 Hi everyone and welcome back. It's Vicky here with a new card making video. Today I will play with some new stamp sets by Altenew. This is from the previous release and I didn't go to use it. I absolutely love it, lovely open flowers that you can of course use with the layering stamps if you like or like I'm going to do today I will stamp just the outlines and I will use my pencils to color them in. Now at the back you can see the layering guide if you want to use those and on the inside of the leaflet you can see some ideas on how you can put together some cards. I think that these flowers look absolutely stunning and by the way the stamp set is called Fabulous Florals and there are also matching dies if you want to grab those as well. I will be working today with my Artisa colored pencils. I have the 72 set here great price for this for what you get and you will see that the pencils work great. Now they come in a tin with a hinge at the cup like how nicely organized they come and that's how I'm going to keep them in my craft room. Now you will find three trays in the 72 set. These are wax based pencils they are acid free and what I love about them is that their lid does not break so I'm going to take out the tray so you can see how they store them. They are in every tray they have kind of a rainbow color which is not very convenient for me so I'm going to take them all out and put them back again in a rainbow order where I have all the yellows together or the pinks together etc. So here is how they look now. On the last tray I kept some pencils that I can use for faces as well as my browns and my grays. Now this video is not sponsored by Artesia I never get sponsored by anyone however that it sent me the set to try it out and I do have a coupon code for you. You will see that these come in a great price and on top of what the discount that they have on their website now you can use the coupon that you will find down below. I am going to quickly review them so you know exactly what these are. First of all they come in a round barrel which means that it might roll around on your table and that's the only disadvantage to be honest that I found with these pencils. Every pencil is labeled with the name of the color the number of the color as well as the light fastness of this pencil. So this one for example is Mekons blue the number is a 104 and it has two plus signs for light fastness. Again these pencils are wax based they are acid free and they are fade resistant and you can see the fade resistance which is also called in the world of art light fastness. By the plus signs I look through all the pencils in my 72 set and most of them have three or four plus signs which is absolutely awesome and here is an example where you can see a close-up look on what I'm talking about and of course the white here is the less fade resistant which is normal. So these are professional great colored pencils. Now today I'm going to work on this pad and this is one that they sent me along with a set of the pencils. It is the premium drawing pad it comes with 50 pages and they are 8 by 10 in inches they are about 130 GSM or 80 pounds thick. So it's not a very thick paper it is quite smooth but it has enough tooth for the pencils to work on top of them. Later on I will try stamping as well on top of this paper and it works great but again keep in mind that I'm not expert in pencil coloring I'm just a crafter making cards and I know that for card makers it's going to be perfect the pencils work beautifully on top of it and you will see that it works with any blending technique. So here I zoomed in for you so you can see what I'm doing. I'm using blood orange and I'm applying very softly the color on top of the page and then I will switch to pumpkin orange a lighter shade of orange and again very light application and I'm going to overlap the darker shade so I can see if it blends nicely and I think it works just fine. The blending is smooth and I do get that pencil colored look where the whole paper is not over saturated. I can add more layers on top light layers without pressing too hard. When you don't press too hard wax doesn't build up so you can add more layers and saturate the color more. Now I'm going to press really hard and see what happens. I'm going to switch to my pumpkin orange add some of that down and then I'm going to try and blend them the two together. You can see I can get some blending and it works just fine. So both techniques light application and pressing too hard works just fine. Now I'm going to show you another technique which is the one that I will be working with for coloring my flower today. So I'm going to do some light application of both those colors and then I'm going to bring in gumsul. Now gumsul is an odorless mineral spirit. It is non-toxic. It's basically a solvent which is going to blend out the wax of these pencils and it's going to end up giving me a very smooth application. When you do this technique you will end up with a very smooth blending. It's not going to look as if you used pencils and depending on the looker you are going after you can switch from one technique to the other. So to apply gumsul over my pencils I'm using a paper stamp. These come in different sizes and you can use them again and again. And here is a close-up look on all the three techniques. The first look where you don't press too hard, the second where you oversaturate the paper and the third one with gumsul. So you can get three different looks with the same pencils and now I'm going to use this paper and start stamping on top of it a few of the flowers from my stamp set. I am going to stamp a couple of leaves as well and for that I'm using permanent ink just to