 Hi everybody, it's Sandy and welcome to my YouTube channel where today I'm going to be doing a stamped comic strip card using the Crazy Birds by Tim Holtz I don't usually use a stamp set multiple times on my YouTube channel, but he came out with the crazy things these are Accessories that go with them so they can be used all season long During different holidays. There's the crazy thoughts which inspired this particular tutorial today and More traditional types of sentiments in the crazy talk. There's also some really silly ones in there So there's lots of fun that can be had with these with the extra stamp sets that go with them I've created two free templates on my blog This one is the five by seven because these are really big stamps So they kind of need to have a little bit more space to stamp the images in and I've put some of the Ellen Hudson heavyweight vellum over it and then I'm going to stamp on it with ranger archival jet black ink I'll be doing a lot of masking throughout this and I'm masking some with just post-it notes to keep some of the images or parts of the images within the boxes and Other masking is just going to be to put one image in front of another and What you want to do with something like this if you want the images to cascade over top of the boxes is To put the ones that are going to be in the front In the front first you want to stamp them first and then mask them out and then stamp the ones that are behind them and Here I actually know what my plan is because I stamped it out onto tracing paper first So I have a really messy tracing paper version off to the side to use as my guide You could also put that tracing paper version underneath of your vellum and just stamp right over that So you get them in the right place You can also create an image where all of these images are masked into the boxes So if you wanted to just print this out on whatever paper you want to color on Then you don't have to actually do all the masking in the drawing out of edges that I'm doing But I wanted a lot of the images to break out so Let it dry is a reminder as you get going If you're if you're like me and you lean your hand on things you want to let it dry in between This is all the front layer and I let it dry for a little while while I did I created masks using this post-it tape So it's two inch post-it tape I'm just created little quickies that I cut out to place over these and then the images that go over top of them We'll look like they're behind so now we're back to stamping and I'm trying to line things up the way I want them and Not I'm not as worried about touching the paper now because I've let it dry But I just was nervous enough because I've done this a couple times in the attempts to film this video So believe you me if you lean your hand on it, you could definitely get ink all over I also was washing my hands pretty pretty regularly throughout this so that I didn't get any stray fingerprints on it Because the spelling will pick them up quite easily and with all of the changing of stamps It's very easy to get lots of ink on your fingers Sometimes I used just a piece of plain post-it note when I was using an image that only had a little little tiny places Where it would touch anything so made it easy to do that kind of quick mask in its bottom corner, I wanted that final sentiment to Be kind of in a box on top So you'll see that in just a few minutes But I wanted to mask that out as well as the area on the bottom before I put the bird in and tucked him where I wanted him and I didn't get my stamping quite right. So that's easy to fix. I just took a sharpie one of the fine point Sharpies and drew it back in. I like stamps like this that are Kind of easy to draw because you can go in quite easily and fix just a little tiny part of it You can use any kind of a pen that'll dry on this vellum But you want to check to make sure it's going to dry eventually It may take a little bit of time because it is a slick surface And here when I did my quick mask the Y fell off. So I ended up using my pen to fix that as well the next step is going to be to add all the boxes in and If you're going to just print it out and stamp all your images within the boxes You don't have to do this part because you can just have them printed out But I'm going to draw mine in and I'm not using a ruler I'm just going to kind of eyeball it and make some of them sort of wonky lines and I'll make them even more wonky by the time I'm all done But I wanted to take this first pass at getting the lines drawn in So that I can do my coloring and then come back and add detail and I'm going to make a little thought bubble here Because this is the main sentiment on the card. What the I'm sorry. You're how old as this sentiment So these three parts are kind of the main sentiment on the card That's what would be great. I think for teen boys We're always struggling with trying to find things that are good for teenagers But it would also be perfectly appropriate for anybody because it's just hilarious these fun little birds Would make anybody's birthday card a little bit happier you could also do a great Halloween card with this kind of a look and dress up the birds in different outfits and Use your other stamps to add spooks and pumpkins and stuff to it I think that could be a whole lot of fun to use this same kind of technique and If you're going to use other stamps There are some sets that I think would be great for this that you could use like a lawn fawn or paper Smooches, and I'll have a list on my blog as well as you're welcome to leave some ideas in the Comments in the doobly-doo as well as on my