 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnoth, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and I'm going to show you no less than eight mini trifold cards and Spectrum Roar color blend pencils. I'm going to be using these. I'm going to show you how to use blending stumps, the blending stumps sander. We're going to test Prisma color against Spectrum Roar and baby oil versus Gamsol. So let's get started. There's a lot to do today. This is the pencil set that I got. They come in a bunch of different sets, but they have these little nubby nubs. You guys know me. I like sharp pencils. My nice big, giant, loud sharpener makes a really good point. That's the reason I love this sucker, link in the doobly-doo to all the supplies, by the way. And here's the difference between the pencils that are sharpened and the ones that came with it. So you can see the sharpness of it. Now blending stumps, once you use them like this one, they get a little color on them. This standard will allow you to both sharpen the point of it sort of ish, not even get these really sharp, but it also will get rid of some of that color. So there are times when you're going to use something with a light color that you don't want to have any color on this. This works fabulously. This Spectrum Roar set of blending stumps comes with a variety of sizes. So it works really well for a lot of different uses. I really do like this stump sander and I wish I'd had it longer. I just got it recently. So now let's do some quick testing. I'm going to test Spectrum Roar versus Prismacolor for one. And then we're also going to do both of them with Gamsol versus Baby Oil. I've used Baby Oil for Magic Colored Pencil technique before and I've always sworn by it because the Gamsol that I used to have was really stinky. The stuff I'm using today is not so stinky. So I don't know whether they've changed the formulation or whatever, but it's not as stinky, which is good. So I tried to pick colors relatively close to each other. You can't quite tell. You can't get exact color matches between different brands of pencils. That's just the way it is. Prismacolor tends to have a little more pigmentation than Spectrum Roar. However, when you start to use the Gamsol with it, it seems to work just fine. Both of them seem to work perfectly fine. You can sand off in between. Like if I'm going to go touch this yellow one, I might not want any other colors on it and I don't want to contaminate my yellow. But often you can go right from one color to another and it really doesn't matter at all. So we're going to speed this up a little bit so you don't have to waste all of our time watching swatches happen here, but you can see it seems to work really well to break down all that color. I turned it around the blending stump so I can try Baby Oil because I didn't want to end up with some Gamsol in there and contaminate the test. But it seems to be working just fine as well. They both seem to break the color down the same. I didn't see much difference. The only difference I did see was that on the back of it, which I will show you in a second, the Baby Oil tends to stay longer. It doesn't tend to evaporate completely. Well, the Gamsol doesn't evaporate completely. You can see there's a little stain, but the heavier staining is from the Baby Oil. So on cards like these tri-folds, I'm going to show you. You probably want to use the Gamsol because you're going to see the back of the paper in the inside of the card. So this is the packaging it comes with. It shows you some examples and then gives you good detailed instructions for this tri-fold and how to create the telescoping effect because what you'll do is stamp a stamp on the outside and then use these dies that comes with the dies. So you'll stamp the outside one, use the die, trace that little line, and then you'll be able to see the next one. You'll see where to place the house, and then you'll see when you trace that one that's die-cut, you'll see where to place the next one. So here's how it plays out. I die-cut the outside, drew my pencil line that you can kind of see there a little bit, and then stamped my house so it would peek through where I wanted it to, and then did the pencil line so I could make my little kitty and doggie peer through the window. So the next step will be to remove that pencil line using a kneaded eraser, a nice soft artist eraser, which I always keep on hand. I've had this thing since college. These things last forever. You just keep kneading it and kneading it and kneading as in K-N-E-A-D, not in N-E-E-D. So let's get busy with the coloring. I'm coloring on Nina cardstock. I also did a lot of these tests on some Bristol for people who like to use Bristol. Same results on the Bristol, except if you're using a heavier Bristol, you won't get that show-through of the greasy stuff on the back from using the Gamsol or the baby oil. So I'm going to color my basic coloring over the tree trunks here. And I'm not pressing really hard. You don't want a waxy buildup necessarily, because with this technique, as well as with regular, just normal pencil coloring, I like to layer things. I like to make my colors richer. And by layering them, you're going to be able to do that. If you've got a really waxy buildup, it's going to be very hard to get the color to move, because it's going to be just this solid mass of wax. So I did a medium pressure, but relatively light coat. I didn't try to fill in every square inch. You can see how much more the Gamsol and the baby oil does the same thing, how much more intense the color gets. And then I went back in with the same pencil and did some more coloring on top. This will add either extra color. So you can go over this again with the blending stump, or it'll add texture. And you can leave just that pencil line on top. Or you can go a third step and do a little bit of blending, which is what I'm going to do. A light going over it with the large blending stump, just a light touch, so I keep some of that texture. But look at how much richer I can make the color by doing it in layers and just watch it build up, which is kind of cool. Whether you're using the magic pencil technique, using baby oil or Gamsol, or you're just using your pencils without any medium for blending them, it's still important to have your pencils good and sharp. That's the reason why I showed you the sharpener. And I can tell you that even though it's an expensive sharpener, it takes up a