 Well, hi there, I'm Sandi Almok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube, and today I'm going to show you a way of swatching your AI watercolor sets, your art impressions, watercolor sets, and I'm going to show you the 10 new sets they have here early in 2017. For each one of these, I cut a little tag and put a little hole in it so I could put them on a ring. You could also tuck them into the packaging if you keep them that way. A lot of different things you can do. If you have different packaging, you keep them in, like I put all of my containers in one stamping up case, those big flat plastic cases, just make a swatch card of some sort that fits in that and swatch everything that's in it, and that way you have an idea of what those stamps look like because they're cling stamps, they're hard to see sometimes because they're just little gray lobs. And on this, it also gives you practice at doing your watercoloring and gives you an idea of what it can look like in different colors. I'm using Tomo markers for these and a silver brush, which is a number eight round, my kind of go-to for painting anything with, that's going to be on cards, the small things. And I've been using a 12 lately for those wondering what I've been doing in my sketchbook that I've been sharing on Instagram, generally a 12 or above for that. Here I'm adding some color to it, there wasn't enough color in the stamped ink, so you can add things to it by putting a little bit of marker onto a block and add some color to it. I also had added more water than I should have in the first place since some of my lines started going away, so you can repair them after they're a little bit dry. The paper I'm using for these little swatch cards is not the stuff that I normally would use, but I recommend that you might want to do that. I just had some scraps cut as tags, so that's why I decided to use them for this project. This is Kansan XL, the really inexpensive watercolor paper, and I use it sometimes for practice things. I typically tend to like the way that these work on Kansan arches, usually either the rough or the cold press. Just because the edges tend to have more of that watercolor texture, they tend to smooth out too much on a student grade sort of smoother watercolor paper like this. One of the things you'll notice in some of these is that I'm using more water or less water and I'm getting more of an effect or less of an effect, and when I say effect, sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing. If you use too much water, your lines will all disappear, so you may want to be really careful in how much you add if you're getting really wishy-washy looking images. If they're too dry and they're not moving at all, then add a little bit more water, but have a cloth or a sponge or something off to the side so that you can constantly be working on dabbing off some of your water or adding on some of your water. These are all being painted with the Tombow markers. I have the full set because I'm crazy that way. At the end of this video, I'll show you some comparison with a few other markers. I got some new ones just as I was getting ready to start doing the voiceover for this particular video, so I decided to do a little tiny quick test as my first thing ever with that marker, so you'll see that in just a few moments. Some of the sets, like this one, have a main image that you can put something in, put some flowers in like this wagon, and some just have the containers, some just have the flowers, so it's good to have a mix of different stamp sets, and those of you who are addicts know that I have a lot of them too. Here I'm adding some ground underneath this one. You'll notice on some of the stamps, you can see that black and white picture of the wagon over on the left, they don't finish off the image. That means you're intended to cover that with something. There are some containers where there's a corner that's not finished, and that's intended to have little grasses, little flowers of some sort there in order to be able to finish off an image, and they give you that space to work with something. Different grasses like these, you can add a bunch of water at the bottom to sort of make a clump out of them and make them a background image. Others you can just drop a little bit of water into, and each one of these you can sort of just watch my brush and see how I'm moving the color around to create different effects. With this chair I wanted it to look nice and rustic, and I'm trying to allow a little bit of light and dark. You don't want to put so much water on there that everything starts to disappear and mush, so I'm being a little bit careful about how much water goes on there. This flower I'm just adding a little bit of water in the top flowers, and then you can dab off color as well. When you start making your compilation of a bunch of flowers, you can very easily just remove some color and let the flowers sort of fade into each other, fade into the grasses, that kind of thing. Here on this one I go a little bit too far with it, but I thought I'd show you how you can make a clump of grasses out of just this one grassy bit. So I'm just adding a bunch of water and trying to soften the bottom so I don't have a hard edge, and then making some really soft grasses around it by just flicking that brush around. So you could stamp some flowers on top of that, and then you have this nice green background. You'll notice with this little bit here I'm painting around the little vines so that I can create some laziness. So if you're very careful with your brush you can create some extra detail around each one of the images by just being careful with your water. Just make sure you don't use a whole lot. Less is better if you start having things that mush out and turn into big blobs, and more is better if you want big blobs. Generally the back layer is best off being very soft and light and washy, and there will be a playlist at the end of this video so you can actually go through and see some full paintings done by me, and I will have some examples at the end of this video as well. Some paintings I've done with these stamp sets. There's some flowers where you're just going to put those in the front, like that little single flower might be just one by itself, so I didn't put a whole lot to it. You can also create a little more of a bush like with this one, just with a lot of water down at the base and trying to water out those bottom stems so they don't just end abruptly. Different markers will react differently and different papers will react differently, so you have to test it out for yourself. I can't tell you 100% use this marker, use this paper and you will get this effect. It is like any art, it's practice, practice, practice. On one like this I'm softening it out by putting extra water to allow those little purple flowers to just kind of mush out a little bit, and when you get a cluster of