blog for ideas for different stamp sets that would be fun to do for this and You could use the a2 template for those or you can use this large one to make the 5x7 card I've turned the paper over and taped it down just to hold it in place while I do my coloring and I'm using Copic markers I did discover that using water-based markers made for a little Less smooth look on the other side. So if you want the coloring to look smooth Copics seem to be the best choice Nice solid colored pencil would probably do well as well. I realize right here that I hadn't put a line across there So I had to leave it With just the marker on the bottom and I'll fix it in a moment when I go back to Doing more of that black detail on the other side But you can see that the marker looks a little on the messy side here But when we turn it over it's going to look a lot better This is just some of the easiest coloring you can ever do because you can't really mess this up too much The marker doesn't normally like being on slick paper That's one of the reasons that with this Copic marker. It's kind of looking funky on this This vellum because it's made for paper that's going to absorb it and the colors are going to blend And you'll get a really smooth look if you do it on that kind of paper. So it's just going to look very different on this I Decided to use a bunch of fun jewel tones for this card You could also alternatively go for like red blue and yellow and just keep it very primary You could do something that's monochromatic and give it a whole different look there's just so many possibilities for this kind of an idea and When I was looking around at Artists that I wanted to to case Roy Lichtenstein came up and I totally forgot about him He's more of a modern artist and I know in the past. I I had done some Some more of the masters and I've asked you for ideas on on which masters you want me to case but I thought somebody modern would be kind of fun, especially with this look when I saw the Crazy thoughts or the crazy Yes, it was the crazy thoughts. That's the name of it with all the thought bubbles and the crazy blah blah blahs and everything that's what inspired this because I thought a comic strip would be great and Reviewing Roy Lichtenstein's work to get some ideas was a whole lot of fun. So I will link to his Wiki page as well in the blog post for this or you can just look him up because he's an awesome artist All right, so continuing on with the coloring. There's some areas I'm going to leave white and I want to leave them white for emphasis because I'm gonna make try to make some colors pop around them like the hat on that Bird the birthday hat as well as the blah blah blah so I've tried to fill in the colors around that and and the thought bubbles because those are the ones that Inspired this card. So I really wanted them to stand out So I didn't color them with a color, but I colored all the areas around them so that they would be the only things that would turn out to be white All right, here we go I've turned it over and you can see the colors are softer now Then they were on the other side because you're looking through Valum So you want to pick really bright strong colors if you're gonna do this If you want a strong color look on the front because it's gonna come out softer no matter what you do for the most part So I'm adding more details with my black pen and Here's where I'm gonna make it sketchy Because the stamps themselves are rather sketchy and I thought it would be fun to add more sketchy details To the card itself and add some shadows around the outsides of things and I'm gonna add some textures within some of these areas Sometimes just hashed lines Thickening up some of the lines here. I'm adding some little like halftone dots some very small ones and I'll do it across that whole pink section and Then I'll do some wide striped lines and Some large halftone dots just to make them different than the small ones in the other section and Just things to make different areas stand out or recede Because when they get darker like this they'll recede so the image itself can pop out and there's some little bit of cross-hatching in two directions and Then this center section. I thought needed to knock back a little bit to make the blah blah blah Stand out just a little bit better Now to add this onto my card I'm going to use stick it which is a double stick material I keep my scraps of it in the envelope and it's real easy to use you just peel off the backing and They do have these kind of crack strips that you can crack you basically just bend the piece of Stick it and It's really easy to pull those apart you don't have to peel off the ends and the edges and Stick it on to the piece of card stock that you want to put on your card place the vellum on top and Then in order to make sure that I didn't have any wet ink still if any of that marker work was still damp I just put a piece of white card stock over top of it and Pressed everything down really well so it would hold together trimmed it all down to put on a black card base and It was done and I just think it's so much fun Anybody's gonna have a brighter happier birthday because of this card I think it just is gonna make somebody smile and I gotta decide who gets this card out of everybody on my list Now if you are bird crazy here are two more videos with them on the left I mimicked watercolor with the Copic markers and on the right hand side I used inktense pencils to make a wall hanging which was really fun and crafty All right Be sure to pick up the free template on my blog or in my store and I'll see you guys next time take care. Bye. Bye