Ever since I made the jukebox card and tried to blend the markers from different manufacturers, I’ve been thinking about my marker situation.  I have a lot of Spectrum Noir markers and some Bic-Mark-It and Sharpies.  I’m not a big “name brand” shopper, I just like products that work well for me.  What I’ve been finding is that I have a good range of light colors and a great range of very dark colors, but the middle range seems to elude me.  I got serious about this situation at one point and went to an online sales at Joann’s and tried to fill the middle colors and did buy over twenty markers, but I continue to have the problem.  It’s like those twenty didn’t make a difference in the situation at all.  Today, I was watching some YouTube videos on markers and found a brand from outside of the U.S. that I might be buying.  At this point (it’s been one of those days when names elude me), I can only remember that it has the number five in their name.   They are very inexpensive and are rated really highly by the people on YouTube that have done reviews on them.  I’m seriously thinking of buying them as they have different sets and one of the sets is on animation and apparently has a lot of colors in the skin tone family.  When I looked at their range of colors, they appear to land in the area I am lacking, and I hope that they will make blending a lot easier.  It’s really hard to identify if the sets overlap significantly, say if I like the one for fashion, or architecture.  I have no idea what the color numbers are in each set and I haven’t found anyone who has discussed the overlapping of colors.  I don’t really want to buy a set of 60 or 80 of these and fall in love with them and then buy a fashion set and have 20 of the same colored markers.  So that’s where I stand on the marker front.  The other issue I have is storage.  I realize that markers are to be stored on their sides, but so many of the storage containers I have found will store the markers upright.  I’d really like input from someone who has a lot of markers and how they store theirs.  I have seen craft room tours that show people using the IKEA carts and store their markers on the top shelf in containers, again vertically.  I really thought that was a hard and fast rule on marker storage, so I wish I knew how much of an issue it is to store them vertically.  These are the things that keep me awake at night.  Actually, they don’t, but they do really kind of bug me.  How am I supposed to know the right way to do things, when every crafter does it a different way?  Yikes!  I don’t want to spend a lot of money on markers and ruin them by storing them the wrong way.  I’m looking for the ultimate answer on this.  Oh, and here’s another thing.  Why do the Crafter’s Companion people make marker storage bags that will hold almost 200 markers but don’t include the trays in the bag to hold them.  You need to buy them separately. If you don’t purchase the trays separately, then how do you keep them organized in the bag, or do they all just tumble out when you unzip it?  This is almost too much to consider.

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