 Hi there! My name is Sandy Allnach. I'm an artist and paper crafter and today I thought I'd share some ideas for Christmas gifts and that's gifts for people that you want to share the gift of art with. Someone who has expressed an interest perhaps in creativity and painting and drawing and coloring and making cards and you can share your love and your passion with them by giving them a gift that would mean a lot to them. I'm going to start with coloring books because coloring books for most people are an easy on-training, aren't as intimidated with that kind of a thing. I'll share two different brands with you that I like. One is painterly days. These are a bunch of different designs that you can get for the whole theme of the book but I'm going to be using these watercolors which are actually this little set of 12 as a giveaway that I bought special for this video so that I could give away a set. It has 12 colors in it. They're really just generic colors so they're going to work for a lot of different things. Here they are swatched out for you so you can see what colors are in there and they're gouache sort of paints rather than true watercolors but I started with these. These were one of my first watercolors that I used and they work great. They're just a really simple way to on-trait into watercoloring. I'm using an aqua brush here so you could either get them a regular brush or an aqua brush and all you do is pick up the paint on the tip, put the tip toward the center of the flower and then squeeze the brush so water comes out on the end where your hand is coming from so it kind of draws that color out and makes some natural shading on the flower itself. They're really easy to paint this way. It's really actually easy to learn how to paint flower shapes because as you practice painting with these flowers you'll learn what a flower petal looks like. How is it formed? These are good for doing those kind of studies but coloring books are a great way to get somebody started so be sure to go to my blog to enter to win that set of paints right there. There's another line of books that I've also loved and they're by a company called Pepin and they're all different kinds of designs, different ethnicity type designs but what I recommend with these is the Zig Clean Color Markers and the Zig Markers blend without actually having to use any water with them which is one of the benefits I like from them and you can see that I've drawn some darker lines around the outside edges and then filled in with a lighter color and that is going to allow you to do some things that look like shading even though you didn't have to do a whole lot to get them to blend. You don't have to use water. You can use water with them but you don't have to and these designs are mesmerizing in these books. There's a lot of different types of designs and some are more complex, some are simpler, there's some flower ones, all different kinds and I've put together this set of 12 colors that I like and you can choose whether or not you like those colors but you can see they make a good rainbow and that's all blended with no water so that is one of the benefits of the Zig Markers because they blend without having to have more supplies on hand so you can get them a brush to go with it if you wish. Now let's talk Copics because lots of people want to start with Copics and I'm going to come up with a couple of different sets of flowers, a couple of different sets of colors. We're going to start with flowers first, pinks and reds and you can choose either the pinks or the reds or get both for your gift recipient if you wish and I'm recommending some Altenew flower stamp sets if you want to get them a stamp set to go with it because Altenew makes stamps with these nice heavy lines and for somebody who's new coloring with Copics heavy lines are going to be a little easier to deal with and if they like flowers this pen rose is really really beautiful and it's also easy to color because there's those nice heavy lines and I was experimenting here with can I get some roses that look different shades by how much of each color that I use and you can do a lot of fun different things with a limited set of markers and I've given you two greens to use for these as well. This is another one of the sets from them using the same colors again not having to stray outside of that. So if you wanted to get a couple of stamp sets or choose one of these and here is another one beautiful stamps easy to color with these good heavy lines. So that is the flower section. Now let's look at animals. There's some people that just love drawing animals. Animal stamps if they get into the realistic side are going to have thinner lines just so you know if you want to do something with heavier lines then you get into more like the lawn fawn or paper smooches that kind of thing. But I'll focus here on more realistic animals for those who like to draw those sort of things. A simple set of browns and grays will get you really far. You can do a lot of varieties of things. Here I've got one stamp that I've used and I'm coloring one with browns and one with grays and just alternating the colors on the scarf and the beak and the feet and things depending on which color I used for the bird itself. And that is one of the things that you can look at the stamps that you give them and what colors are they going to need to color those particular images. You could also stamp out some images that you have and just already have them stamped on paper for them which reminds me make sure you give them some Copic friendly paper so that they are able to actually use them. Whatever you give them in this gift make sure it's complete enough that they can use it on Christmas morning even if you just cut up some paper from your stash to give them something or have some pre-stamped images so they're ready to go because it's always fun on Christmas morning to be able to make something. So here I just die cut these with a circle die and put them on round bases to make some really simple beautiful animal cards. Now there's the advanced people that might want to do people people and so I put together a wider list of colors and here I have a strong recommendation where I've given