can So now this little guy is just about done I'm not worried about a couple of the areas that had some ink going out of the lines When you have stamps that have thin lines in them I just go around them with a color or as you see I do a lot of backgrounds around my stamps And that's going to hide any of that But you can also just do a halo around the image with a color Instead of working at it like crazy with your colorless blender to try to remove that color Because sometimes that's just a pain in the butt. It's a little easier to do some repair to it So I'm using some More dull color for his antlers because his antlers wouldn't necessarily be the same color as he is and Then going with a slightly darker color on that right antler and then a little bit of shadow Not very much but a little bit on the front antler and when I say front I mean front facing the fireplace And I'm going to give him some yellow on his Ribbons on the package because yellow is my favorite color and that's just how I roll So I wanted I am gonna have a little bit of Christmas colors in there But I like having yellow in most of my card images that seems to be very common color for me since it is my favorite I always find a way to work in at least a little bit And I'm not going to use the traditional red and green types of colors here I didn't want it to all be I don't know very stereotypical I wanted it to be a little more on the fun side sometimes it's fun to even add You know pinks and purples instead of reds and greens just to make make something a little more fun Now you can go in and color something with a pen or draw something with a pencil first But I decided I was just going to make the glow of the fire first and I'm taking a very light yellow And I'm just gonna make an L shape that fades out Toward toward my little guy with a very light yellow so that I just carry a little bit of that color Toward my my little reindeer And next I want to add in at least a basis for the fireplace So I'm going to do that in an L shape. So again, this is a side fireplace. This is not behind him Originally, I had tried doing something with a fireplace behind him like his butt was on fire and that didn't work so well So I decided not to go there So I'm doing this side one. It's also going to be a lot easier to draw Because it really is just an L shape And this is the the color that I'm putting here is a light brown because it's gonna be for my grout And I can add bricks right on top of it You could also make this a wood fireplace wouldn't have to be brick But I think it reads a little more as a fireplace when it has a brick So I've got my basic color down there and then I'm going to add in bricks You could use the chisel nib for this my chisel nib on this particular pen was dead So that didn't work so well. So I had to draw my bricks in my bricks are not perfect But I knew how much more I was gonna add to the scene. So I wasn't really worried about them being Altogether perfect. You could get a ruler out and measure it all out me roll particular about it I find that that just tends to inhibit me more because then if I go anywhere out the lines, then I start freaking out So just adding them by drawing them in Leaves it kind of loose and sketchy And that works just fine for me Now I did end up with my bricks going a little too far over to the right So after I finished them and they were sticking out too far I used some colorless blender to pull out a little bit of that color And then I used my fire to disguise it Ha ha ha So my fire is is a little darker than it may have been otherwise, but it also ends up looking really cool this way by adding that really strong yellow color And I kind of sketched in a few logs. I wasn't sure if I wanted to add more detail to them I did end up adding more detail later on But I just add a little something for the fire to come come from Now I do realize that somebody is going to comment that it looks like the fire is coming too far out of the fireplace So please know this is a card My little reindeer is still safe even though that fire is probably pouring a little too far out Don't let this happen in your house at home So I'm going to add a little bit of shadows around the brick With a couple different grays just to give them a little dimension And I'm going to add more color over it. So even though they they may look a little bit strange right here I'm going to go in with the same color that I did on a previous video when I did Santa last week I'm going to use that E07 again because it worked really well to create the brick So you can watch that video to see another way To do bricks on a card that has the bricks actually stamped into the stamp itself But I'm using the same kind of an idea here to create my little fireplace And I'll go over each one of those bricks and now you don't even see that mess where I had Repaired where my bricks went out too far. You don't even see it because all this is covered up It's all part of the master plan to hide those bits and pieces. Okay Now he's stamped a little higher than my bricks are because I wanted to have room to put a rug I wanted to have a little round rug underneath of him And this is another one of those areas where I remember I said I had a secret plan And I knew I was going to put some strong color under here the more color I add in this bottom section The easier it's going to be to visually Draw attention to the rest of it So I knew I wanted to have a really strong color under the base because it would make the rest of it feel very bright And like that light is really cascading out. I am going to cut off more that right hand sides I'm not even though fussing with it I'm not really too worried about where that rug is