The worst part about losing my two memory cards, is losing the Halloween videos that have now put me really far behind on the ones I really wanted to do.  Some of the projects are quick and perfect for a Halloween party, like the apothecary bottle I just put up.  Others, like cards, are too late, and I have a couple more of them that need to go live.  Rich is going  to put one up tonight and maybe one tomorrow so both are online before the end of the month.  Geez, I hate being so far behind the curve, but the great thing about YouTube is these videos live on and can be viewed next year and into forever.  I had Thanksgiving projects on the sticks as well so I’ll remake them and put them on line as soon as I can.  My wet glue video with the creepy blur on it needs to go live before Halloween as well, or else the blur is just a blur and not something kind of funny.

I’m going to make one last Halloween project tonight because I got the greatest package in the mail today.  I’ve met so many wonderful people on YouTube and I got a present from a lady named Donna.  She knew how much I love Halloween (as does everyone else because I talk about it all the time I think.)  She sent me a bunch of Halloween paper, embellishments and an adorable makeup case that I’ll be showing on the video.  I can’t begin to show my appreciation to all of the really sweet and wonderful people I’ve met this year.  I’ve also been thrilled to have connected with one of my relatives as well.  I have a very small family as I think most of you know.  I have one sister in North Carolina and both of our parents are deceased.  I have three cousins, yes I said three, and no surviving aunts or uncles.  One of our cousins has a son and a daughter and I knew them as kids, but have not been in touch since we’ve been adults.  I got a comment from Shelli (my cousin’s daughter), on one of my videos and have been hearing from her regularly since then.  When you have a very small family, it’s great to reconnect, or in our case, to connect and without this YouTube channel, I doubt if we would have ever done so.  Yet another wonderful gift that YouTube has given us.

I’m a little bit behind with my first anniversary video, but will be getting it up shortly.  I can’t thank all of my viewers and especially my subscribers, for making this such a wonderful and fulfilling experience for me and for Rich.  We’ve been blown away by your thoughtfulness, generosity and sweet hearts.  Thanks so much for sticking with us through the learning curve this year has provided us. We couldn’t have done it without you.  Literally.

Often I am asked for my email address and other social media information.  On YouTube within the picture at the top of my home page, you’ll find links to all of them, but I thought it would be easier to post them here as well as on Facebook.

Email: saundralparker@yahoo.com
Blog: craftingforalmosteveryone.com
Instagram: crafting for almost everyone
Pinterest: saundralparker
Google+: crafting for almost everyone
Facebook: crafting for almost everyone

I love making Halloween decorations and these bottles are so easy and cute.  I found the templates on this blog.  http://blog.worldlabel.com/2014/printable-halloween-apothecary-bottle-labels.html
I printed the labels and then chose the ones I liked best from the two pages of labels.  I used a distressing tool I made with a plumbing fixture that I jammed a bunch of make up sponges into and then folded the top one over and hot glued it into the plastic.  I used Distress Ink Pumice Stone and distressed them by lightly dabbing on the paper, since I used computer printer paper for the designs.  It worked well as long as you don’t rub the paper or it will pill.  I bought my bottles from A C Moore and they were $1 each.  One has a circle embossed into it, so it’s perfect for the circle label.  I liked the “Dust of Unicorn Horn” and a smaller label that said it was “Highly Potent” for the smaller bottle.  The larger bottle with the circle, I used the label that mentioned Crow’s feathers, so I put three feathers into the bottle after I was done.  I used grape Kool-Aid and filled the Horn of Unicorn Dust bottle with it.  I used tear tape to adhere the labels to the bottles.  And used matt Mod Podge to coat the labels when they were dry.