lot of space on your desk. I'll just tell you that, you saw how big it was. I have had so many people email me and say thank you, thank you, thank you for letting us know about this sharpener because it's amazing. So it's not just me that thinks it's amazing. So I pass on to you the endorsement of your fellow crafters and artisans. Now coloring anything that's gonna blend totally into white is gonna be a challenge. With the baby oil kind of remaining on the surface, you do end up having a harder time blending something into white with the baby oil because it still shows. The Gamsol will do that a little bit less, but also be prepared to wait a little bit. You can see it's kind of grayish right now. It will dry a little bit clearer than that. It will evaporate some, I guess, that must be what happens because it does disappear a bit and that will be helpful to know that you can just wait for it. It's gonna finish up the little doggy bowl and here I have two colors, a red on the yellow ball. So you can immediately get some nice shading with it when you use the both of them together. Got a little bit of a brown here for my bones and then the front image will be just about done. We can move on to the inside or the second panel. Gonna color the dog house next and get some basic color down on top of here. You can see I'm not really worried about being precious and perfect and all the lines straight and all that sort of thing because I'm gonna mix that up with some other color anyway and we're gonna use the Gamsol on top which is going to soften a lot of it. So I'm gonna add a little bit of shading underneath of the edge of the house and then start with my blending again. You'll notice that my little nib is on the dirty side and that's okay depending on what colors you're using. Like if I was using a light yellow and I had some very recently used heavy red pigment or blue pigment or something, you might wanna either try scratching it off on a piece of scratch paper to see if it's still dirty or just clean it with the Stump Sander, whichever works for you. And then I'll add a little bit of color to the ground and color in my greens on the little tulips and just use a bunch of different colors. Now this color set that I'm using, there are several other sets and this one has a whole bunch of really nice bright colors. It doesn't have a white, it doesn't have a black. That was a little disconcerting for me because I kept looking for one but I had to use some other colors as I was working to make things happen but that was okay. And now get to the inside image with the little puppy and the little kitty on it. And the sentiment that I added here is life is short, pause to love. There are several other sentiments that come with it. You can look at the stamp sets themselves in the shop. Link in the view we do if you wanna see what the other sentiments for it are. But I'll add a little bit of color now to the heart and to the bed. Get a little bit of lovey loveless in here on the inside of it. These cards are a lot of fun to make by the way. If you haven't guessed, the fact that I did eight of them means that I kind of liked doing them. They were kind of fun. I also did not purchase these. I will let you know that Art Impressions does load me up with stamps from their new releases so I appreciate that. I don't accept that from many companies but since I use so many other stamps all the time and I know I'm gonna use them, then I do allow them to do that. Anyway, here's the finished pause to love card. So you can see how it opens up that you can see the image on the inside as it peeks through. I'm gonna show you my card made for each one of the other sets too. Welcome little one has the die in the front is what cuts that little baby crib, the little bars on that. And then you can see through to the inside and the baby on the inside, they have a girl and a boy. So you can make a card for some of you with a girl baby or a boy baby. This one is obviously for girls since it's all pink. Pamper Your Shelf would be great for a reader, a librarian, a teacher, that kind of thing. Look at this little mouse peeking through the bookshelf. Now I added something to this. The light stamp is separate from the little mouse so I drew two little books for the light to sit on, I guess, so it would be up above him and shining. And we close it back up. Isn't that cute? Pamper Your Shelf. This one, Sweet Wishes, is actually a Valentine set but you can use it any time of year but look at this little window. Look at this, the little box opens. So you can see something on the inside. And I used a non-Valentine sentiment on the inside. Very sweet. I love the double interactivity of this one. Then we have Celebrate Spring, another one with some extra interactivity. This is an Easter card but also has other sentiments with it. And you could put another item on the inside that the bunny can be looking at. It does not have to be eggs. They have an Easter egg as well as this little egg trio. But you could put a kitty cat in there. You could put any little friend for the bird inside. Everything Wonderful is a birthday set so it has a kitty on the outside and then you can open it up until you see the cute little cupcake on the inside. There's a little stamp that has these little confettis and I use them a couple of times on the inside to create a little scene around my cupcake. All of these by the way are colored with the Spectrum Noir Pencil, same technique as I've showed you. Homemade Happiness, you open the outside little cupboard to open and see all of the things in the cupboard and then look who's on the inside is a little sleeping mouse. This, the cookies and the mouse are a separate stamp set or separate stamps but I just masked them and put them together so you can sleep next to the cookies. And finally Seize the Day, this one I stamped onto some Desert Storm cardstock by Nina. And with this, I didn't have a white pencil in my set so I used my white gel pen. Not sure I like the effect all that much but the whale and the sun are separate images and I put them together so you can use both of them. So there we have the eight trifold, mini trifold cards. I hope you enjoyed this video today. If you'd like to see another example of one of my mini trifold cards from the past that is there on the screen as well as another video and you can click on my face to subscribe to my channel. I put out three videos a week and I'll see you guys later. Have a great day.