 Are you the type to make a card the easy way or the hard way? I'm going to show you both of them today in my video using this Mama Elephant stamp set that's got these cute little penguins shaped like a tree in them. And I'm going to do the easy one first and it's going to be on watercolor paper, arches, cold press, painting the background upside down using some phthalo, green shade and some indian throne. So it goes from one dark blue into another one is brighter, one is duller and I wanted to create a nice mix between the two with a little transition in between. So I'm painting it upside down so I don't end up having to push the color, I'm pulling the color instead of pushing so just turned it upside down for that effect. And then did a little spraying, just a little spritzing and then worked with it a while to tip the color and get it moving on the paper because I wanted it to be relatively smooth. I didn't want the background to stand out and be super important. But a tip for you in drying it if you're going to use any kind of hair dryer or anything, try to dry it evenly. If you dry one section you could end up with creating a bloom in something that you worked real hard to try to get it smooth. So I love the moment of taking the tape off of anything because it gives you that nice crisp edge. I love that. So the background is done. That was super easy and super quick. You could also just use a piece of paper for that instead. And then I stamped the image onto the same watercolor paper so the whites would match and I embossed it with clear embossing powder and that's going to give me a little bit of a raised texture on it and I don't have to deal with little black flecks. I did fussy cutting. There is a dye. I didn't get the dye but I did fussy cutting and I've laid it down on my paper and anywhere that it's going to be blue sky behind it, I'm just going to paint those edges in the same blue, that same phthalo blue. And then hopefully no one will notice and if they do notice, guess what? They didn't deserve to get my card. So if you happen to be the one that gets this, you can't notice that. You're not allowed to and if you do, you're not allowed to say anything. So then I put some dimensional adhesive on the back of it, adhered it to my card. You could choose to go through and paint every little guy in here but I decided not to because this is supposed to be the easy way, right? This stamp set has so many little spaces in it. It's impossible to watercolor. I did try and that just was a, just a mess. It was just a mess. Even with embossing to try to hold it in and it took forever. And I decided if I was really going to spend time working with this stamp set and coloring every little bit of it in, I went for the medium that made most sense with this. I stamped with some no line ink onto drawing paper and this is my favorite Stonehenge drawing paper and it gives me a really nice texture. I wanted a soft card, something just really sweet and soft and something that looked illustrated instead of looking like, like a stamp. So I got out my Polychromos pencils and I just went to town with it. For all the penguin bodies, I used two colors. I used a warm gray and a black. And when you're coloring black things like penguins, because we'll be doing lots of penguins this coming year, this Christmas season, you want to allow the black to create your grays. By that, I mean, whenever you have an area that you want to look lighter, then you need to put some darker right next to it. So see the little flippers on the penguin that's sitting on top of the head of the other one? I had to put black on the head so the flippers look like they're on top. And anywhere where there's a body that comes down and then there's a flipper that reaches out from it, you can put some shading and I'll show you a little close up in a minute. Put a little shading there and then it'll make that gray pop because it's next to black. And this is the same for any black animal. I get people asking me all the time, how do you color a black dog or a black cat? Same way, use your grays and then create that contrast. You can see there's contrast under the flipper and then in that section above the flipper, which makes the flipper look like it's separated. It's not just one giant blob. Then I went through and worked on all of their little beaks and their little feet with, of course, yellow because every card I make, doesn't have to have yellow in it, isn't that kind of a rule of the universe? I think it is. But the really fun part about going to all the trouble of coloring each one of these individually with colored pencils is I had lots of time. And what I did with that time was to make up a story for each one of the penguins and name them. Some have more of a story than the others. Peter is the first penguin and he is totally a Christmas penguin. His grandmother made him his little scarf and she also made little gifts, knitted gifts for him to give out to his penguin friends. So he wrapped them up in little boxes. She's also the one that taught him how to decorate Christmas tree the right way. So he made sure to bring