going to end because I'm going to cut it off Right next to his foot. So there's going to be a little Little room to chop off some And so now I'm going to go in with a you know a marker right around that edge and refine the shape of my rug And make sure I get some fairly decent blending across that whole bottom section on that carpet There's a lot of things you can do. You can add texture to the carpet and everything. I'll add a little more shading to it, but Uh, mostly it's just to have color down that's going to kind of disappear I wanted to have the rug with a red and a yellow kind of band around it You know, there's rugs that have little I don't know what they're called There's probably some name you can leave that in the doobly-do in the comments if you want to But I'm just going to add my my rug shape around here. Now again, you can add it in pencil and it might be easier I'm just adding it as I go with my marker And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do on that left hand side. So I didn't add the left ring yet in that upper left corner But I realized as I was adding the yellow that I probably am going to add a little bit more of that red when I get around to it So I'm going to grab that red I you could make a third color in here if you wanted, but I didn't want to introduce another color This r5 6 is kind of a dullish red Which means it's going to be dull next to the rest of him and I want him to be the bright thing So I didn't use a bright red deliberately because of that So now I had the circle in the middle and try to roughly get the stripes even And again when you do images like this for the most part people aren't going to be Assessing whether or not you drew everything exactly evenly or not. So give yourself grace Because you're doing a lot of work on a scene and just allow people to fill in blanks with their eyes So here's my the rest of that rug being finished off I did use a duller color to just add a little bit of shadow behind him. I wasn't sure how far I wanted that to go But now I'm going to use some shadow underneath of the rug to make that look dimensional and a little more color On the the rug itself. This is going to allow me to straighten up those bricks So if there were areas where the bricks didn't actually end in the right place everything wasn't perfect Now with all this dark color I have plenty of space to fix that So I'm just going to go around from each side because the the light is going to cascade out a little past those bricks And then end before it gets to the very outside So that's why I have a little bit more of a glow in the middle and a shadow on either side And now I can go back into my image and start to see by how much contrast I have whether or not there are areas that I want to add some contrast and Definitely on those little ornaments and on the package. I didn't get very much in there So I'm just doing some simple two color blending to To make those pop a little bit more and I started realizing that I needed some shadowing on the yellow too somebody use one of the brownish colors the YR23 that I used in my My reindeer and bring that color into the top too I could use a different color in there, but again it pulls that color together with the rest of my reindeer So that it all looks like it's one one image when you add too many colors together. Sometimes it's just a little too much I added some contrast in his feet now because I was realizing his feet didn't really pop But you can see how adding just a little bit of dark color does that Since I had my dark out. I added a little detail onto my my wood in the fireplace And after I got it mounted on the card. I realized I needed a little bit more There's just a little more shadowing. I need to do under him So I just went underneath each of those specific areas Under his legs and behind his body so that I could have a really dark bark shadow That adds that contrast. It really looks like he's sitting next to that fire and the light is really shining Shining out brightly because the contrast is what makes that happen And so I'll soften that a little bit with a seven and again you can use a lot of different Grays There's no science behind why I'm using the teas. I finally all work About that's the same. So whatever grays you have add a little more contrast underneath of that rug and now for the piece that I raise is Is to add some texture Onto the rug itself So I'm starting at the far side with a darkish gray or medium gray and then I switch to a light gray And I'm making these lines that go out from the middle Toward the outside edge. So it's going to give it that woven look And as I get to the red, I'm even making my line a little bit curved Not completely, but it should be a little bit curved and then it looks like it's a dimensional rug But for the most part all of that attention is on the sentiment and that cute little reindeer The rest of it just builds up to showing off the image in its best light I wanted to add originally a whole scene behind him and I went you know I think this is plenty to add on here. I don't think I need any more than that So thank you so much for joining me for all the Wednesdays this month Here are the rest of the videos if you'd like to see any of those you can hit the subscribe button To get more videos from me. I put out about three a week and all throughout the fall I'm going to be doing more holiday backgrounds that you can use on your cards So please feel free to check them out as the fall goes on and we get toward. Oh my gosh Christmas How crazy is that that we are looking toward Christmas at this point? All right, you guys have an awesome day. Don't forget to enter the giveaway over on my blog and I'll see you next time