you my colors for my favorite Caucasian skin tones. That uses the blue violet if you haven't seen my videos go find one of them that colors people with a blue violet and make sure you send the person the video so that they know why you gave them a blue violet color. They need to know that so that they don't think you're crazy and you just picked out this random weird blue violet color but for her I've chosen those skin tone colors and then I've just done one color for her hair so depending on what color that person's hair is or if they have a daughter who's blonde you might want to get him a color that works for blonde hair but I'm not doing any multiple shading in the hair. I'm going to focus more on the colors that are here for the dress and I've also chosen a stamp that is a good one for for a Valentine because remember you're giving a Christmas gift to somebody don't give them a Christmas stamp give them something that they're going to use for spring and this stamp could also be a spring time thing so they have more life out of it rather than giving them something for Christmas that is already over by Christmas morning and here I'm just going to do some shading with these are my favorite reds but you can choose whatever colors you want you can go to the other pinks that I had given you before and choose some colors that are going to go with the stamp set that you give them. You could also open the stamp set carefully just be real careful so it doesn't look like you've used the stamp set and take some take the stamps out and stamp them and color them for the person first and give them a card and then give them maybe the stamped image along with the markers so that they can replicate what you've done it's going to help to teach them and just put it back carefully. They don't think that you well you know I guess they know that you've opened it but I just want to make sure that you actually focus on making sure the gift looks good to them but you're also giving them some education as well. You could also pick a stamp set that there is a video for on YouTube that you love to go get that stamp set and some markers to go with it and then send them a link to the video on Christmas morning and that way they can go watch it and learn how to color that thing so that's kind of a cool thing. You could also gift them an online class which I will be talking about a few minutes from now about how you can provide them with some craft or art education as well but you can see here that I'm using blue greens for my greens on this so don't feel like you have to get them greens just because there's flowers in this picture and then I did an alternate coloring where I have the dress in the flipped colors so it gives more options for the same set of markers to be able to do something different. Now let's move on to watercolor and I love the Daniel Smith watercolors if you know what I've been doing lately I've just been Daniel Smith Daniel Smith Daniel Smith and this set of essentials is really flexible you can get a lot of different colors out of it because yellow red and blue make all different varieties of colors you have two different yellows two different reds two different blues there's videos on my youtube channel about how to use this set in particular how to make a color chart for it etc but you don't even actually have to know all that just I put some pink and some yellow onto a palette and this is not a fancy palette this is an 89 cent one that I got at Home Depot it's just a piece of white ceramic tile and works great for a palette for mixing colors. I put down two colors smushed them together so I can get some pinks oranges and yellows on these peonies and I've chosen these these flowers as well as some others of the essentials by Ellen to recommend she has these gorgeous huge flowers which are really easy for somebody new to watercolor to paint and you can see here I'm just throwing color on just a little bit of color at the inside of the petals and then taking some clean water to move the color around and leaving some white spots you know don't feel like you have to fill in everything this is not Copic marker it's looser it's watercolor so just let it be what it is and I'm just going to paint the color around here now let me talk a little bit about this class as I mentioned I have a watercolor class on my blog as well as a Copic Jumpstart class and just for this period right now until Christmas I am offering a gift version of the class which means if you sign up and purchase this class you can gift it to someone else so there will be instructions on the web on how to do that but I will send them an email in Christmas morning saying this class has been given to you and there will also be a download that you can send along with your gift and wrap up and say you've been given this class okay so I'm going to finish up the watercolor on this one by putting some blue and some yellow onto my palette and just letting those colors mix for a background and make it just a really soft light background Daniel Smith colors are nice and transparent so you're getting this really sort of soft color the Gansai Tambi's that I showed you earlier end up looking a little bit chalkier that's all that's the big difference between them but there are two cards that I made with the Mondo Hydrangea and Mondo Peanies from Ellen Hudson next another thing my mom loves these so I thought I'd recommend this as a set to give somebody if you want to put together a beautiful set for them to make some watercolors where they don't have to actually know how to draw these art impressions ones there's a lot of different types of things i'm going to use the wooden gate here but you can also get different kinds of containers they all come with little flowers there's barns and bridges and things but these other two sets are really helpful companions to that so they have different grasses different flowers so you can mix a lot of different things and make a variety of scenes a little set of these acrylic blocks helps when they're tiny things but you also are going to need a large block so that if there's a large image in the set you want to have one that's large enough for them to to use for this and I'm using Tombow