 Hi there, my name is Sandy Allnach. I'm an artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and I am starting Christmas videos a little early I apologize to those who aren't ready in September but I have a lot of background ideas for Christmas cards that I wanted to start to share and Since they do take a little while to do I also thought it would be good to start sharing them early so that you have time if you want to do a couple of special Christmas cards with some fancy backgrounds in them that you could do that and This series may turn into being with multiple mediums, but it's focusing on Copics this month also because I'm using some new stamps Every Wednesday this month from Stamping Bella. This little one is called Christmas Tug of War and I love the ones that have dogs and cats in them because I'm an animal lover and I just love color and little critters and this little guy on the left is a kitty cat And I know my hands in the way my big fat hand, but with a lot of these cat and dog stamps I love to color them so that they look like critters that I have or have had Or if the card is going to go to a particular recipient I'll often color it with the colors of their animal so that they end up getting a card that has their babies on it But this particular one looks a bit like punch He's got sort of these stripes on one side of his face which is very distinctive if you've ever seen pictures of my boy and So I'm just I've got an underlayer of a light gray and I'm just adding some darker gray lines on it So I just looked at his little body to figure out what would be the best way to approach Creating these kind of stripes for him He's got a little bit of warm gray and cool gray in him So I'm kind of going over it to soften some of that line work that I did You can do your line work on top if you want the lines to be a little sharper But I wanted them to get a little softer so he looks a little bit fuzzy So I'm doing colors over top of it and that helps to just smooth out the look a little bit He's got a little darker line down the middle of his back too So now I'm going over top of this With a little darker color because it just started looking a little bit too pockmarked Too many little details everywhere So just working on a couple techniques to smooth that out a little bit and give him a little more depth on his back that also made his head pull forward as I put dark color behind his head and Then I looked at him while I was doing this to say okay now What do we do? I wanted to add a little bit more brown to it He doesn't have much brown in him But that just totally helps to pull that warm grayish look in there with just a little tiny touch of the brown But this totally looks like him Except he's not as chubby as this cute little kitty is And then there's this little dog. Yeah, I colored it in the colors of my old golden retriever, but It's not a golden retriever obviously because it's a little portly pudgy cute little pup and I'm using some different colors I wanted to try You know in the next couple months. I want to try giving some love to colors that I don't normally use and the Y2 Family is one that I've often used for gold objects So if you're coloring something that's you know for Christmas, you're doing a Christmas bulb or Ornament or something a lot of times I'll use this combination for those but I thought what would that look like on a dog and That is what I'm doing here I'm just using a couple of the Y2s the Y2 8 is a little on the greenish side So I didn't use that one, but I started with the Y2 6 For a darkish color and then just kind of working my way through some of the lighter Y2 markers Since this pup wasn't trying to look like a particular dog It was kind of nice to be able to just jump in and add some contrast some pop of a different color So I went one over on the color wheel to find a YR that would work And that is going to give me a good dark color almost like a brown, but it's not quite a brown. It's got a little more Brightness in it since it's a YR color So that is one thing that you can do if you're having trouble finding a color in your stash That goes with something go one step over on the color wheel or one digit Over in the the first of the two digits That will give you something related to the color that you're using but not too far off to make it difficult to do the blending So I'm just gonna add a little bit of contrast all the way around to try to get him to Have a little more roundness and depth to him And go over the top with my lightest color just so I can smooth out some of those areas But since he is so cute and pudgy I also decided I wanted to add a little bit of texture to him I wanted him to still look a bit like a fuzzy dog So I'm gonna add a little contrast with an E23 and that's gonna give me just a little bit more pop To those dark areas and then I'm gonna go in with my tip of my marker I'm holding it fairly vertically and using a really light touch to add just a few little lines So he looks furry because furry is always good, but notice. I'm not doing fur all over the entire thing I'm just doing fur in the dark area into the mid-tone Because if you do it everywhere, he could end up looking like he's got chicken pox Okay So the packages in here are gonna be red and green now This is one of those stamp sets that you could use all year long So if you're looking for ones that have a little more shelf life than just Christmas It would be really easy to add a happy birthday message to this one And use this stamp set all year long and not really have to Worry about holding it just for Christmas I like stamp sets like that just because I don't have to put it away Because I put all my Christmas stamps away after the season's over to wait until I'm start Starting to make the following year's cards And then I have a whole bunch of stamps that I bought that