Today is Rich’s and my 34th wedding anniversary so we went out for supper to celebrate.  It’s hard to believe it’s been thirty four years, but I’m so lucky to have met my soul mate when I was nineteen.  A lot of people think there is no such thing as a soul mate, but we are proof that we married our other half.  We were friends before we dated and I think that has something to do with how we just knew we were meant to be together.  We dated for two and a half years and two weeks after we got married, I got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.  If you’ve read my blog, I think that you have heard the story that when we heard the diagnosis, we thought “no big deal.”  We thought it was like a television commercial with two ladies playing tennis and one woman complains about her arthritis and the other tells her to rub Ben Gay on it.  Little did we know that within five years, I’d have my first knee replaced and in the next six years had both knees, one hip, one shoulder and my neck fused. Additionally, one of the knees became infected and I spent five months in a wheelchair trying to eliminate the infection.  Rich has been a total trooper through all of the ups and downs of my health and not many men would have done the things he’s done to keep me going.  He’s my rock and brings out the best in me.  I wish every woman could find a man who helps her through her toughest times and is there to celebrate the good.  It’s been a great thirty four years and we’re looking forward to the next thirty four.

You have to love the music, Rich did a great job on this one!  This is number #6 in taking something old and making it new again.  You can start with a foam wreath ring and cover it with yarn or ribbon like this one is.  The Dollar Tree sold almost all of the pieces of my wreath except the eyelashes that I got at Dollar General for $2.  The mirror, boa, hair, skull, battery operated tea lights and flowers are all from the Dollar Tree.  I used low temp glue sticks and a glue gun that works with them.  I started by cutting out the back of the skull so I could lay it flatter on the wreath but more importantly, to put the tea lights inside.   I flipped the hair piece over so the hairband didn’t show and then glued the head band to the skull, braided the hair, and wrapped the hair around the top of her head, then glued it in place.  I attached the eyelashes and then put some wet glue on the lash line to ensure they stayed put.  I glued the boa down first then glued the skull to the boa and the wreath in the back.  I didn’t like the purple flowers once I had them close to the wreath, so went with white flowers instead.  I cut the teeth off of the tiara and glued it to the head.  I glued the mirror under the boa and glued the white flowers around the top of the mirror.   I loved the results and hope our niece does too.

I’m working on my last Halloween projects and I’m really sad about it.  Halloween is such a great time for making and giving gifts.  I’m sorry you missed a couple of my videos due to the loss of the memory cards, but I’m getting over it now.  I have a stamp that I’ve been meaning to use called Tableau of Terror, and just came up with a cute card idea for it.  You’ll need to wait to see this one.

The other project I made is taking bottles that are vintage looking that I got at both the Dollar Tree and A C Moore.  All were a dollar each, and I found different uses for each of them. There’s a couple of websites where you can print spooky labels and one I really liked.  It had crows feathers and dust of unicorn horn etc.  I loved both of them and had a bag of feathers that were perfect for this idea.  I distressed the labels and then put them on their respective bottles.  One looked like it held powder, which is perfect for unicorn horn dust.  Try saying that three times fast.  After I put the label on it, I filled it with grape Kool-Aid powder which is the closest thing to unicorn horn dust I had on hand.  Then I put three feathers in the crow’s feather bottle and called it a day.

The last bottle looked like an old ornate liquor bottle so I used a label that came from the Dollar Tree and used Mop N Glo mixed with re-inker to color the bottle. (My other two bottles were already colored.)  I swirled the Mop n Glo mixture around in the bottle but didn’t get a very distinct color from it.  So I turned the bottle upside down and let it sit for a couple of days.  I was using that time for the Mop n Glo mix to evaporate (or thicken a little bit.)  It worked really well.  This time when I poured the mix inside and swirled it around, the color was a lot more vibrant and I really liked the results.  It even stained the cork, which added to the vintage look of it.  I had previous tried a recipe I’d seen on the web of a mixture of food coloring and Mod Podge.  I’m not sure why mine was a failure, maybe the opening was too narrow, but the Mod Podge never completely dried, so my blood red looked pink.  There’s nothing spooky or creepy about a pink bottle.  So I rinsed it out and started over.  My first instinct was to use the Mop n Glo idea as it worked so well for Christmas ornaments last year, but the YouTuber convinced me that Mod Podge was the way to go.  I should have stuck with my first instinct, but I really just wanted to try that recipe anyway.  I’m always trying to find new and better ways to do things, but this definitely wasn’t one of them.  The end result is a bottle that’s almost whiskey brown in color and looks terrific.  Now all I have to do is finish my Tableau of Terror card and Halloween 2016 is a wrap.  I’m sad to say it’s over, but I’m on to fall and Thanksgiving and Christmas crafts.

