 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube with a rather crazy video I'm calling Moll Family Portraits and you'll see why when we get there. This is a stamp set from Art Impressions and it's one that meets my I need to have a stamp that does this thing. It has several faces in it and I want to put them in picture frames. I know it's a crazy idea, but there's a lot of companies that make dies that have this stitching on the inside of a square and you can use any different kind of companies dies. I'll link you to a few of them that I find in the description down below where I always put the supply list. But what you want to do is stamp the images into the inside square. And the reason that the stitching works really well is because it gives you a really nice straight line that you can just follow along and make your picture frame out of. If you don't have a die like that then just cut out some squares or whatever size picture frames you want. You could do some circular picture frames, whatever kind you wish. And then we're going to draw in the outside frame anyway. So you don't have to have the stitching. The stitching just gives you a guide. And using the sticky notes just helps me to block that off so the stamp isn't over into the picture frame. And there's that one little part that got stamped onto the border, but I'm going to draw over that anyway so no worries. And if you're lining something up like this, you're trying to get your image in it, but you're not really positive and you don't want to ruin it by messing it up, then stamp it on to acetate and then you can tell where it's at. And if you have to move anything over and make any adjustments before you do your final stamping. I'm stamping all of this with Lawn Fawn's Jet Black ink. I'm going to use watercolor today. You can color these in anything, but I'm going to use my Primatex from Daniel Smith. Daniel Smith makes a whole line of these Primatex that are made from these minerals. And since they're minerals, they're going to give you some real earthy colors and they're going to give you really earthy textures. For my moles, I was pondering what I wanted to do for where I wanted to hang the picture frames on the wall. I'd been looking for a stamp set that would allow me to do this picture frame idea and whether or not it was going to be drawing a stairway or hallway or something to hang these picture frames in. And with moles, they live in tunnels in the ground and the tunnels are made of dirt. So I needed to make dirt walls. And that's why I got out the Primatex because these are going to make really good dirt. And I'm playing around with the colors, not really stressing about what to use or anything, I'm just trying out different ones based on the little swatches that I've made for myself. And I made the same kind of palette guide that I did for my main dot card palette, which you've seen many times here on YouTube. And I got this one out, though, this palette because I wanted to use this texture. If you're looking for just one Primatex that you think would be really cool to get, then I would start with this. This one I'm using right now is burnt bronzite because it's got really good granulation, but it also has sparkle in it and sparkles always fun. So if you need a nice warm brown with sparkle in it, then it'll give you a little bit of a glistening tone to it. And I believe that I did make a chart at one time for the Primatex. So you can see some samples. There's also a video and I show you at an angle in the video how the Primatex twinkle and different ones twinkle at different rates. So I'll link you to that at the end of this so that you can go and see more on the Primatex. But I'm just throwing color on here. This is cold press watercolor paper from Arches. And I'm just slathering color on with my nice big fat number 12 brush. And I made the bottom look a little bit lighter because I wanted to make it look like there's a floor and a wall. I don't think there would be a floor and a wall. If you were a mole, I don't know if you'd have a vertical wall, but for the concept that I was trying to get to, I wanted to make it look like there's a division between the floor and the wall and the little stamp of the dirt and the shovel. Both are part of the stamp set. So I'm using a baby wipe to lighten up the part on the bottom. And that's going to just basically give me that horizontal bar across it so that I have darker color on the wall. And then I wanted more color on the bottom after that anyway, because didn't look right to have that look all white and weird. So you can color these with any medium you want, but watercolors is really fun when you're working with moles because moles are hilarious. I am going to color these a couple other ways and I will put them on my blogs. I'll do some Copic work with these little moles and give you ideas on how to use them on cards because they're just not done yet. But hopefully by the time this video posts, I will have them up there. So there's the place where I goofed with my stamping in the border, but I was just going to draw a couple of lines anyway. Since I'm following along with the stitch lines, I can kind of get the frame even all the way around without measuring a darn thing. And these are going to be loosely watercolored anyway. The stamps are loosely drawn. So the loose hand drawn look of the frames seems to work for me anyway. So I kind of like it. And once you get all those frames drawn in, it's just a matter of starting to do your coloring. And you can color these in any way you want. You can color them with whatever medium you like and whatever kinds of colors you want. I'm just going to zoom through here because the coloring doesn't matter. It's the idea in this video that I want to get across. And I'd be really curious to see if you end up doing a card with picture frames on it like this, link me up to it and let me know, whether it's on Facebook or Instagram or somewhere, tag me somehow so that I can come and find it. Because I think it would be really hilarious to see the number of different ways this picture frame idea can be used. I had this thought a long time ago when I looked at that die. And I mean, I've had several dies from several companies that have that stitching in them. But when it came to me, I was just on a lookout for a stamp set that had faces that looked like they could be in framed pictures. Now you could do something very sweet with this idea, like do a wedding card and have two little stamps that look like the bride in groom and put them in picture frames. You could do family reunion cards. You could do birthday cards. You could do something where that you have a baby animal and the animal gets bigger. And then it's a grandma animal so that you can do a progression and make it a birthday card and show how they're getting older. There's just innumerable ways you can use things like this. You can instead of making the dirt wall for the scene, maybe your scene is going to be a tree because the characters in it are all going to be birds. Or maybe you can use a fence in the background because it's all going to be dogs and you can just make a fence in the yard where they hang their pictures. Just think of the settings where whatever the critters or people that you would be doing would be located. And then you can kind of come up with from there how to hang those on the wall. When I put watercolor paper onto a card base, I use the B Creative Tape because this stuff is so sticky. A lot of adhesives won't hold down your watercolor paper. And now I'm using some foam tape underneath of each one of these guys and I'm just going to put them on the wall. Kitty Wampus. Because they're moles. Like who's going to get out a level and hang their pictures straight, right? So I'm just throwing these pictures on here. Aren't they hilarious with their little funny faces and everything? Press them all down and then I'm going to just add some strings to them. So I'm going to take a black pen and do basically a V on top. So I have two strings that are hanging from a little peg or something or a little nail in the wall. I'm not sure if you can nail into the wall of a tunnel, but in this case, they can. And I'm just drawing it so it ends right under the corner of each one of the pictures. They don't even have to be even because this is supposed to be funny and make them all look Kitty Wampus. And I got out my white pen, of course, because my white pen enters my life all over and I'm adding just a few little highlights here and there. If your shovel gets too covered, then you can brighten it up. I'm going to add a little bit of highlight to the top of the dirt pile because I don't want the dirt pile to look like it's too dirty. I want to draw some attention to it. And a little bit alongside some of the dirt. And there it is. I added the sentiment to it. Digging in the dirt is the best therapy because, you know, we all need therapy from growing up in whatever families we grew up in, even good families. We all end up needing some help to recover from life. So I thought that was a hilarious little card that might give you some ideas on how to use your stamps in a different way, get one of those funny dies with the stitching on it and go make some silly, silly cards. Alrighty, I will see you guys later on. Take care, have a really awesome day and go make something amazing. Bye bye.