some ornaments with him to this little Christmas party that they were taking pictures of themselves at. Next is Penny. She's a card maker and she made a card with a fishbowl on it and little fish in it. And she's just trying to figure out who to give that one to. She's got a whole box of them hiding behind her. Next up is Pauly. Now Pauly is totally the ice fisherman in the gang. He is the one who gets everybody else together when it's time to go ice fishing. He's the organizer of the trips. He's the one to tell everybody who brings what when they're going out ice fishing. And so he assigns them who's going to bring the bait, who's going to bring the food, who's going to bring the whatever that they need. I don't even know what they need. I'm not an ice fisherman, but Pauly is totally the guy to know all of the details and how to work all that out. So he's ready to roll in his little hat with the brown fuzz on the top and the two little ear flaps in red. And the next three little guys are Papa Parker and Paisley penguin. And they are a little family and they just like little Paisley loves having her hat. She just thinks wearing a Christmas hat is the best ever. They also love giving out gifts. So they have a whole pile of gifts to hand out at this Christmas party to everybody else. Piper and Paige, all they are are the sweets penguins. They just love their little candies. Poppy is the dress up penguin. Poppy is wearing Holly on her head and a bow tie because she could not decide which one was more festive. So she's ready to roll. Now Philip is Pauly's pal. And remember Pauly is the one who goes to do the ice fishing. Philip tries really hard. He's not a great fisherman. He's fishing with a star. I'm not really sure how that's supposed to catch any fish. Paris loves to wear her hat. She is the queen of fashion. Paisley is a hot cocoa drinker. You would not think it of a penguin, but there you go. And then here we go with another one of the penguins. This one is Paxton. And Paxton has a fish in the bowl. And the bait and everything is ready to roll unlike Philip. There's always the penguin that doesn't come prepared. And Paxton is always the one that brings extra goodies. Phoebe is a decorator, loves to decorate the tree, and has a really good fashion sense. Patrick is a singer. And he's got a deep bass voice. Have you ever heard a penguin with a deep bass voice? It's really shocking. Prince Pablo insists on being called Prince. And Piper loves wearing her little hat, sitting on top of the Christmas tree. So there's the penguins. I made up their little names and their stories. Now to make each one of these penguins separate from each other, I'm putting shading at the bottom of each one. And you can see how it kind of helps the bodies to look like there's one in front of the other. To just add a little bit of that color, you could also do that with gray. It doesn't have to be blue. And if you do that with each one of these penguins, then it just starts to look a little bit more dimensional and add a little bit more to it. Not that this is dimensional because it's not real, but it is what it is. Don't tell the penguins it's not real. They will have a fit. The whole party will be over. It will be a bad thing. So let's just keep that as a secret among us that this is not real. The background I actually did while I was on a Zoom call, I was on a really long Zoom call and we didn't have any video on. So no one knew that I was sitting there coloring and filming while everyone was talking. So it was really kind of a nice way to do double duty and get something done while I was also getting something else not done because I wasn't really doing much in that meeting. I was just sitting there coloring and listening to people talk about things that I didn't need to know about. And the background I decided on this card, I didn't want to use any blending solutions. Kind of even things out and all that. I love the texture of pencil. I always have, I started out in college as a pencil illustrator and that was just what I loved. So I don't tend to use the blending solution all the time and this is one that I decided not to. So peel off that tape, that delicious moment, those nice crisp white edges. And of course, since it is a Christmas card and there's snow out there, I had to add snow to my card with my Signo Uniball white pen, my favorite white pen. I go through a lot of these every year. I did buy a big box of them, so I have tons. And yeah, I'm adding snow in front of the penguins as well as behind them. So it looks like it's snowing all around. And then my penguins are all ready to be on their festive little car. Just trimmed the image down and popped it onto a card base. Really simple one, but it took me forever. And you can decide which one. Is it better to do the hard one or is it better to do the easy one? I don't know. I do some of each and you know, it is what it is. Let me know which one you would try in the comments down below and I will see you again in another video very soon. Supplies are all linked below as well as over on the blog. I'll talk to you guys later. Take care. Bye-bye.