I’ve been putting together a box of crafty things to send to a teenager who loves crafts but doesn’t really have many crafting tools or products.  We all know I have more than enough for myself and a few hundred other people (that’s a maybe a slight exaggeration,) but I thought it would be great to set her up with some of the tools to get started making paper crafts at the very least.  It’s hard to know what crafts someone would like to attempt and I have tried so many since I was a kid, that I’m not sure what types she will like.  I thought paper crafting has so many options from cards to 3-d structures like boxes or stationary holders or even covering composition books or making their own books, it’s a wide open field.  I’ve tried to consider all the possibilities in putting together this box of goodies and hope I have covered enough that she’ll find something she enjoys doing.  When I was a kid, I tried crocheting and always dropped a stitch at the end of a row so my afghans always looked crooked.  I didn’t really love crocheting once I realized how much work I put into the afghan only to hate the results.  I’m not one of those people who would undo it and start over.  Once I’m done, I’m done. Then came the “crazy about ceramics” phase in the mid 1970’s.  Geez, this is really showing my age.  But after you make presents for your grandmothers and mother and a few for yourself, what do you do with a bunch of painted ceramics?  In college, I took a pottery course that literally saved my sanity.  It was my last semester before graduating and I was in flux about what I really wanted to do with my life.  I had an accounting degree but didn’t love accounting once I had my internship.  I also had a business degree which ultimately is where I found my home in managing banks.  But I digress.  Pottery gave me an outlet for creativity that I had never had before.  I loved the wheel and the way the clay felt, it was just great.  Of course it’s not like I had the talent to be a professional potter let alone the tools so that was four months of a great craft.  I also took a course in jewelry making and failed miserably at it.  This course had me filing copper and silver by hand to make jewelry designs.  No beads or charms, just hard physical labor.  I hated it.  After that, I discovered needlepoint.  I really enjoyed it but again, once everyone in the family has a piece or two of your needlepoint, well, you know where I’m going.  Same with cross stitching, which I did in the mid to late 1980’s.  After that, I pretty much devoted my time to working until I retired, then I had time to kill and saw some YouTube channels on card making.  Actually, Rich saw a video of Kristina Werner making a card, showed it to me, and I was hooked.  I think the thing I like most about paper crafts is there is a continuous need for them.  There’s always a birthday, thank you, get well, wedding, new baby, or sadly, sympathy cards that need making.  I love that I haven’t been in a greeting card store or aisle in a couple of years.  I’m so excited when someone loves one of my cards and even happier when I find that my cards have affected their lives, which was the case of my girlfriend who had cancer and passed away this summer.  I sent her a card every couple of weeks, and her son and sister both told me how much it meant to her when they would find my card in the mailbox.  I guess I’m saying that giving handmade cards to my friends and family has been a craft that has no end and it’s the reason I focused my gift to this girl around paper crafts.  You can never run out of ideas or uses for them and the receiver of the cards or paper craft are always appreciative, because it’s not only useful but makes them smile.  And isn’t that the greatest gift you can give?

I’m throwing in the towel on ever finding the two video memory cards that I lost.  I can’t imagine where they could have gone, but have extinguished every possibility (at least for now) that I can think of.  I’m pretty disappointed because there were some really cute videos on the sticks, but I’m just going to have to get over it.

