 Hi there, I'm Sandy Allnog Artist and Paper Crafter and today I'm going to ask you a question. Is it a succulent or is it a rose? I bought the Altenew Mega Succulent stamp set because it had this big beautiful floral shape on it and though it's called succulent, I think it's also a rose. You can use it for either one. You can see how big it is compared to an A2 size card front and I've stamped it onto a half sheet just so I can get every last bit of it on there and color it all and then trim it down to whatever size card I want to make. So I'm starting with blue greens and greens and we're going to color it as a succulent first and then we'll do it as a rose. And what I thought of when I saw the stamp set, I often think of what can I teach with this. I thought this would be a great opportunity for you to try making your petals really, really deep. And what I'm doing here is using two blue greens and two greens and putting the color on the deepest part of the petal on it and when I say the deepest part, what I mean is the one that's closest to the center because the center is where it goes down furthest away from the light and that's where the shadows are going to be created. On something like this in the center portion, there's all kinds of teeny tiny shapes. Now they are larger than your normal stamp because it's a full-sized card image, but you can also kind of ignore the fact that there's individual shapes in there. I decided not to go into each and every single one of them and try to make everyone look like it was an individual shape and worry about where the light was hitting and where the shadows were. I just kind of threw some color in there into those shapes with my dark green and then blended them out with the lighter green. The idea when you're making the tight center of a flower is to allow some of the parts to be super dark and then allow some tips to show upward into the light because that's what a flower is going to be. It's going to have a very tight center a lot of times and that's what you're going to get. You're going to get some rounded super highlights and then some deep dark areas in the middle. I am going to add more to this later on as we go, but my next step here is to just blend out a little bit more with another one of the blue greens and I'm using the same four colors throughout the whole thing so you can scroll back to the beginning to see what they are. I'm going to start working on the rest of it. I'm not going to make you sit through coloring every single petal because I want to get to the rose as well today, but I want to slow down a little bit and show you a little bit more on the petals themselves and talk about that. So I got my very dark green on the part of the petal that points to the center and then that little edge is the part that the light is going to hit, that little skinny curve that's drawn up there with the little notch in it. That's the tip portion. So I want you to keep those light when you color them. Keep those in the bright sunlight and let the rest of it fall into shadow. So you can see I'm just creating each one of those areas with a dark part at the very center blending it with my green and then I'll go over that and start blending with my two blue-green colors. When you're doing this, there's lots of forgiveness. If you go over lines and that sort of thing, really, you're just using the same four colors, so if something bleeds over, nothing's going to be hurt by it, but you can see how nicely a blue-green will blend with a green if you approach it right. But one of the things that happens is I start losing some of those deep shadows as I go over it with my lighter colors. So I am going to add another layer of that as we go. That happens a lot in Copic coloring because the lighter colors, I picture them having more colorless blender in them, and that means they're erasing color down below them. And I talk about that a lot in the Copic Jumpstart class, so if you haven't taken that, that will be a mantra you will hear in that class. There's always links to all my classes in the description down below on YouTube. So you can see adding a little bit more shadow in there added some immediate dimension because I recreated some of that dimension that I lost from going over it with the other colors. And now I'm just kind of adding a little bit of the green there to start flicking over top of that blue-green because these were becoming a little too blue-green. And adding a little bit of that green back over top of everything starts to not only smooth it out, but it also adds that overall green color that's going to turn it into a beautiful succulent and not a weird blue-green flower, which it could easily turn into. But look how pretty that is on the card. And yes, you can emboss right on top of Copic marker and not have any ill effects of it. You just have to make sure the colors underneath will make your words readable in whatever color that you're doing your stamping and embossing. So now I want to try it in red. I'm going to do the same thing and use the same colors throughout. There's three colors that are up there on the screen. RE9 is a color that works with just about every one of the light reds. So I do lots of videos with red things that use a variety of the light colors, but I'm almost always reaching for my R89 and my R37. But I'm doing the same thing here. Just decided I'd do some of the petals over on the left-hand side because I'm trying to create a little bit of dimension as well. So I'm not only going on this particular one into the depths of the flower with my shadows, but you can see that I'm doing the bottom so that I can make my light feel like it's coming from the top and then blend it upward. But you could also do those petals the same way as I did before, only putting that deep shadow on the interior. So this is for those who want to make it look like there's directional lighting. You can kind of look at each petal and figure out where that shadow would be. You can see how nicely those colors blend. The light red that I'm using here is more of a tomato red. And the mid-tone that I'm using, the R37, is more of a cherry red. So you can blend those two together and they make a really nice combination and going over top of it with that tomato red just kind of pulls the whole thing together so it doesn't look like it's disjointed colors. But I'm just kind of scribbling right over top of the whole thing with that marker just to kind of unify the whole thing. If it starts taking away color and making it too much of a light color and you start losing all your shadows, then just go back in and add your shadows again. And now I'll do the whole flower here in super speed. I wish I could color this fast. That would be really nice. Now it wouldn't be because I like coloring. I enjoy the time sitting and coloring, but it is kind of nice to be able to see it form so sometimes it's helpful to look at it quickly to get an idea of how the whole flower develops because you don't see that when you just look at one petal at a time. But the stamp is just beautiful. I really have enjoyed coloring it and I think I will enjoy coloring it again and maybe in a different color combination. So I again made a square card, mounted it on some black card stock, stamped my sentiment and put it on a square card base. I also did try watercoloring it and it watercolors nicely as well, have that layered as well. And then on this one, I put the sentiment on the inside. Not that you can't emboss on top of watercolor paper, but I thought it would be more visible here by putting the two color embossing, doing the black first, letting it completely cool and then doing the white embossing. Looked really pretty on the inside of the card. So thank you so much for joining me for the video today. If you liked it, click the like button, watch some more videos on screen. If you would like, visit the supply list in the description or over on the blog and I will see you guys later. Take care. Bye.