 Hey there, it's Sandy and I am on my last card. This is my last card of 2020. Don't worry it's not my last card ever. Using some stamps from Purple Onion Designs drawn by Stacy Yakula. You may recall the epic card that I made a while back when they first came out and I had the buildings but I did not have the shopping critters. These little guys have shopping bags and things and they are they're having a nighttime shopping adventure I guess. Maybe they all got just got off work and they're busy shopping before the stores close and I decided to do this and make it a night scene because I wanted the critters to stand out and if I colored everything else in color it's just gonna be a way too busy card. It is 5x7 so it's a little bigger so I could fit both buildings in but just coloring all of this in the B9s, the very desaturated B9 colors makes the buildings kind of recede into the background and that air brushing gives me some soft snow and also creates that light in the foreground where I'm gonna draw my own light pole later on in the doing of the coloring of the card. So that's a little detail about the card itself and the reason that this is my last card is because I start my sabbatical soon. The month of December has become my traditional sabbatical month for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm exhausted by this time of year. There's not a lot of people that do what I do in terms of doing so much content from August through Black Friday that it's this exhausting. A lot of crafters you may know do one video a week, two videos a week or something and not this many. This is just a lot to get through, a lot of content to come up with and I need a break from it and I also need to refill. I always focus on trying to find a way to teach you something. It may not be something epic but I want to teach you something in each video so I'm always trying to come up with new ideas. It's really hard to come up with new ideas when I'm just in that onslaught mode so taking a break is just gonna really help me to get out there, take my own classes on other sites, go take classes in weird things that have nothing to do with card making or painting but that might get my brain going or I do things like watch science videos and I love watching molecules explode or different nature things that just get my mind thinking in a different way so then when I get back to my art I approach things differently. So I plan to do a lot of painting and drawing and who knows what during the month. I will be having videos here on YouTube and I would love it if you'd continue to watch them even if you know it's not a card because you will learn something from it. I mean just watching something get drawn or painted you may look at that and go oh I didn't realize that I should be drawing this portion first and that drawing that portion second. I mean there's just little things like that that you can pick up from watching fine art that are going to apply to your card making. So please do continue to watch otherwise Google thinks that I've disappeared off the planet because everybody stopped watching my videos and I end up with nobody watching my channel and then come January I'm rebuilding and then it takes until like April before I start getting any kind of an audience back and that makes everything else slower and yeah it's just it's a it's a thing just just watch the videos that's all I ask. I may have some live videos intermixed in here I don't really have a schedule for that at the moment will give me a little week or two to get my act together and figure out what I'm going to do and I will post about those on social media as well to let you know what's coming if I figure out that I'm going to do something on a particular day and some of it will be on Facebook or Instagram and some of it will be here on YouTube. It's at least my mental plan at the moment. We'll see how that works out in the long run. Wanted to let you know that there is a sale today not just at Purple Onion because you can go get stamps from them. These stamps that you're seeing are all linked in the doobly-doo but also on my teaching site. My thanks 2020 coupon code today is good for 30% off all adult classes above $20 so it's basically not the minis and not the kids classes and stuff and then tomorrow the same coupon code thanks 2020 all caps will be for 20% off and then Sunday it will be for 15% off throughout the month I'm going to do pop-up sales and you have to watch my social media to know which class is on sale that day and I will have a card made somehow with some element from that class and that will be the one that will be chosen for the day so there's coupon code things on Christmas Day itself 20% off using that coupon code that'll be the last day for it and I do that one on Christmas so that if you get a gift card from Santa if Santa clicks on the give a class button in the menu bar on my website then he can give you a gift card good for classes and you can make it stretch farther if you get your classes on Christmas Day so thanks 2020 will be for the whole month long there are some new classes if you missed the video the other day when I talked about them there's a level 4 blueprint Copic blueprint class for Copic people who want to learn how to draw interiors there's a Bible journaling class that's a fundraiser because I have not been able to do as much charitable giving this year as I would normally like to do just because in comes down and if people join in then maybe I'll feel better about that because at least I can inspire some other people to do some giving there's also a watercolor class that's a mini it's called all season watercolor and that class uses Stacy Yakula stamps which you can get over on her site she's got a bundle of them they're all together plus that class is going to be on a regular sale since it doesn't count with the coupon code so I want you to still be able to get a discount on that one so I'm gonna put that on sale for about a week and the other new classes I'll have on sale next week to in case you miss out on getting them today so that's the four new classes talked about the coupons talked about sabbatical and now I want to tell you something else I have a comment question that I thought I would pose for you today and it comes from my friend Patrick who's in one of my Toastmaster clubs and in Toastmasters one of the things we do is have a section of the meeting we call table topics when you're asked on the fly to answer a question you have two minutes to answer and it's a question you haven't heard before I just talking off the top of your head and trying to make sense while you're doing it and the question that he asked I thought was really profound and it has had me thinking ever since because he said normally people are talking at this time of year about like what are you thankful for what are you grateful for blah blah blah and yeah we'll all do that around the Thanksgiving table but his question was what is it that made 2020 awesome and it kind of made me really stop and think because I'm always saying you know 2020 has been a pretty stinky year and it has been a stinky year it's been kind of a pain in the butt it's a lot of yucky stuff has happened but there's also been some really amazing stuff that's happened and even in my club just hearing people take turns talking about the thing that made this year awesome for them one guy his wife had a baby in March and he just talked about how amazing it's been that he's been home for his baby like he wouldn't have had that time somebody else talked about how much time she had to cook with her boyfriend when they normally you know were commuting from all over the place they would take an hour to get home every night and they'd be exhausted they didn't want to cook together so they did take out and now they're just cooking together and it's really strengthened their relationship and so I want to ask you guys to leave comments on this video about what has made 2020 an awesome year because I take to heart that there were some people in my previous video where I talked about 2020 being kind of poopy that other people took took offense at that because it was a good year for them and I want you to tell me in the comments what makes it a really good year I want to celebrate the things that made it good and let's let's see if we can leave the things that made it a crappy year behind and move on to the good stuff and maybe 2020 won't end up being an epithet where you know oh that's so 2020 is what I'm expecting to happen the year but maybe it won't maybe we can make it into something that's so awesome that it will be a really good thing to say such and such happened in 2020 already I'm gonna get going I will see you guys again soon with some fine art so hang tight there will be more coming on my channel and if you decide to be silly and just go away until come back in January with more card videos than have a merry Christmas and a happy and creative new year and I will see you in January but I hope that I will see you much sooner than that whether in classes or on social media or here on YouTube my fine art stuff all right I'll see you later take care guys bye bye