 Well, hi there, it's Sandy Allnok, artist and crafter here on YouTube and today I am going to be stamping and coloring on the cover of my Copic art journal. Many many many years ago, like forever years ago, it feels like I started this journal and it was in one of the large ranger journals, the delusion journals, and I had started some stuff because I was playing with the Copics and learning them, learning techniques for them, and this was my place to experiment because I like experimenting with things in a real real-life situation, I guess, rather than just swatchy things. So this book was a lot of that. You know, some pages have been torn out. You can see everything bleeds through on this paper and stuff, but it was a really great place for me to learn the markers and recently I rediscovered this book and decided I wanted to get back into doing some of this Copic art journaling again. Here you can see just lots of textures I was playing with, a lot of things that you may have seen in small parts of different videos that I've done over the years, but this all has led to me getting back into Copic art journaling again, and I have another journal that I'm going to do the cover of today and I will show you the inside when we get to the end of this video. But the outside when you work with a craft surface has some interesting challenges to it. I wanted to use up something that's in this little bowl. It's a mixture of 70% isopropyl alcohol and some B6-9 ink refill. And I had watered it down because I wanted to use it for a project that's actually inside the book and I wanted it to be lighter but have that same kind of color to it. So I mixed up this little mixture and now I just wanted to use it. I was thinking it was going to be a little darker on this paper, but apparently it's not. It dried more like a sky blue, which changed the whole concept for my cover, but that's okay. I wanted to make a mer-bear for a bear-maid. It's a mermaid and a bear. I have these two stamps that I've been wanting to put together for some time. Both are by Ellen Hudson and one is inner mermaid and the other is called all-inside with this little bear. So I stamped the top half of the bear and I wiped off the ink from the tail so that I could draw back in the middle because the bear is a little wide of waist. Kind of like me. So she had to have her tummy drawn in so she could taper herself down to her scales. And yeah, just start kind of putting things together here. She's going to have to be flying though. So as I said, this changes the whole concept of what my cover was going to be. I was originally thinking a nice rich dark blue. I would use white text and add some white pencil and pen on top of the Copic coloring of her. And that did not end up being so because she's flying now. That looks more like a sky to me. So sometimes your art just takes its own direction and that is one of the things you learn, especially when you're doing art journaling. It's not like I can just tear the page out and start over because this is on the cover. I always do recommend though, if you're going to eventually be doing stuff on craft paper or on cream paper or something else, print a hex chart on a paper of that color, paper of that type, so that you can see what colors work. As you can tell, the colors are lightning after they dry. When they first go down, everything looks grayed out, but then it eventually ends up feeling kind of pastel. So Copic markers are not necessarily the best thing to use here, but that is what I'm using because it's a Copic art journal. I tried the sky here. I wanted to make some clouds that would actually be white in these open spaces. And my Posca pen did not do much for me. It didn't stay wet long enough. I thought it was going to stay wet longer and it didn't. I tried using a little bit of a baby wipe that didn't throw me very much either. White acrylic paint could have been good here, but such as such as the world I was in, I just wanted to keep proceeding. I did have my Uniball Signo Pen handy, as I always do. So I put highlights that I'll go over with marker once that dries on the tops of the arms and then little sparkles on the scales on the bottom of the Mure Bear or Bear Made. I don't know what you would call it, but there you go. And give it a little bit of detail there. Colored over top of the arms and then drew in my own sector because if this Mure Bear is going to be flying through the air, then it is a magical Mure Bear. It has to be magical if it's going to make it all the way up to the sky. So it has to have a scepter. Add a little bit of detail down there in the tail. Went over that with the Copic marker as well. Yes, you can go over the pen. Just make sure you scribble it off if you get any of the white pen on your marker. And then I wanted to add the wings. So the first step in the wings is to just draw them in. And I'm drawing in very simple, like more like dragonfly wings than giant angel wings, even though they're probably too small for this bear to fly through the air at its girth. It probably doesn't matter a whole lot because this is all wings go anyway. So little tiny wings that I just drew a bare minimum outline for. And then I'm going to let that dry and get back to adding color to them later. And work on making more clouds. Now the clouds, when you do that with the signal pen, the Uniball pen, the ink stays wet longer. I know some people have trouble getting ink to come out of these pens at all. I never have figured out why it works for some and not for others. It works great for me. Maybe it's pressing too hard or used to, you know, if something doesn't work, press the elevator button harder. And with the signal Uniball pen, I find the ink rolls around the tip much nicer if you use less pressure. So try that and see if it helps. Adding a little bit of sparkles all over the place, because if the wings are this tiny and the bear is this. Successful around the hips, as one pastor once said, then I think we're going to need a little bit of magic to help the flying happen. So I had lots and lots of sparkles of magic so that my little bear has has a reason to be up in the air. It's because of magic. And I also decided to name my book with the word magic because, you know, the little bear has to have some magic. So I'm calling my book Making Magic and the G as it goes behind that wing, I filled it in with a light gray marker instead of just that black marker. So it looks like the wing is in front of the G in making and then added some blues to the wings themselves. Over top of that white pen. So it gives them more of that a sheen of blue color and then you can go over and add more sparkles on top of it with the white pen. And then those parts will stay whiter than the part that you've colored over top of. So let's just give a little bit of a different layer to it so I could add a little bit of the detail back in a little bit of the highlights on the tops of the wings and a little stroke in between that sort of thing. And not that anybody's going to really try this on theirs. I don't know why I'm explaining this sometimes because I'm not sure anybody's going to really do this. And there is another card not on craft that's on Ellen Hudson's website today. So I wrote a blog post for her and did a step out coloring this on white paper so you can see maybe what a normal civilized person would color this little bear. I realized after finishing all this, when I brought the string back over that's that closes the book, a little rubber band thing that now there was a big empty gap in between making magic. So I made some swirls and added some white doodly bits to it and stuff. But here is the inside of the book. And now this is all from the Copic Art Journal class. And I'm super excited about it. All the lessons are up now for students who pre-registered already. So you can go check everything out. Very exciting to have this class together. This one for me, I have a real passion for it, not just because it's Copic and it's fun, but in this class, I walk you through your artistic journey so that you can think about your skills, your gifts, the things that you bring to your artwork. What are you inspired by? What is it that sends your heart soaring? What are your passions? And really looking at those from your own perspective, your journal is going to look way different than mine. I'm going to teach you some techniques, but you can do whatever you want in yours that suits your journey, because I want you to see yourself as an artist and put all the words in that mean something to you, draw pictures that mean something to you. Use your stamps and stencils if you want to add those to it. Rock on with whatever you want to do. I just want to give you an opportunity to make an art journal all about yourself and your own artistic journey. So this is where mine stands so far, and I'm looking forward to filling up the rest of the book because I have more pages to go now. And I also, in this book, figured out some techniques for culling on the backs of those pages that bled through. So I have not wasted any paper in this book at all as of yet, which is kind of exciting to figure out how to do that. All right, that is it for me today. The class is linked in the doobly-doo if you're interested in taking it, and if you've already preregistered, go check it out. Your lessons are there. And I will see you guys again very soon. Take care and go color something beautiful. Have a great, great day. Bye-bye.