 Well, hi there, I'm Sandy Olmack and today I'm going to create teeny tiny itty bitty works of art to put on my cards. And these are inspired by Japanese artists that I was looking at online. The stamp set from Mama Elephant is called Lucky Cat and I started googling what is Lucky Cat? Is that a thing? Is it a brand? Is it a toy? Is it a what? I had no idea. I still don't know that I have any idea but I got lost down a rabbit hole and I used these frame dies from Ellen Hudson and cut out some Creme Mina card stock to make little teeny tiny versions of what I was seeing online and that's one of those great things that you can do when you're lost for ideas. You want to do something unique with a stamp set and you don't know where to begin. Just start googling something and let it take you where it wants to take you. Now, you might set a timer so you don't end up going down a rabbit hole that never lets you back out. Yeah, ask me how I know that. But this sent me down a rabbit hole exploring Japanese water colorists and people who paint in inks. And it was really wonderful. I was debating whether to do these kind of Sumi style and figure out how to do that. But the stamps have so much detail in them I thought I couldn't quite get away with that but I could do a little Copic replica of some of the visual themes that I was seeing in the artwork. So as I said, these are on Creme card stock and I'm putting some more Creme color in the background as well because there's some white in there that I wanted to pop out like the face. I wanted it to feel whiter and by putting color around the outside of it, then that makes the inside feel a little bit brighter. And there was one painting that I saw that was gorgeous and had this orange lounging tabby and I decided to try to replicate that fur pattern on this little kitty which was not easy because I'm not using very strong colors. I was trying to replicate the kinds of colors I saw and I had a little piece of paper beside me that I was swatching and testing out things and seeing what would work. What would give me that look because it was a really soft color combination. And I think I matched it pretty well for what it is but given that I was a beautiful watercolor and this is stamped Copic Kitty. These are all stamped by the way in no line ink from Inkon 3 which is a really good ink for doing this. The ink kind of disappears which means if you want to adapt things you can. You could redraw the eyes and make some paintings that I saw that had really giant beautiful eyes and I was considering doing that on this but I didn't go there because I didn't want to stray too far. I really wanted the scenes that I was seeing in these paintings to be replicated on my little pieces. So there was this one that had several layers of I guess greenery in the background. There was this one that had these very lacy types of leaves in the right corner and then a little bit of the same in the bottom corner and then over top of it it had an ivy and I thought I had a color in mind that would work for the ivy and that I could put this really subtle tan color behind it and just start to make some flip marks that feel like ivy. The painting of course has much more specific shapes that are I guess they look more ivy like but this worked for me. This is a teeny tiny piece of artwork and I thought it came out really cute even if it's not an exact replica of some incredibly talented artists work but it was fun to attempt to see what else I could do with a stamp set like this instead of just the normal color it like a normal kitty cat on a card. That's one of the things that my sabbatical really helped me with that I took in December when I stopped making cards for a while so I could get my head into thinking differently. One of the things that I try for here on my channel is to create artwork that gets you thinking about different ways that you can approach your own artwork as well. Different ideas you can think about, different things you can Google to find concepts that might be helpful to you in your artwork and this is one of the results of that and there's Vienna saying hello to you. Okay I have returned. Vienna was actually barking at a cat that was walking across our yard our neighborhood tabby must have known that I was coloring a little kitty cat. He decided to walk across the yard right now while I am recording so there you go. The second piece that I'm going to do I'll color the background again that same really light tan color and then over top of it I found this one painting that had branches that looked kind of blue and then these really elegant kind of fat leaves that were on it and there's some flowers in it as well and that seemed like it would be a good branch to put in a scene like this and while these are not as delicate as the leaves that were in the picture that I saw it was a really easy way to just lay my marker down and flick it so that I could create a leaf shape and that's one of the things your markers can do is give you a really interesting but simple shape that gives you the feel of what you might see in a painting without having to actually sit there and draw out every leaf in that kind of way you can keep it really simple. If you're interested in more things using marker strokes like this check out the Copic Wildflower classes over on my blog yes there is a new one so you might want to check that out I'll put a link to both of those classes in the do down below so you can check them out and next up is going to be the kitty the kitty is going to be gray in this particular instance I used to have a gray kitty and his name is Oliver he's no longer with me but he was one of my very favorite kitties I've ever had so I'm going to give him a couple of different gray colors to build up his little body the lucky cat stuff that I looked up online all had the kitties kind of sitting on their back legs with one little paw raised up in the air so whatever that means I don't know but they all have one little paw raised up most of them are higher than the ones in these stamps but I think it's the same idea little kitty reaching up and either waving or grabbing at some I have no idea like I said I don't know anything about lucky cat if you do please explain it to me in the comments if there's a thing that I'm just not getting I think they're cute but it's just not something that I understand so I'm just coloring them in the way that I was inspired to and I'm actually kind of glad that I found that there was some kind of Japanese connection because I wouldn't have gone down this rabbit hole otherwise and rabbit holes are fun sometimes when they lead to really cute art like this because I really enjoy the process of trying to replicate these it was a lot of fun there's all kinds of them out there with white flowers you could put a dark background in there and add some more white flowers onto a branch there's lots of different ways that you can do things like that so feel free to Google your heart out to find some stuff to inspire yourself as well to make some of these little framed pieces of artwork you could do with other stamps of course but lucky cat stamps work pretty perfectly for this there's this little guy too who has one leg up in the air he's kind of leaning and running he's got a little motion going on so I decided to put the flood of color down at the bottom instead and turn the kitty around so he's running away because one of the paintings I saw had a cat that was looking away from the viewer and I thought that might be interesting to see if I could replicate that somehow on a card that the kitty was running away and what I'm doing here is joining the ears and the paws and the tail with the back side of the kitty and then I'm gonna put a little glow around the outside so I was using not enough difference in the two markers so I'll have to add a little bit more dark but the outside is where light would hit and then the back side the sides closer to you would be dark and so just adding a couple layers and trying to soften those edges so it looks like a little fat chubby kitty because that was what my little Oliver was back in the day so we'll have this little dark kitty as well little gray kitty and I've got the collar showing decided to cut off the two sides of it so it didn't look like it wrapped around his cheeks but just around his neck and then continue on to make a little body when you're making something where only one foot is touching the ground so if the character is walking or running then making a shadow that somehow only touches one foot helps to indicate that so I've got the stamp tipped sideways as well as the ground only touching one foot one of the paintings that I was looking at had a gray tree up in the the corner like this one and just little leaves that match the tan of the whatever was in the background the earth that was in that particular painting so I did the same thing with mine using the same color that I used in the ground to just make little leaves on a branch and this whole thing just gives the feeling of being one of these old vintage style Japanese paintings so now it's time for the assembly of the card so I put some dimensional adhesive on the remainder of the piece of paper that I cut the frame out from and attach that down onto a cream card base I did trim the outside a little bit so there's a little border around the outside edge as well and then just use some dimensional adhesive behind each one of my little drawings my little framed works of art so there's kind of a gap in between the two panels but they're flat across them and don't forget if you make something like this sign your little artwork and it makes it feel more like it's an actual piece of artwork on the card isn't that cute I think these came out adorable and I might have to make some more with different styles of different paintings and using different stamps and stuff the little black little calligraphy thing there so it's supposed to say luck I hope I got the right side up trying to follow what was on the stamp set so I hope I haven't screwed it up but anyway these were fun cards to make and I hope they were inspirational to you as well you may want to check out as I said the Copic Wildflower class over on art-classes.com link in the doobly-doo as well as over on my blog and I'll see you guys again next time take care and go make something beautiful I'll see you again really soon bye bye