 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnock, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and today I'm gonna share a tropical Christmas card for those who either live in the islands or want to live in the islands. This is a really fun, fun stamp set. Not only has Santa in his t-shirt in his shorts and his little flip flops and his shades, but he also has some friends in his stamp set with him, this little, little guy. Oh my gosh, he's so cute. There's a sandy claws sentiment in there too, so you can use just him on the card, but I decided to use both of them on mine because I like to color all the things when I get a stamp set and when art impressions sent me this one, I was like, I so have to color this little guy. So I'm trying to make him look like his claws at least are shiny. Not worried about the legs being as shiny because if you communicate that shininess on some of the elements, it sort of carries through to everything else that you're an amazing colorist. So I'm leaving some super white highlights on the top sections of some of his claws and then I will add some shading around it that's going to add that impact of the dimension. Of course he's got a little hat we've got to get to first as well. So now I've got my favorite R89, favorite dark red color and I'm gonna add shadow areas around everything and give myself some strong contrast. For a lot of folks, R89 is too dark of a color, but I really, really like it because for me the contrast is what makes something really work and I'm all about the idea of trying to make something look really dimensional and when you have good contrast that is actually when you start seeing some of that dimension. R37 is my favorite mid-tone red and these two dark and medium reds, they work with most of any of the other reds. So I'm using an R05 for my light red, but you can use a lot of different reds for those. If you have these other two, they work really well together with all the other reds. So when I add my medium color, I'm just blending in the dark areas and not worried about the medium blending into the lights because I'm going to go in with another step for my coloring in order to get that to happen. So just going to add a little bit more shading around here, leaving a few spots that will be highlighted in that light red and leaving some bounced light areas. And as always, if you'd like to pin this image so you have an idea where to put the shadows and the highlights on the sky and be able to follow the visual reference, feel free to go to my blog where I always have stills of my cards posted and you can pin it to your Pinterest board for future reference when you decide you want to color it and know where to put those amazing shadows and highlights on yours. So I'm adding a little bit of color to his mustache and his beard and stuff to give him a little bit more dimension there, just kind of letting it be mushy color. When you're talking about beards, just having a little bit of color in there is enough to make it look like it's not just abandoned to be white, but it's got a little bit of dimension in it. Since Santa is living on the beach, I decided to give him a little bit more color. So I'm using an E02 for my base color on his skin, which I rarely ever do. It's a really strong color, so feel free to go with something lighter if that makes you nervous. But I figured since he's outside on the beach, he's going to have like some some peachy skin from being outside. And I'm using a V22 instead of one of my BVs that I normally use because that's going to give me a little bit of a duller look and tone down a little bit of the intensity of that color that I've already got on there. And when I choose my mid-tone color, I'm also going to use another color that's going to basically kind of help to recover from a little bit of that over peachy peaches by giving a little YR for my mid-tone. And you can go over it with other colors too to knock back some of the color, but I'm going to wait and see what happens when I get the rest of the coloring done. For Santa's bag full of goodies, I wonder what's in there. I wonder if he has goodies for people who live in all societies, whether they're hot or tropical or cold or wintery or whatever. Or if he's just got lots of flip-flops in there, who knows. But I'm going to use the E5 family of markers to do shading with a light, a medium, and a dark, just kind of giving it some lumpies so that it looks like his bag is really good and full. Note, as I stamped this, that I didn't make everything like just right in the center as well. I let it kind of be a little off kilter. I made room for my sentiment, so that was important to get my sentiment on the front of the card. I wanted the little crab down in the bottom. And then I put trees off to the right behind Santa Claus rather than just putting everything in the center, which tends to make things just a little bit more interesting, a little different. And he's got more of a gray beard than a white beard for now, but we'll see if it turns out to look a little more whitish since I didn't leave very much white there. We'll see what it looks like when I get around to finishing everything up. I decided he would have a red shirt on with a big white joy on the front of it. And I don't know if those are stripes on his shirt or not. You could color them as stripes as well. But I decided to make it a simpler shirt since I'm trying to also mimic the colors that are in the crab because that will pull the whole image together. So it doesn't look like it's all different kinds of disparate things. And I'll add some stripes to his candy cane striped shorts, which is hilarious. He's wearing candy cane striped shorts and make his flip-flops red. So they go with everything. And then I'll start adding my shadows. Again, same dark red color because I'm all about the contrast. Contrast is good. And I'm making