 Well, hey there, it's Sandy Alnach and I'm an artist and crafter here on YouTube. And today I'm going to be making this card that has a double blended light source. So it's got two places where the light's coming from. I don't usually do that kind of thing, but I thought this would be helpful because if you look at any of the old masters, the baby Jesus glowed. There's always light coming from the baby Jesus. So there's also light coming from the star, which in this case happens to be on the barn instead of behind the barn in the sky. So I have two light sources and I'm just going to use the same series of colors to create these highlights around them. Some people will go from the darkest colors on the outside to the lightest colors on the inside. And in many cases and possibly even in this case that would have been the smarter way to go. Because one of the things that happens when you start adding the darker colors around it is depending on your decisions about how dark you're going to go, which I kept changing my mind how dark I wanted to go, then you're going to keep closing in on the highlight. It's going to get smaller and smaller, which I was fine with because that original yellow had gotten really large. But every time you add one of those extra colors on the outside, you're going to have to do a little bit of blending as you get toward the inside. So in some instances, and this might be one of them, it may have been easier to start from the outside, get those darks in there and then blend your way inside. But you know, I'm not known for doing the easy way. So I went from the inside to the outside and then kept going back in with some of the previous colors to create this double highlight. And I'm not really worried about coloring over some of the parts of the barn or everything. A lot of that's going to just be really dark color and disappear and just cover right over top of those reds and yellows. I'm not really concerned about that at all. Being a little bit careful around the animals and things and the holy family because I didn't want to mess them up. But again, a lot of that's going to get really dark because the lighting is going to be really strong in a lot of nativity scenes that you can make. If you make your lighting really dramatic, then there's really only a few areas you have to worry about coloring, which is leaving some highlight around the main figures in the picture because everything else becomes unimportant. It doesn't matter if it's a sheep or a, you know, donkey or a duck, it can be anything as long as it's a lumpy shape that makes you think animal because people in their mind fill in with everything is. So a lot of my colors on those things are going to get very dark and very rich because they don't matter that much. Just having a little highlights on them to make them look like animal shapes is going to be enough. I'm still working on darkening my colors. You can see how I'm going to have to now go back in and do blending again because I decided I was really going to go dark red. I didn't at the beginning of this, I didn't know how dark I was going to end up. I almost thought I was going to go purple. But I ended up kicking the purple out the window because I thought red is going to be really striking because I don't see this kind of coloration very much on a Christmas card and it'll make it really unique. So that would be a good thing. And I also wasn't sure when I showed you the acetate card at the beginning what I was going to do if this was just going to be the card front or not, but this stamp set has the magi, the three kings. And I did figure out a way to show you how you can use them on an acetate card. But you can watch very slowly. The center is just getting pulled in closer and closer because I have to keep blending all those darker richer colors in and lightening up. I'm just going from the outside R89 back to the R37 back to the R14 and the YR04 just working my way through that cycle until I get back down to that center. And with something like this, in some ways, having really small glowing areas is actually going to be better than having a wide blend because it's going to put more focus on each one of those highlights. If they're both really, really big, then it doesn't necessarily look like those are the things that are glowing. It just looks like there's an overall glow if they're joined to each other. But having this definite separation between them makes them look like two separate glows. So even though a lot of you may have been looking at this and thinking, she's insane, she's spending a lot of time working on this glow for no benefit. It ends up coming out pretty nice in the end anyway. So there you go. It just takes some time and I have nothing but time. It's just something I have a lot of. So I do love spending a lot of time on my Christmas cards anyway though because I send out a ton of them and it's one time of the year that I reach out to some people that I normally don't get to reach out to. I don't write to them very often. So since it's the one time of year they're going to get a card, I'm going to send them a really nice one. So I keep working back into some of these colors. I wanted that red to be really rich. And you may notice that over time, or not even very much time, in the few minutes that it took for that to dry, the red colors were kind of starting to fade and not necessarily fade. But when the paper is wet because it's filled with color, then it's got a lot of moisture in it. And as that moisture dries up, that's where some of the blotchiness appears. So you may find that your work looked really fine. And then all of a sudden, once you got the image colored, everything looked blotchy again. Well, don't worry about it. It happens to all of us because of the fact of all that paper drying. So I'm speeding this up now because we're done with the