 Hi everybody it's Sam here so I've just condensed down the Facebook live that I done last week where I made a card using the lovely elf and some of the props from my Christmas props stamp set. So the focus on this card was the masking and the coloring. Lots of people have been asking me to do a more detailed coloring tutorial so I thought I'd do it on a Facebook live and then share it onto YouTube. So I've got my masking sheets there I'll show you those in a bit closer detail in a moment but I've just got my piece of five and three, no this was five and a half by five and a half and I'm just starting to create my scene. Now when you do the masking technique you need to kind of think about your background and your foreground so the first stamps that I'm laying down here are going to be the very the very front images they're going to be right in the front so you kind of have to think about what you want to have in front and then everything behind. So I'm laying these ones down now I do end up changing it more towards the end initially I kind of thought I'd have this kind of image in the middle of the cardstock but later on as I started going through it and we were chatting in the live chat it would have looked better to have them all kind of starting right from the very bottom and you'll see that change through the video. So here I'm just kind of talking what I'm doing but I've just stamped all of the presence on the cardstock and then I've also stamped them on the masking sheet and the masking sheet is a low tack sticky tape really and you stick that back over your image so it now means when I stamp this elf when I peel off everything he will be behind the presence because I've masked off the top of them so you can see he goes down onto the presence there however that part will you know come away when I lift that masking sheet. Now I want to mask off the elf because I want to build up loads of presence behind him so I've stamped it again on the masking sheet and you want to cut right up to the black line so yes it is a bit of fussy cutting you could run this through your scanning cut and just set your outline to zero so it cuts right on the black line so I'm just spending a bit of time cutting that out and I do speed it up now you don't want to sit and watch me do that for too long now the good thing about the masking sheets as well as you can keep these so they do come with a release paper so you can just put it back on that or you can actually stick them onto your stamp acetate you know that the stamps will come in so which I just briefly showed there so don't get rid of these it's actually something nice to keep so that when you want to do it again it's not going to take you as long so I'm just laying down that masking sheet right over that stamped image so that's now all protected and this is what a lot of people do when they want to create a background as well so you can ink the background which you'll see me do shortly. Now I also want to have these naughty and nice little signs and again I want the presence to be behind that you always have to kind of think ahead you know start off simple I would say I've gone quite complex with this and I've added a lot to this card but if you just want to do some simple masking just have maybe a couple of stamped images and go from there so I've laid that down I've also stamped them again on the masking sheets I'm just peeling off the backing there and just sticking that over the top you can get these most companies sell these masking sheets as well stick to anything crafters companion hunky-dory and more so now I've got that laid down you'll see I've stamped two other presence and then I thought I need to mask them so I did I think I probably ended up stamping maybe 20 of the presence but they are easy to cut out and I know I definitely want to do this card again and it would look great for birthdays because those presence you know it doesn't matter how you colour them so I will definitely use this again for a birthday card so every time I'm kind of stamping I'm then masking so that I can then stamp over the top of that one again so you'll see that I've just laid that one down and then I'm just going to pop the masking sheet over another one so I can lay another stamp over the top and you just keep going from there like I said I went quite over the top with this I wanted it to be really full and the final card I'm thoroughly pleased with it and I actually just don't end up giving it a well I'm at the moment I don't want to give it away and lots of people that understood that as well they said no I can understand why you don't want to give that to somebody but I probably will so come into the end of the stamping and the masking but I figured I just want to add a few more bits and pieces in so I've masked all of that off and this is now when I started to think it looks like it's just floating it needs to be kind of landed it needs to be you know coming from the bottom there so I'm laying some more down here now rather than cutting more masks because it's literally just that little side there you can see you can just use a piece of copy paper so I'm just laying it down so that the overhang doesn't go on to the stamped image below and it saves me having to cut out some more masking sheets and then I've just done it on both sides there just so I can get a little bit of that present just to fill that gap but you can see there you get a nice effect and I end up filling the far left and right and you'll see why shortly so now I've laid all that down I'm starting to bring in my distressed inks so I'm using the faded jeans weathered wood and this one is chipped sapphire and I actually come in with a little bit of black as well so I'm just using my blending brushes starting with the darkest color at the bottom using that copy paper just so I don't go over although in a minute I do I was so cross with myself but you can see now I wanted to create this nice kind of starry night sky which is what I will achieve shortly so I'm just bringing in that slightly lighter that was the faded jeans starting to kind of blend that with that darker color and bring it all around the top of the elf and then just finish it off with the weathered wood at the top so I've got a selection of the blending brushes this colored one isn't one of my favorites but it is the one that I use for the blue it's just it's not as soft I don't find I get a nice the the nicest blend I prefer the actual makeup ones and then I just brought in the blending sponge here for the top section because