don't see the light of day all year long So this is one of those ones that you can color in all different kinds of color combinations And end up with really cute cards any time But I'm just going to use some reds and greens In order to bring that Christmas feel to this And I'll do a few more things in the background that we're going to get to in just a moment If you tuned in for the fence background, we will be there momentarily I'm just going to add a little bit of red to the bow on his head I originally was thinking about making it another green bow since they Obviously would have had green out while they were wrapping the package But I thought the the red contrast would be good So that I bring that red into a little different area of the card and then the green is that pop Which is what they're tugging on and having a little tug of war fight with So it adds a little more emphasis to that Now to get started on the fence I decided on gray because the gray is going to contrast With the majority of the colors that are already in here If I were to do a brown it might accidentally melt into the brown dog And I didn't want that to happen So I covered the whole thing with a base coat of a light color I made lines those You can see I didn't use a ruler didn't get real careful with them I made the heavy lines between the boards with a very dark marker It was a number 10 and you can use the C's the ends the T's whatever And then I went for a mid tone ish like a darker of the mid tones a number seven to make the green of the wood And you can see here. I am not being real careful with it It's not lining up exactly in tiny corners or anything Just let it be Lines just all kinds of wood if you want to google what wood looks like you can certainly do that And find different kinds of wood But use a darkish kind of color For the texture of the wood itself And I just went through the whole thing and added that now There's some areas that you'll have to maybe be a little careful right inside the bows I didn't worry about making the lines inside the bows because that's a lot of fussing And in the next step, you'll see how unnecessary that is So because the next step is going to be to go in with a color That's a mid tone but a darker mid tone not as dark as the colors that you already used for the lines So that was a number seven I used for the The grain in the wood and now I'm going over it all with a number six That's going to pull all that color together So it's going to look like a piece of wood a little gray fence As opposed to letting all those lines be so distracting Because you can see how how much they get a little more subtle You could do those darker lines on top, but then you'd have a real strong contrast This color on top with the the mid tone gray Allows that to kind of melt together and become a little more of a background element Because some of the things that you may find as you try to start doing some backgrounds Is you need to keep them At a distance and a fuzzier background image will allow the images in the front To sing and to be the important things So I just want to cross the entire image With that mid tone gray You might want to test on a piece of scratch paper a different combination of grays Which one is going to look better for what you want And then to create a sky on the top. I just went over it with a really dark blue You can use any of the dark blues and then I made a little bit of division in between each one of the Boards on the fence so that it looks like like a fence Doesn't even have to be even it could be really kind of soft and squishy like that And I did end up going over it one more time before getting to the final card So here I'm adding a little bit of white detail to some of the things on here the ribbon on top I wanted to make sure that that Popped on top of his head and didn't look like it disappeared too much into the background So I added some white dots to it with my white pen and had added some to the gift as well And then the kitty had melted a little bit into that gray background So I just put a few little highlights made some white Spots on the tail that sort of thing and then on a highlight area on both his back and on the tail I just added a little bit of a white line to make sure that those things popped and didn't disappear into that background Next up is just adding a little bit of snow to the scene Especially on Christmas scenes anything during the holidays if you add snow Really helps to just add a little bit of fun and difference to the the card and as well it also adds A little bit of distraction. So if there's anything in the background that didn't get colored perfectly Just look at the snow and people will be happy. They will totally love seeing all that that beautiful snow on the card Notice that I'm putting some snow over top of the images themselves Just some carefully placed snowflakes so that it looks like it's snowing in front of them not just behind them Here's the finished card which I just had to glue onto a piece of card stock for my card base How simple is that I love when I don't have to actually figure out a card design because I've spent so much time coloring and so much love Has been poured into it that it doesn't need anything else and it's nice and flat for mailing too Nice and inexpensive for the holidays So there's going to be three more in this series this month with stamping Bella There's going to be more throughout the entire fall. So please feel free to hit that subscribe button So you can get lots more Click the link in the doobly-doo to go over to my blog to enter to win this stamp set Which would be a lot of fun so you could recreate this card And stay tuned all month long for lots more and throughout the fall Again, apologize for starting Christmas so early, but Christmas will be here before we know it Take care you guys. See you next time