 Well hello there, it's Sandy Alnok, and today I have a rainbow Instagram card with a free download of the pattern for it, and I'll be using the Ocean Shelfie stamp set from Lawn Fawn to make this one. Lots of rainbow color will be fun. The stamp set I chose because it has multiples of the same animal in it, so I can make it look like there's multiple selfies, which kind of works, right? I'll show you more in Instagram pictures, and the bottom part is really easy to mask out. It's going to be easier for you because the template that I've posted on my blog has thicker outlines because these are a little bit thin to work with, but that's okay. I survived it, and I'm just going to stamp each one of the images into one of the squares. I'm going to be using this Stonehenge drawing paper, which is my favorite for my color pencil work, and I'll be using, for the first time with color pencil, not that it's a big deal, it's the Catherine Pooler Midnight Ink, and the reason that I'm using it is because everything else needs to be re-inked right now. My VersaFine needs a re-inker really bad, and I can't get anything to stamp well, so there you go. You can use almost any ink pad though with color pencil. Just make sure that it's going to work if you're going to use any blending solution, and I'll talk about that a little further later on in the video. The only tricky part is masking out the circle you can see, the mess that I made. I just tore up all of my used sticky notes to make a little mask that was roundish. You could also just stamp it on a piece of paper and use a whole bunch or a die and cut it out and stick it on. It might be a little easier, but these are the colors that I've used, and I am going to have this picture over on my blog if you want to get those numbers, etc. I am going to use blending solution in this one as well as pretty good pressure because I want a really intense color, which I don't always in my color pencil work. If you've taken my color pencil jump start class, you'll know there's a variety of pressures I'm using probably about a 3 and sometimes a 4 in some particular areas in this. This whole card took me an hour and 30 minutes about to color it. So it was quite the adventure in coloring, but depending on what medium you're using and how detailed you want your coloring to be, you could make this very much easier on yourself. For instance, if all you did was make a profile that had white backgrounds as the thing because there are lots of people that do lovely Instagram profiles where everything has white backgrounds and they're very beautiful and very clean and simple and you could do something like that instead or you can get crazy like me and put colors in all of it and leave some strategic white highlights. The colors that I chose I picked because they are the colors kind of of the Instagram logo, not that I matched anything up, but I wanted something that felt Instagram-y with those types of colors. And I also started alternating the backgrounds on these. One would have a background that would be in the yellows and reds and purples and the other would be in the blue and the blue-green. So those kind of colors in the background. But I'm using the same colors in all the pictures so they all match. But you'll notice every other picture has a different overall background color. And boy, do I wish I could color this fast in real life. That would be really nice because, like I said, this took me a really long time to do. But it was so satisfying when I got it done because it is such a happy little card. I am using Polychromos pencils. You could certainly use Prismacolors. And it seems like every time I use my Prismacolors, people say, why don't you use your Polychromos very often? And as soon as I do a Polychromos, I get people saying, why don't you use Prismacolors more often? And I switch back and forth. There's not really an artistic reason necessarily why I choose one over the other. I'm a Prismacolor girl from way back in the day. And that's just always been my favorite brand. I do love my Polychromos as well. And I find they both work great. So I don't discriminate between them. But I do switch back and forth because it makes people happier if I do that, I guess, since I get complaints if they think that I've done too much of one particular one. But there you go. So in this one, the little person or a little person, a little octopus who has this profile is a consistent color throughout all the pictures. So I did think through that a little bit as I stamped the octopi because I wanted to make sure that I spread that color out instead of having multiple octopi next to each other, that sort of thing. And I alternated also having some that were busier, some that were less busy and that kind of thing. Now we get on to the blending. I'm using a blending stump and some baby oil. You could also just use some Gamsol. It works just fine. Again, I don't have a reason why I use one or the other. Baby oil smells a little nice. So that makes me happy. But I don't really have a reason for using one over the other. You may find your paper or your pencils works better with one or the other. Just try them and see. The blending that I'm doing to start with is the yellow because I wanted to keep the yellow pure. I didn't want to get the blending stump all dirty with other colors and then start trying to jump in and fix the yellows because that would of course mess everything up because you've got other color on there. Yellow is the most contaminatable color. So it's the one to start with first. And then just started moving through my warm colors and did all of those and then switched over to the cooler colors. And you could also just blend each square as you go. You don't have to wait and do it all at the end like me. But I thought it would also be fun to watch the image come alive and see the difference that blending solution can make. Most of the time I don't really like to blend them. If I wanted something blended, I normally would simply go for using Copic markers or something. If I want something perfectly blended, I like the look of pencil. But this one in particular, I use the blending solution because it actually needed a little more smoothness because it was such bright pictures all right next to each other. That's also another reason why I alternated the background colors. You can see there's a cross almost formed by the ones that have the more of the blue in the background and the blue green versus the ones that have the warmer colors. But now I'm just going to add bubbles into everything and doing some that have massive numbers of bubbles, some that have less bubbles. In order to kind of give some unity to the whole thing as well as providing a little bit of interest in some of the ones that felt more boring. I had drawn an extra rock in that one picture so decided to add black lines so it would match everything else. And this is a white uniball Signo gel pen, my favorite gel pen. And some people think that the white pen is my signature thing, especially at this time of year because I make so many cards with snow, but it also works great for bubbles. So there's my finished card. It took a long time to do, but it was so worthwhile. It was very satisfying when I finished it. And I hope if you use my template downloaded from my blog that you will share it with me, go share it on social media and tag me. The other things I want to let you know are some heads up about stuff coming. Friday night, I'm doing a Facebook live in conjunction with MFT. And you can find out on my blog how to log into that, where to get the downloads you can color along with me, the list of colors, et cetera. So that's going to be fun. I hope you can join in for that. And then upcoming videos. This one is going to be on Ellen Hudson's channel tomorrow, previewing one of her stamps for Friday's release. This one is in colored pencil. Again, making some tree branches on both black and white, coloring that little owl. And then on Friday, she's having her big release, and this is going to be my card for the big release. And that one's in Copic marker, so lots of fun to be had. But at the same time as that, on Friday, I have a video over on MFT's channel. Another one with a free template. So on Friday, you can check that one out. And I'll try to remember to add links to this. If I don't remember to add links, somebody leave it in the comment and tell me I need to add the links as promised as soon as they go live. All right, that's it for me for today. I will see you in the next couple days on my channel and those other two. Be sure to go subscribe to them as well. And I'll see you again soon. Take care.