 Well, hello there. It's Sandy Allnock. I'm going to be making some cards with wreaths for all seasons, all different kinds of sentiments you can use with these. I've got a lot of thank yous because I send out a ton of thank you cards and I've chosen a lot of different colors for them. This is an art impression stamp set. I don't know that it's supposed to be a watercolor stamp set, but I'm going to use it that way with the Tombow markers that are my set. Yes, I have a set with my name on it at Ellen Hudson and some Canson XL paper. I am going to also include a little bit of the art impressions stamps along with these wreaths and you'll see how that works out. So each one of these wreaths, there's three two different kinds and then some swag type things. And one of them is more like a eucalyptus, just a single type of leaf. The other one is more complex, has several types of leaves in it. But with this technique, you just take your water-based markers, you can use all different kinds with it, although different ones will work to lesser or greater extent. If your markers are dry, you may have more trouble with the color moving. But I've got it in my misty and I'm leaving it there for a reason. I'm going to start by just adding water to some of the leaves, kind of half of each leaf. And you can see that adding that color when the water touches it, makes it blend out into the leaf itself and gives it a really soft, gentle watercolor look without being too crazy. And if you keep your water to a minimum, you'll have less mess. If you get real splashy with it, you can get something really loose and fresh, I'm going to try to keep myself tidy. See if I can stay under control, because I know some people have said that my art impressions watercolors are too messy. So there you go. With this one, I ended up having, I used a blue and a brown, or blue-green color and a brown, and I ended up, unfortunately, with not enough brown in some areas. So I put some on a palette and added it to my wreath. And then I stamped inside of it, just using a post-it note to mask off the bottom of it. I stamped one of the cabins. You have to have a cabin that's small enough because they make a bunch of different sizes. This one is one of the little ones. I'll have it linked in the supply list. And I'm doing the same thing with this that I did with the wreath itself. Just taking a brush that's wet and pulling color in from other places around the edges that are stamped. With each one of these, if you leave the thing in the misty, you can stamp over it. If it totally washes out, if you end up getting too crazy with the water, just wait for it to get nice and dry and then re-stamp on top of it. You'll end up with the lines again. I'm trying to add some shadows to it under the eaves of the roof and then over on the left side of the house. And then I wanted to have some color for the grass, but I wanted it to feel a little bit like the rest of this. And I have that blue-green kind of color. So I'm going to mix the blue-green in with this really pale green. That's going to bring it all to a place where it sort of jibes together. It fits with the coloration in it rather than having a whole green section that isn't related to the wreaths on the outside. So a very sweet little card. Just that little cabin in the center of it. This one is the one that has swaggies. There's a circle. The circles themselves are separate from the little swag. So you have to mask that out just with a little bit of a sticky note. I stamped the swag first and then the wreath around it. But the colors in this one are really soft. I liked this combination. And by the way each one of these combinations are going to be pictured over on my blog. So you can see exactly what the colors are. You can match your own brands to them if you wish to try these color combinations. I've used this technique with my favorite is Tombows just because they move but they don't move too much. Like zigs move a lot as soon as you hit them with water. Distress markers don't like to move as much. And there's all kinds of other brands as well. There's a kids class that I'm teaching right now that uses Crayolas. So you can do this with Crayolas too. But I've added little berries along with it. Which you can add all kinds of beautiful things to make these look really pretty. The text on each one of these I also did with the same technique by putting the color on the letters and then adding the water to blend them. This one is that complex wreath that I told you about. It's got lots and lots of different kinds of things. Got little leaves of different types. And putting a bunch of colors on the stamp itself gives you lots of color when you start adding the water to it. And boy do I wish I could water that water color that fast sometimes. But here I stamped on top of the wet paper. And look at how beautifully that blends in. There are some areas again that I noticed I didn't have particular colors in and I wanted more of it. I wanted more of that dark green. So I just put some onto a tile. You can use a white plate or something as well to use as a palette. I also wanted to add some little berries because I liked them on that last one. So why not add some berries. The brush I'm using is my silver black velvet brush. I tend to tell people to use the biggest brush they can get away with when they're using any kind of brush because it gets you looser. But on something like this you might stick with the eight. So here's how I did the type on these. I stamped the lettering with the top half in one green, the bottom half in the other with the thank. And then the U has two reds in it that are the same reds that are in the wreath itself. And then I could use the water to just blend them. But I also have control enough with markers on the stamps that I can do the two words separately, which is nice. I can't really get that kind of control when I'm slapping ink pads on it because I'm pretty inept with that sort of thing. On this one the way that the leaves were laid out, I didn't like the fact that I had no space between the K and the wreath and then tons of space between the Y and the wreath. So I just added some extra leaves myself, little extra berries. Yes you're allowed to do that. I give you permission to change it up if you need to. But it gave me the excuse to do lots of berries in there too, which was fun. Next up I decided to try a wintery one. So I've got a couple blues in this one and it just came out icy delicious. And I think I might be making some of these for Christmas cards this year because I think that would be really fun. They're just they're really pretty and with something like this you could stamp a whole bunch of them when you're in your workspace and then go sit with a brush and a little cup of water watching TV with the family sitting on the sofa and just do all the watercolor part. As long as you're not going to have to re-stamp them in the misty, you're good to go. Just sit there and add all that water in there so I may find myself stamping a whole ton of these so I can sit and do the watercoloring. I love little projects I can do while I'm hanging out in the evening with my feet up on the sofa and the dogs snuggled with me and all that sort of thing. So this one I used a sticky note to mask it off of course after it was dry so I could add this little puppy. Yes, our impressions has little animals. They also have cats and bunnies and all sorts of animals. So you can put a little critter in here as well. And yes, I know he's blue but this whole thing has a blue theme to it. There you go. But I wanted to put a snowy scene in here as well so I was kind of trying to figure out how I'd do that. I definitely have some some color going on with him and then I'm going to add some color behind him. Those who've taken my watercolor classes will recognize how to do trees here. I just put some blue at the bottom and then use water to spread the blue out toward the top so it fades out and let that part dry and add some trees on top of it. But in the meantime work on my puppy a little bit, firming up the eyes and the nose, little puppy playing there in the the wintery snow. And here's where I was adding my tree branches and I did go back in after it was dry and add them a little bit better because that sort of melted out. It was a little too wet. And then I added more color onto the puppy dog. You can see how just adding a few areas of darker shadow makes a huge difference and he totally pops out. And even drawing in some areas like a little color for him. See how much better those trees looked in the background if I waited for it to dry. Oh patience, sandy patience. So these cards I cut all down to square cards, popped those panels onto card bases and I've got a nice set of cards going and I think I'm going to get started on some for Christmas because that'll be fun, especially for the secular people that I send holiday cards to. Alright, I will see you guys later. Take care and have an awesome, awesome day.