flowers you can either make it one big blob or let the little tiny detailed flowers be detailed. It really is up to you what look you want and whether or not you're putting it in a front layer where the more detail would be or in a background where it would be a little softer. The great thing about these stamps and this whole art impressions watercolor thing is you can do any one of those techniques with it. You can make it soft, you can make it really crisp and hard-edged. Depends entirely on what you would like it to be. You also have these great animal sets now that they're coming out with which is really fun. They've had a few little birds and little rodents and I think there was a bunny in one of the sets but they've kind of slipped in randomly here and there but they've got a couple sets now that are pretty solidly animals and this one is all birds so I would recommend that you go to Google find your favorite bird, stamp it in a color that's going to work with that bird and then try to mimic it and I know there's oddly some people who don't understand that you can actually Google very easily for reference material. Just put in bird standing gray if you want to do a gray bird and you will get so many pictures of standing gray birds. You can get very specific with your Google searches so you can find some reference and follow along. These bunnies are another set that's a lot of fun. They'll be good for Easter but also for any time of year because bunnies can be in spring, in summer. You can use them with fall trees and fall leaves and they would be really cute. You could even put some Christmas gifts around them and let them be part of a Christmas scene, a winter scene, in a forest. A lot of different ways you can use bunnies. There's a lot of stamp sets you might already have that have cute bunny sentiments and that's another thing with these art impressions when they go with your sentiment sets really well because they're just imagery and they're very generic florals for the most part but all different kinds of things too. On my blog there's going to be a giant conglomeration of all of the art impressions, watercolors, sets that Ellen Hudson carries and you know I point to her you can always go to the art impression site as well but I recommend going to Ellen because you're always going to need some cardstock. You're going to need something else and you might as well share your shipping so that is one reason that I try to make sure Ellen is carrying stuff that you need. So here I went in too fast. I went in too soon to add darker color to this bunny so it bled like mad so I've got a dry brush I'm trying to move that color around and not let it be too icky and just sort of made it I just yeah I went overboard to say the least. I'm going to let him dry a bit before I fuss around with him and this little bunny is just the front end of the bunny so you can put him in a container in a wagon in a bucket in whatever you're doing just the front end of him and this little guy decided to add just a little bit of brown to him and I didn't use a whole lot of water because the more water you use the more you're going to pick up color underneath as well so if you want just a little wash of it he's just a little tiny bit and here I am trying to add eyes and nose and that bunny just look terrible so now I know better to do a little better job on that one but as a key card a little swatch like this it's going to work fine still because I will at least know how big it is because it's sometimes helpful to see them to scale and also to know whether they face left or right when you're looking at a cling stamp it's not like you can see it in the right direction because it's always reversed because that's where the rubber is so it's good to be able to have them stamped out like this this kitty set of course is adorable especially like kitties and they have one that's just the front of it so it can peek out of any container that you stamp and it can be behind flowers it can be behind another kitty can be behind a bunny can be behind anything and you can color them to match colors of your own kitties or the kitty that you're sending that's owned by the person you're sending it to that kind of thing lots of fun now there's one other thing I'm going to do here real quickly and I just bought a new marker so I'm gonna test it against these other markers this art and graphic twin I just bought the set of zigs and I wanted to try it out so this first one is distress and going to stamp that one this is the tombo it's the ones that I generally use the most with these art impressions stamps and this is the zig it kind of goes into all the work crevices so hard to paint on there with the marker since it has that brush and this one is the new zig twin the art and graphic twin and it goes on pretty heavy and it stamps pretty heavy so you'll see how that plays out when I add water to it really curious to see what a whole painting will look like with those so I will have some more images on my blog by the time this goes live I just wanted to get this voice over done so you're just gonna see this quick comparison so upper right was tombo this one is distress and the difference sometimes is in how much water you use or don't use but in general you can see the the tombo is holding up better it's not melting out and getting mushy as quickly the zig marker here is definitely getting mushy the now here is the new marker the art and graphic twins I am gonna have more videos coming up with them but this was my literally my very first little try at them they do have heavier pigmentation pigmentation that goes on the stamp and that is going to vote well for some techniques worse for others but I think it's gonna be interesting so stay tuned because I will have more coming up in the future on those and I will have links to all these of course in the do we do it over on the blog a quick reminder that you should probably pick up this set of tiny blocks if you're using these art impressions little tiny stamps very helpful and here's some images that are gonna be over on my blog as well one with all the kitties one with two bunnies one with just some flowers in the ornate containers and here I made one with a couple birds and the tree stump and a few of those boxes with one of the kitties so many possibilities for different layouts for scenes and this is two ways that I handled that cowboy boot in very different ways but so much fun to play with and I would invite you to do some swatching of your very own art impression stamps because it's really gonna be helpful as you start trying to make scenes if you get a whole lot of these you end up with lots of little great blogs to pick from so here's that playlist if you'd like to check that out and see more of the art impressions watercolor and be sure to check the links in the blog for all your shopping needs because you know that's the thing I'll talk to you guys later bye bye