 Hey there, it's Sandy Olnock, and today I'm going to make some cell phone greeting cards. And they're kind of a DIY kind of cell phone idea using the Hero Arts United Kids, or Kids United. Yes, I think it's what it's called, Kids United stamp set, and it's got three sets of kids. There is a die set that you can get along with it if you need dies. I decided I was going to make my own cell phone pictures. So I used the essentials rectangles from Ellen Hudson to kind of figure out how I wanted to crop each of the pictures and picked out a different die for each one of them. You can kind of play around with how you want those to be, but I decided to tape them down with washi tape at kittywampus angles, because I wanted to make these look like, I guess, a cell phone sitting on a table in the long run, just with part of it peeking into the frame as opposed to having it just plop right in the middle. So this one is the little boys, and they're going to be off the left corner. So I lined it up so you can see it, but you don't actually need to put it all together when you're doing the stamping portion, but I have it in my Misti. I will pick the stamps up using the lid and then tap some ink on. I'm using Lawn Fawn Jet Black ink, which I can use for both watercolor and Copic, but I'm going to be coloring these with Copics today. And there I have my image ready to go. Little girls are next, and they're going to be hanging off the right hand side of the card to little girls hugging. And then these girls, I kind of tried to figure out how I was going to frame these. I decided that I should have the strings or the chains for the swings hanging the same direction as the cell phone, but when I do the coloring, you'll see I do a little change up on that. The skin tones for all three sets, all three pairs of children, I'm using the same colors. And I wanted to see if they looked different based on how big the faces were because this pair of kids, these little boys are very tiny. They have lots of little details in them. And I'm a detail person, so I'm trying to put shadows in and stuff and having a challenge with that. But here's the colors that I'm using for all three sets, by the way. That picture's over on my blog if you want to snag that and stick it in a file. So you remember to try these colors out sometime. And these little girls have larger faces, so they're a little easier to color. They've got a little more room to get the Copic markers in there. One thing that I find a lot of people struggle with is they try to make the shadows all the way around the outside of the entire faces when they're coloring people. What that leads to is you have to do 360 degrees of blending, coming in from the outside to the inside on every single thing that you're doing. If you can grab hold of the idea of having a light source on one side or the other, it's amazing how much easier your life is because you're only trying to shade one side going toward a highlight. I tend to put sometimes a little bit of shadow on the far side or on the highlight end if there's hair that's kind of hanging over to cast a shadow. But it's going to be a lot easier if you don't try to make it circumferential coloring like all the way around the outside edges. On these two little girls, they're facing different directions. So I want you to notice a little something. The sun is coming from the right hand side on all these. The little girl on the left has the sun shining on her face. The girl on the right has the sun only peeking around maybe on her cheek and her ear because she's facing away from the sun. So that's just a little tidbit for you. I'm going to zoom through even faster on the coloring of their outfits and the scenes on these because this card is more about the whole cell phone idea than it is about the specific coloring. I thought these would be really quick to color since I'm just kind of coloring little tiny rectangles that are going to go into the cards as opposed to coloring full card scenes. But this took me forever. I made these two little girls in front of a brick wall like they're at school. Did have to add some more color as I typically do when I'm coloring people. If I put a scene with them, the colors look stronger when they're starting out. And then as you add color to the background, they start feeling kind of weak. So I add layers to that. These little boys are in front of a little soccer goal. So they're out there playing soccer on the field. The good thing about doing this kind of an idea with these little cell phone pictures is that you can crop the scene in and you really don't have to do a whole lot to it. Just a suggestion of something is more than enough. My suggestions are probably more than anybody else needs to do. So feel free to just do a block of color or something like that. Might work just fine. These little girls, like I said, I wanted to do something different with them. So I turned the trees so it looks like you're taking a picture of this whole thing with the girl swinging in the air. So the trees are on a different angle. Anyway, let's get to the rest of these cards because now it's the fun part. And here's how it sort of fits through the they nest into each other, these pieces. And what I'm going to do is draw the outside of the cell phone on the rest of the card on the blank card base. And you didn't have to put, of course, the picture in there to see what it looks like. But I wanted to show you that you could just put a shadow around the outside of it. And you'll have a white phone sitting on a white table, just using a couple of warm gray markers, getting lighter and lighter to add a slight shadow to that. But you know me, I don't do anything easy. I do it the hard way. So I am giving all kinds of fun table ideas. So here I'm doing a dark wood table, very typical wood that I do on a lot of projects and have it on black background. So it's able to be seen by you as I'm coloring it. And I added a little shadow around the outside edge of the white phone and then a little shadow on the table cast by the phone itself. So then I can go to the back of it, nest the pieces together because they'll fit together like a nice little puzzle. And then use scotch tape to tape them together. Just put enough on there so that all the different sections hold together, especially out at the edges. You can put lots of adhesive when you stick it on your card base, but it helps to hold it all together and then glue it on the card front when you're done. So this one is all done with my little boys playing soccer. Decided to add little markings on them. You can look at your own phone and see what kind of markings your phone has. I used to have a white phone and I think it had a little horizontal line like that, a little dot for the phone or the camera that faces you, I think. This one I decided to do marble in the hex art class that I have on my website. I told people how to use or how to draw marble with just making lines of different gray colors and making the little striations in the rock. And I've never really, I don't think, done marble here on YouTube and showed anybody what you might use it for. So that's what this is for. Here is marble. That hex art class shows you lots of different textures and things you can create. But I decided I would draw a black phone on this one, but I decided to use a dark gray marker as opposed to a black marker so that I could add some shadowing to it and a little round button would show up, etc. You can add all kinds of details that you wish. This one didn't look right with the white border around it. So I just colored that with a Copic marker so that I'd have a little black line around it instead. Turn to the back and here everything together with tape. And then I've got a nice card with a beautiful big empty space for a sentiment. If your colors of the marble are light enough, then you can stamp right on top of it. I ended up not doing that because it was getting kind of visually confusing. And then here's one where I decided I wanted something that felt very rustic. So I made deliberately kittywampus kind of lines. And I just wanted these to be really rustic planks for a table surface. And went over them with a couple of different colors, turned them kind of yellowish. And what I do when I'm creating something like this is pull up some pictures of wood. Look for wood planks, wood table surfaces. Put in all kinds of fun keywords and you'll come up with some really interesting types of woods and tables and all the different textures in the trees, etc. And come up with some really fun ideas of your own for doing something like this. One other idea I wanted to throw out there that I think I'm going to try, my sister's birthday is coming up. And I want to get a picture of the two of us and die cut it into one of these and draw the rest of the table on there. And use a photograph on my card. So here are my finished cards. One I was able to emboss the sentiment. Another I had to put it on a little circle, which I thought still worked. And this one is my favorite. I also punched a circle for that one, the sending hugs. And I love the fact that the phone is just kind of peeking into the card itself. So I am going to be giving away these two stamp sets to two lucky people commenting on my blog. You can see what's in all of them. I bought the sets and then Hero Arts kindly sent them to me as well. So I'm going to give you the ones with mojo in them, the ones that are used because I love giving away mojo. I always hope that it travels along with it. So go leave a comment on my blog and you'll see instructions over there. And good luck. Talk to you later. Bye.