make sure that when I will use gumsul over it I'm not going to smudge or smear it. And since my ink pad was quite dry I had to do it a couple of times and I'm going to start coloring the leaves with my two shades of green. I'm using spring green which is the lighter shade and basil green which is the darker one. I'm going to start by applying the lighter one and I'm not going to cover up completely the whole leaf. I'm leaving an area completely white. Now I switch to basil green and I'm adding the darker shade. I am applying everything with a very light hand. I'm not pressing at all and now with gumsul I'm going to start blending out the lighter color going all the way out to the white area which is going to remain whiter and now I'm going to blend in the darker area. So you see I end up having a very smooth blending. It looks as if I used my alcohol markers there and of course you can deepen up the shadows if you like and add even more layers on top. For my flowers I'm going to use the exact same technique. This time I'm working with blood orange and pumpkin orange. Now you can use your scissors or a sanding block to sharpen up your paper stumps or to clean them from the previous color and then I'm going to blend it out just like I did with the leaves. Notice that with my lighter color I didn't go all the way to the tip of the petal. This way I will end up with a very light shade there. So I'm starting by blending out the lighter color and now I'm going to move on and blend the darker shade and my petal is ready. Now the fun part is that you can go ahead and add color on all your petals, on all the flowers and do the blending with gumsul later on. I find this technique is really fun. It gives amazing results. It's super easy. It is a technique that I absolutely love. I did share it on my videos before and I go back to again and again and every time I use it I always say to myself it's so easy. Why do I use alcohol markers? And the result is really pretty. But in any case I feel like I have to switch from supplies to supplies just to give them all some love since I have them in my stash. I will continue doing the exact same thing on all the flowers and the leaves. Now this step is completely optional but if you want you can build up color and add even more shading on different areas here and there with a darker color. You can see that the paper is not oversaturated with wax just because I blend it out with gumsul so I can easily go on top of it and build up even more color and darken up some areas. Now if you like you can go with gumsul and blend out this layer as well. I kind of like that stroke look of the pencil so I'm going to leave it as it is. I think it looks more organic and more authentic but you can definitely go over it and blend it out one more time for a completely smooth result. Now I'm going to use the matching dies and start cutting out all the images that I have colored just for convenience and so that you can see what I'm doing. I brought out my mini blossom die cutting machine. It is so small and handy and it is easy to put on frame for you to see. So anyway I'm going to cut out the flowers, I'm going to cut out the leaves and I have a bunch of leaves here. Sometimes I color and stamp and color more than I need to for my final composition just because I don't know exactly how many I'm going to need for a flower bouquet. Now I have a white panel here which I ran through my die cutting machine using these dotted swirls deep bossing cover die. This one gives a lovely design on top of the paper it is very subtle but it is still there. It's really hard to see on camera right now but you will see the details in the photos at the end. This is the fancy hello die. It is by Alte New and I cut it out from a black cardstock. I absolutely love this one. It's one of those die cuts that I will be using again and again throughout the years. I am using a nouveau de luxe glue at the back and I'm going to stick it down at the bottom. I like to have a big sentiment down before I do my flower composition. This way I know that it's going to fit nicely. I'm also going to stamp a secondary sentiment. For that I'm using a very thin strip of white paper and I like this stamp set by Simon's stamp. This is called you got this and it comes with a tone of smaller sentiments that you can combine with bigger ones. So for this one I'm going with the one that says sending happy thoughts. So I stamped that with black ink and I'm going to stick it directly below the hello die cut with foam tape at the back. Now I'm going to play around with my flower cutouts and try and decide where this is going to go. I like to somehow nest the die below the flowers and once I'm happy with the placement I'm going to commit and stick everything down. For sticking things down I'm going to use my nouveau de luxe glue for all the layers that are below the main flower and for the bigger flower which is at the top I'm going to use a foam square at the back. It is a bright and happy card design. I absolutely love flowers on cards and of course by changing the sentiment below it can fit any occasion. I'm going to finish off my card by adding some crystal gems at some of the petals of the flowers. I always like to do that touch on big flowers when they are the focal point on a card just because they look like droplets and they make the flowers look more fresh and it kind of brings them to life. Here are some close-up photos on the card that I made for today. Don't forget that you will find links down below to everything I used along with a coupon code for the whole Arteza website. Thank you all so much for watching today. I hope that you had fun and that you got inspired and I'll see you all next time.