crazy, blendy, blendy, double-blend sky. And I'm just going to start working on the rest of the elements. And the rest of these, I'm going to make anything that's close up to the light source. Those are going to be lighter shades and then darker shades as I get out from them. And I'm going to put some strategic highlights in just a few areas, like those two side poles on the bar are going to have the two verticals are going to have highlights on them. And then each of the characters is going to have highlights just like on the top of their heads and that sort of thing. But a lot of the rest of it is going to disappear into a mush of color because I don't really need a whole lot of details or anything on all of the rest of it. Anybody who looks at this card in the Christmas season is going to know that this is a nativity scene, that there's two people, a man, a woman, and a baby, and that there's animals around it. That's just the assumption they're going to make even if they can't see what's going on here if all of this gets really dark. It's not going to matter at all. So this is like a really dark robe. Most people would use a really pale blue for Mary. I'm just making it nice and dark. I want all of this stuff to be just rich, dark shapes that don't really matter a whole lot. I don't want the emphasis to be on them because the emphasis is on the light. And that's one of the main things that you can work on in your cards is figure out what is the most important thing on the card. If everything is important, then nothing is seen. So here I'm just knocking these animals back until they practically don't exist. This white sheep, I'm coloring with a very dark gray. I'll go in and lighten it with a lighter gray a little bit, but I want it really dark. I want it to practically look black because all I need is that little glow on the face. That's it. I don't need anything else. I'm going to have a little bit of yellow coming out from the baby Jesus that's going to hit the ground down there, the hay. And since I, at this point, had decided that I was going to make this the inside of the acetate card, I left the bottom so that I could write or stamp a message down there if I wanted to. And I'm also going to put a white panel on the back of the card as well. So I'll be able to write on that as well. Now, as for the three kings, what I decided to do was to color them very richly again with just some highlights. So I put yellow in the places where I thought the yellow might touch each of them if it was coming from the baby and they were, they're facing the light source, then they're going to have some yellow, maybe up on the crowns on their heads, maybe a little bit on each one of the things they're holding. And everything else will just be a mush of color for the most part again. And I wanted dark, rich colors on each of their clothing so that they kind of become just a blob of a unit. And we have just a hint of the things that they're holding in their hands so that you get the idea that they're the magi, but not necessarily getting lost in any of the details because they're not the important part of this card. They're just an adjunct part of the story. But I did realize I was going to cut these out and hand cut them out for a specific reason. So I wasn't really worried about staying in the lines at this point. And in a couple of details, dulled a few things out, darkened up some colors so that they would feel nice and dark. And then that was going to lead to cutting them out. So I held two pieces of paper together and fussy cut them so I could have one piece that is the stamped image and the other one is going to be the reverse image. If you've ever tried attaching something onto an acetate card, you end up seeing all the glue on the backside of it because it's clear, right? If you glue these little magi in the front, you're going to see all that adhesive as soon as you turn it around. But if you have two of them, then you can have one on one side and one on the other and glue them together as a sandwich. So I flipped it the opposite way left right so that when I glue them on either side of the acetate, they're going to hide the acetate. But this side is going to be the silhouettes of them with just a little tiny yellow highlight on them because they're facing now toward the light. This is the backside of them. And you're going to see a little glow around them and that's it. So I started with very dark in the center and I'm working my way out with a lighter gray and then a little lighter gray and that sort of thing until I have just barely that warm glow around the edges of each one of the shapes. And then I've already got the thing cut out. It's super easy to assemble this and put it together on the card itself because now I've got two sides to the same figures and the camel even sits in the same place. And unfortunately on this side he looks like he's in front and on the other side he looks like he's behind but it is what it is. You can see how they assemble together on either side of that acetate. So here's the card that on the back I put another panel so that I could write a note back there. And then I have the acetate on the front I've put the adhesive on the underside of my picture here I'm gonna glue the other one on the other side and you won't see the adhesive from either one of them when the card is open the magi are facing the baby Jesus and when it's closed you just see the back of them walking up to the manger. So that is my card. I hope that you got something out of this. The main focus was that double lighting but the acetate trick was a little bonus for you. You can do that with a lot of different kinds of images on other cards too. Thank you for joining me. If you like this video, if you got anything out of it please click the like button, subscribe if you haven't and I'll see you again very soon with another video. Thanks, bye bye.