markers there is a set of just a small set then I'm going to link on my my web on my web on my blog and in the description down below so you can get just a good selection of colors from this one particular general set and your color onto the stamp itself stamp it onto the paper and then you take a brush you can get them an aqua brush but for these in particular I recommend more of a regular brush number six again is a really good width for that and then spread the color around from the stamped marker area and you can really get a beautiful watercolor look without having to do anything other than stamping and then doing a little bit of water right next to where that paint is now there's also like I said a ton of different types of images containers and all sorts of scenes and things that you can you can really get sucked into it so be careful that happened to me I have a large collection of these but you also want to go to youtube and find some videos using those stamp sets whatever stamp sets you give them and have that list prepared put an email together so that on Christmas morning all you have to do is hit send and say hey I gave you this thing and here's how you use it so even if it's one of the Copic ones or you know this this art impressions watercolor art impressions has a lot of this watercolor on their website I've got a few on mine but you can get a lot of different ideas to give to your gift recipients so they know what to do with it they don't have to go out and learn and research and stuff just give them what they need nothing like Christmas morning being able to play with your toys while the kids do right so you want to make sure you give them that opportunity so here I'm just stamping some greens and watercolor them after it dried I stamped some flowers over top of it just doing some layering of different stamps a little bit of masking so that I could get some little green bushes there at the bottom and then add water to it very easy to do with these and to end up looking like a watercolorist after you get them done because they can be really beautiful and very relaxing so this is a great gift idea that you can give them a whole packet of things make sure you give them some paper to work with as well and on the block you can even take a little bit of color and watercolor from that to paint the ground and then make a card out of it where they can just make a scene out of it they don't even have to be a card maker to use these because they're just quite beautiful next I want to talk about the Misti because if you have a friend who knows stamping and stuff they're going to probably already know about the Misti and how much they want one but I thought I'd show them to you just to be sure the small one or the large one there's a mini Misti in the large one the the large one I use more because you can get two images on it and I do so many scenes that that helps me and I also like background stamps so I picked out a couple background stamps to share with you and some thoughts on on being able to stamp really well the mini Misti doesn't always fit all the background stamps so make sure you get one that's going to fit but you put the stamp face down if you haven't seen a Misti put a face down and it has a lid on it that will pick up that that stamp it'll stick to the top this one doesn't set all the way down though so I'm going to take the mat out from the inside so that it lays a little flatter and I get a better stamped image so I'm checking it to make sure it works well and then all I have to do is put my paper in I've got it held down my magnet so it doesn't move magnets come with it and then I put my ink onto my stamp and I'm stamping onto watercolor paper if you've ever tried stamping a big solid image like this on watercolor paper you probably were really mad because you ruined your watercolor paper because it came out like this well guess what you can just keep stamping and I stamped this I think it was like seven or eight times and finally got this so look at how beautiful and dark and rich that image is it's on watercolor paper so you could take a pen and fill it in but I use brush oh over the background of it to make this beautiful scene and then some white pen to add some snow to it and I didn't even add the sentiment on the outside to put it on the inside there's another background image that I used to make a panel and colored it with my Copics and I just had fun filling in colors little darker around the edges each hexagon and then flowers like who doesn't love to just sit and color a whole page of flowers all different kinds of colors so lots of fun you can have with images big background images next up I want to show you the Archon products there's a 20 discount if you use my coupon code so Christmas is a good time for that sort of thing this is a stand and it can hold your phone for making videos so if you know somebody who has always said they want to make videos this is a great way to get started I've put my iPhone 6 in here and it holds that holds a bunch of different size phones you can also get an adapter that will be linked down there as well that will hold a camera you just have to wait down that base or else it'll all tip over but I'm just going to use my iPhone for this because you don't have to have a fancy camera to get started making videos if that's what you'd like to do and you can see I'm just coloring away underneath I have it all lined up and I have it well lit so that I get some good lighting and I can put my markers face up my marker caps if you don't want to add the little annotations that I do with text you can just put the markers there and you can see this is the video from the iPhone 6 high quality good good lighting and everything so you don't have to have something fancy you will need to learn a little bit about how to edit videos but other than that these arkan things are really good I also have an arkan phone mount in my car and I'm going to link you to that one in the doobly-doo as well just make sure you take advantage of the 20 before Christmas all right so that is it for me and my gift giving ideas I have probably more in my head but for now that is plenty and I will see you guys next time have an awesome day bye bye