some areas to just kind of make all of those lines into wrinkles. So even if they were intended to be stripes, I'm turning them into wrinkles, if not, and to have some horizontal action going on there to add some just some interest to that big old shirt he's wearing. And now I can take my medium color and start shading in some of those dark areas. I'm not going to leave too much of light red in there. I will go back in there with the light red in order to blend some colors a little bit. But I'm going to try to leave not too much of that. So we end up with his shirt looking a little more like a cherry than a tomato type of red and then just start to blend some of that out. I did forget to put some shadows on his shorts. So I'm adding a little bit of that, a little bit of the mid tone, and then I'll blend that out with the red. And next up, I've got a little shading on his flip flops. And we got to give Sandy Claus some shades. He's not just wearing glasses, he's wearing shades. And now I'm going to add a little bit of shading to match the shading that I did already for the rest of the shorts by using some grays. So that there's shadows on the right hand side, a little lighter color on the left. And then I'm going to just add a few wrinkles across the joy. So it looks like that's part of his shirt rather than something just kind of slathered on. It doesn't have any texture in it. Now that I've put all that time and energy into coloring everything else, it's pretty easy to just jam through the rest of the background stuff. There doesn't have to be a lot of detailed coloring in the background elements because they're really not as important. They're they're a scene, a setting for Santa Claus. I'm not going to put a ton of work into making the trees look super dimensional. I am going to add a little bit of ground underneath of them and stuff to give him a little context. But when you're doing something like this, make sure you're focused on the things that are the most important. And that is going to be Santa Claus and the little crabby do. I'm going to start adding in a few other colors so that I can get a little little more interest in there. I've got some yellow that's only going to show up in the tree up there, that sort of thing, and some yellow and red lights. And then I'll add a little bit of shading. I'm just going to do two color blending here on my trees and not worry about it. I'm not doing any shading on any of those ornaments. You could certainly do that if you wanted to. But you know, most people are going to be looking at Santa Claus and the crabby do. They're not going to care too much about anything else. So go in and do a slight bit of blending just to make sure I don't have any harsh areas up there. And then I can move on to my finishing touches, which is going to be the ground. Originally, I was going to just put a little bit of sand underneath of them so they'd have something to stand on. So I'm going to use some tan colors to do that. I just create a little bit of sand texture. And I thought, well, what if I put a little tiny bit of a scene back there? I'm not going to do a ton. It's going to be really light. But I want to give some setting to where they are because they're actually at the beach, right? So let's give him just a tiny little bit of beach. A lot of times you can do just a suggestion of it to make it work. So I'm going to start by kind of figuring out where my sand is going to end. And then I'm going to add some water. So I need a horizon line and then I'm going to add just kind of some white waves. It's going to be behind the sentiment. You're not going to see very much, but you'll get the idea that there's a wiggly line of the water. And then there's some white in there for the waves. Now, as I was making this go across here, I thought I need to make that a little bit higher up because I wanted a little more of that before one across that top. I wanted a little more of the blue behind him. So I moved it up a little bit and then I added a little bit more shading for for where the the waves are kind of cascading back into the ocean. And it's not much, but you can see how much that little touch gives a setting. You can definitely see they're at the beach now. And it's not just a random other kind of place that they're at. My before one did start to bloop on me. So I had some some recovery to do here. That was a recently refilled marker, so I'm letting that dry while I work on giving some specific shadows underneath of where the crab and Santa are standing. And you can see the little toe shadows that I gave on that left hand side of the crab gives a lot of interest to that with just a little tiny bit, a little tiny shadow coming from each one of those toes. I had a little bit of texture here with some of my browns and stuff for the sand. Don't make it everywhere because you don't need polka dots all over the sand, but just enough to add some interest so you know there's sand. You could even go in with a white pen as well and do some more. And then I tried to go in with my colorless blender to add another wave out there in the distance, that sort of thing. And here is the finished card. So it was not too painful, not too long to to get this much coloring done. But it's a whole lot of fun, especially for somebody who lives at the beach or would love to live at the beach. It's a great card for them to realize that Santa Claus lives there, too. So here's a couple other videos. If you'd like to see some more, there's a playlist of all my holiday cards with backgrounds and holiday includes both at this time, at least Halloween and Christmas. So you'll find a little bit of both in there. And here's two other videos. If you'd like to check those out, you can hit the subscribe button. You can click for more on the blog if you want to go pin that card. And I will see you guys next time. Have an awesome day already. Bye bye.