 Hi there, Sandy Olnach, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and today I'm gonna do a Merry Kisses Christmas card It's really an easy background to color and there's a lot of different stamps you can do this with But with these particular little foxes, I thought it would be extra sweet So the image in the stamp set and this is Merry Kisses from Neat and Tangled has these two cuddled together So if you want to do something like this, you may need to stamp your images so that they are hugging each other because they're Underneath a little bit of mistletoe and you could fake the mistletoe as well If you don't have any mistletoe stamps, you can just use some sort of a little plant or a little flower and hang it upside down And it will read as mistletoe So by the time this is all colored in You're not really going to see a whole lot of it other than just the suggestion of the fact that there is something hanging from above So I am coloring my foxes with one of my favorite color combos Using an E19 for the dark portion It's gonna give them a really rich color really dark shadows and It makes them a little on the red side There are some more orangey colors you can use but I like the fact it pulls in a little bit of reds So they turn into red foxes, not just orangey And I'm putting the shadows in the bottom or down one side that sort of a thing To give them some dimension And the third color that I'm going to use in the middle is YR18 I was go with my lightest color and then my darkest Mid-tone and then lightest again and that tends to get me a pretty good blend by the time all is said and done If you are new to Copic markers and you want some Basics on how to color images. I highly recommend my Copic Jumpstart class lots of people have loved it and I've seen some Amazing amazing improvement in a lot of the students in the from the beginning to the end of class And I actually had somebody write me recently and apologize For kind of blowing off the class she watched the videos and she didn't think she needed to do the exercises And then she took another one of my classes and she went back and did the Jumpstart class and she's like I'm so sorry I should have done that. I was a dork and I didn't she didn't say she was dork, but This is my mental translation of having read the email recently and She just she apologized. She said it was really an amazing class So even the people who didn't like it ended up liking it eventually because you learn a ton about the markers and about blending and that sort of thing What I'm creating here is a Kind of a hole in the tree and I sketched it in with a lighter marker So if you feel more comfortable doing that I could have just dove in dove in dived dived dove dove with the markers with this dark brown marker instead of Sketching it out But if you feel more comfortable then by all means sketch it out like I did and you can use a lighter color if you're even more scared But just make an opening of some sort It doesn't even have to be straight Because it's an opening in a tree. So it's gonna be all crooked and jaggedy and that sort of thing And I'm coloring this with a really dark brown and now it's a matter of starting to create the wood texture so what I'm doing is pressing and releasing on the marker so I get thick and thin lines and It's gonna look like a hot mess. I'll warn you right now. Don't be scared It's gonna look really cool by the time it's done and speed it up because it's going forever but I'm just doing a whole bunch of lines and You can see there. There's some that are sort of a v-shape. You can make knots in the tree all different kinds of stuff and then I started adding a couple different browns just Randomly coloring strips in there of different color brown. So I start getting a mix of different colors in my tree And it works better I think to do this because it it almost creates a sense of light and shadow on all of that bark Without you having to worry about light and shadow. It's just putting a bunch of different browns together And so I'm adding a second brown and kind of filling in the areas that didn't get covered by the first brown and Back and forth. I'm leaving all that stuff on the bottom. It's gonna be snow. So I'm only gonna color that top half And now I'm gonna go in with the black marker and add some extra detail and What I'm doing is adding in a few areas Especially if there's larger areas that kind of flattened out and end up with just one color in them Do a little more line work a little lighter with the touch on the marker So the lines get a little thinner. I'm adding some more interesting knots in the wood that sort of thing and Just adding, you know, just have fun add a little extra detail And don't sweat it because it's gonna look like wood in pretty much whatever you do if you end up With it looking too scribbly like there's too many lines Then just start going over it with another brown marker and that'll kind of soften it out a little bit And now I'm just gonna color in the rest of the bits and pieces I didn't color them in earlier because I wanted to see what was gonna be the contrast How dark was I gonna go with that wood because you could also do very light wood and use some really light grays or light Flesh-tone types of colors and make some a really big Light bark tree with just a dark center in the middle. It's kind of cool I'm gonna use a couple different greens the YG 9 5 and YG 9 9 To make some really simple scarf around them. I think that's one scarf They're both wearing not really sure, but I think that's a cute idea to share a scarf and Then I'm adding a little bit of depth in the white and of course, this is not necessary I always go the extra mile But it helps to add some dimension to the white in the long run as well It gives you a little something to Feel like just feels like there's more there instead of just open space But if you're not good at coloring with light colors, then by all means just leaves out white If you want to add shadows to something like this scarf, and it's got multiple colors in it Do your shading with gray? I'm using a dark gray at the bottom of each shape and down one side and then softening out with a lighter gray Because for goodness sake don't get out a you know a couple little green markers and try shading all that You'll be there forever Now you could use a bunch of different methods. I have a video on Different white products you can use for snow. This is a sharpie a white sharpie So you can do that I'm going to throw on some distress stain spray in picket fence just blocking off with a holding a piece of paper over the bottom and just spritzing and It will sink in a little bit into the paper and I'm also going to try a little bit of the Signo Uniball white pen and Whatever kind of white pen works for you You can add just a few of the big flakes and then let the rest sort of be dusty snow coming down from the sky I have Added a layer of red paper to it put it on a brown card stock and left it really simple I think it came out really sweet. Look how that the The picket fence spray just kind of sunk into the paper and made it just really works nice thing Anyway, I enjoyed this card. It was one of my favorite to make recently I hope you enjoyed it, too If you did hit that like button you can watch some more videos here if you're interested in seeing some more There's information on the Copic Jumpstart class. You can subscribe etc etc, and I will see you guys next time. Thanks. Bye. Bye