I didn't have a lighter color brush without having to go and clean one and then it has to dry and yeah you can you can see why I've done it so I'm just now really working those two colors to get a nice blend and go back over the lighter color go back over with the darker color I wanted it quite light at the top that's where I'm going to stamp my sentiment which I'll see me do shortly and just make sure you don't lift your masking sheets either because you don't want to obviously ruin the image now you'll see can you see the blue that's gone over just where I've put my hand down I just wasn't thinking I just in my head I thought it was masked and it was fine but it's okay because we end up resolving it and lots of people gave some suggestions and um yeah I'll talk to that talk about it in a moment so now is the reveal the best part of the masking so I'm just peeling off all those pieces like I said you can keep them all definitely reuse those again I guess if you use them a lot over time you'll probably have to make new ones but I can certainly get a few more uses out of those and I'm just peeling them all off with my well it's actually my cricket weeding tool but you can just use a poke tool and just carefully lift those up because it's such a low tack it won't you know tear your paper um so it won't ruin your image or anything like that but um it was great and everybody was like oh my gosh it looks so cool and now you can see by I've come in much closer because I'm going to start coloring but you can see how the elf is behind that very first strip and that's when I kind of wished because the ones at the bottom can you see they go under those presents that gets corrected later on so now about the coloring so my coloring is very very simple and I you know I I do spend a long time but I don't I wouldn't say I do anything kind of really tricky so I'm just laying down a light it's quite a almost I would guess a neon kind of color but I wanted that real nice kind of highlight so I just go over the whole area that I want to be for this case green in that light color and then I bring in a slightly darker shade and I go all around the outer outline of the image with the darker color always working in circular motions and I'm just kind of blending it in you know back into that lighter color so already just by adding in that you know that second color there you can see the image starting to lift and I'm doing that exact same technique on his little hat then I'm coming in with an even darker green and just going into all the little the areas where there would it would be very dark you know when you've got a crease in your arm where you've got you know underneath your armpit there would be no sunlight there so it would be much darker behind his ear there it's been much darker and I'm just going in now you can see the same technique I've laid down a nice light pink and then I've gone in with two darker shades of like a reddy pink and just filling in all those areas with the elf you do have to just draw in the cuff on his left arm it was missed out but it's very easy to do same technique with his hair laid down a very very light camel color and then I went in with some very dark browns again all around those small areas and around the outline and already you can see he's starting to come together I was conscious of the time for this during the live so I wanted to get the sentiment down so people could see how that looks so I know it's very close up but again I wanted to keep it in this video just so you can see exactly what I've done so I'm just using the VersaFine just to get a nice intense black and this is a woodware it's an old you get a set of three really nice large Christmas sentiments again if I can find the links I will link it in the description box below but I'm just going over it again just to get a real nice intense black color make sure your oxide inks are dry because they can stay wetter for longer so that's you know I stamped it twice just so I've got a nice crisp color because it might absorb some of that and kind of suck in that black I've also flicked some water just before I lifted on the masking off initially I flicked some water because oxide distress oxide inks react to water you can see they've got a kind of snow a look but I do go in with a white gel pen later on now in the stamp set you do get these little polka dots and stars to fill in the presence so I've gone back in and brought in the masks again just to lay it down so I can pop these details in without ruining the image now you can see obviously how they look now I'm just going to color everything I'm going to put it on much higher speed and I'm going to put some music on in a minute but it's just that same process of laying down a light color all over the area and then go around the outer sides with a darker shade so I'm just going to leave you now to watch me color in the rest of these presents okay so now you can see everything's colored and what I also went and done is I stamped and colored those individual presents and I'm going to stick them along the bottom and it just completely transformed the image and made me much happier so that was how I got around that kind of mistake and also I wanted those to be in front of all the others so they kind of staggered as they kind of went up and then I'm just trimming from the back so you get a nice finish then I just colored his face actually brought in I used the black widow spiders to color everything but I didn't feel I had the right kind of skinned colors so I've used my artesa and it was the peaches and creams you'll see that pencil there's slightly different and then I just used a tan color from the black widow just to give him a little bit of color and then I just brought in my black pen here just to create some little kind of poles for the signs and I had a little bit of a bleed around his face but I just rubbed that out with my eraser popped it onto some silver card and a six by six card blank so it's got a nice silver frame and then here I'm just using my secure jelly roll and it's the jelly pen sorry and it's the white and you can see how nice it looks to give that snowy effect I also added some glossy accents onto his eyes but overall I think this card looks fantastic really really pleased with it like I said I think I'm going to keep it for a while I may give it away I don't know so thank you for watching I'll also link a couple of other coloring tutorials now so you can have a look at those if you'd like and I'll be back very soon with another video take care bye