As my way of getting past the pain, I think today is the day.  It’s big, I mean really big.  I know this has been long (way too long) in coming, but I’m finally making the video of a wet glue comparison.  In theory, this video didn’t seem so difficult, but in reality, I tested a lot, and I mean a lot of wet glues to see how they worked, or if they worked.  What I found is that all wet glues are not created equally.  Nor are they easy to use with a fine tip applicator.  I’m going to do a couple of categories.  Wet glue, the best glue in a fine tip applicator and possibly glue sticks.  It wouldn’t be fair to do a video of wet glues without including glue sticks.

I’m going to do a second video comparing different brands of small tape runners.  Since I can’t or won’t use the big ATG gun, and prefer the small tape runners, I thought it was important to do a video comparing them as well.  So that’s my big plan for the day, that and crying a little bit more about the loss of the memory sticks.  I’m going to be feeling the pain of that loss for a long time to come.

 

I found the template to make these adorable coffins at Kid Spots YouTube page. Here is the link to download and print the templates. http://www.kidspot.com.au/things-to-d…
They recommend using construction paper and I found that my coffin was too flimsy using 65 pound black cardstock so I recommend you upgrading to either using 65 pound white cardstock and run it through your computer for the template as well as 65 pound black cardstock. Or you could just use copy paper for the white paper and 110 pound black cardstock. Either way, you should get a much sturdier coffin than I produced. After you make your templates, you will glue the white paper printed side up to the black paper. I’d use a glue stick or tear tape to get a surface that isn’t warped like you sometimes get from wet glue. Let them dry (if you use the glue stick and then cut out the entire coffin. You will cut on the solid lines (NOT the stitched lines.) Cut each of the solid lines on both templates then fold them as I show in the video. It’s important that you get good clean folds. When I make my next one, I’m going to use a bone folder or ruler to make sure every fold is really clean and well defined. Again, your coffin will be more flat and easier to glue if you do. I filled my coffin with a full sized Butterfinger and a snack bag of nut mix. For decorations I used two stamp sets from Stampin’ Up. One is Googly Ghouls and is retired, and the other is Cookie Cutter Halloween that is available as is the Gingerbread Man punch. If you don’t have a Stampin’ Up representative, Linda Bauwin has been really helpful to me in establishing my channel and is a really nice lady. Her email contact info to make an order is jlbauwin@roadrunner.com. There is a Christmas stamp set that is available to work with the gingerbread man punch as well. I loved the Halloween stamp set and had to have it. I also used a couple of stickers from the Dollar Tree from their Halloween stickers.
I used Art Glitter glue on this project as it sets up quickly (holds fast) and allows me to move the glued pieces easily (immediately after gluing) so if I glue it down wrong, it allows me to pick it up and move it before it sets. You need to move it immediately though.

I’m having a day where I just want to cry.  Ever had one of those?  I had finished several videos and gave them to Rich wrapped in my notes.  I needed to get them back from him to add more information from one of the videos, so he gave them back to me.  And then they disappeared.  Gone.  Completely.  We’ve gone through every part of the house, the garbage, recycling, under the chair, inside the books that are beside the chair, you name it, we’ve looked there.

I realize that it’s silly to be so upset about something so minor, but I have so many great projects on those sticks and you’ll never get to see any of them.  I can’t reproduce some of them as one was of the baby shower invitations and I don’t have them anymore.  This isn’t the first time we’ve lost data.  We had a computer that destroyed a chip once before.  This is different.  It’s two 32 gb sticks that are full of videos.  I’m so upset and have no idea where to look next.  We even went through the house looking for scraps of paper or chewed sticks, thinking maybe Honey had found them.  But no, thankfully, her belly isn’t full of a memory card or two.   I guess I need to look at the bright side, and that is Honey didn’t eat them and we aren’t at the vet’s office worrying about having to operate on her.

The part that really makes me sad is that the detergent video was on one of the sticks and Rich gave me a choice of which video to put up first and I chose that one.  I can make detergent anytime, but the other videos I can’t reproduce.  Bad decision on my part definitely.  I’ll keep you in the loop so if we do ever find the sticks, I can share my happiness with all of you.  It’s been a tough day so far.  Geez.