Every time I do a product comparison video, I’m amazed at the number of that product that I own.  I just finished the craft knife, demon stick, comparison and I had eight of them.  Ok, I bought ONE for the comparison, and had the other seven in my stash.  Two of them were so generic that they didn’t have a name on them, so I excluded them from the comparison.  The other six made it into the video.  I compared one from Fiskars, Martha Stewart, Prima Marketing, X-Acto, Tim Holtz and the dollar knife I bought on Ebay that I used in a video to make my own stamp storage.  I won’t ruin the surprise, but I was impressed at how well even the $1 blade cut.  Granted, it bent when I pressed down on it, but it did cut all three surfaces I used it on.  I thought it was only fair to test it on paper, cardstock and cardboard (chipboard, or whatever cardboard is currently being called.)  It was fun to play with all of the knives and as I used each one, I remembered why I did or didn’t like them.  For me, it’s about the handle and feeling comfortable and secure when holding it.  Some required more force to make cuts in the cardstock, but all in all, they cut pretty well.

You are probably wondering why I needed another craft knife for this comparison.  I watched a video that had a woman who lacked hand strength and she loved this craft knife.  I didn’t think it was fair to do a product comparison video without looking into whether this craft knife was easier to use than the rest.  Besides, I forgot I had purchased Martha Stewart’s and Tim Holtz’s knives, and found them when looking for the rest of the craft knives. At least the next time I need a craft knife, I should be able to find one.

I’ve watched Tim Holtz and Carol Duvall on YouTube making what seems like a pretty easy project, until I tried it for myself.  Maybe the miracle of television made it look easy, or maybe they weren’t telling the whole story.  I’m not sure, but what I do know is this.  It wasn’t easy and mine didn’t turn out anything like theirs did.  It was a way to create a stamp pad that is colored specifically for a particular stamp.  Using re inkers for Distress Inks, you first stamp the image with archival ink on a foam piece, then draw the lines in with re inker in the colors that you would use if you were coloring it in.  Then you stamp on the foam and then stamp on card stock and ta da, you have an image that you can use a water brush and make it look like it’s been water colored.  Really?  It didn’t work that way for me.  I used Ranger foam that’s specifically made to use as a stamp pad.  I used Distress Inks.  I used a water brush.  The re inker dried onto the card stock before I could use the water brush.  On the video, Tim Holtz said you could stamp it one week and color it in the next week.  I couldn’t move my color within a minute of stamping it.  It really looked easy when they did it.  I’ve watched that video so many times, I practically have it memorized.  I’m just not sure what I missed.  What a huge waste of re inker.  Maybe once I’ve had time to think about it, I’ll try it again.  Or maybe someone reading this will say, “Geez Sandy, did you do this or that?”  And then I’ll smack myself on the forehead and say, “Gee, I should have had a V8.”   Then again, maybe not.

I’m still thinking long and hard about the recipe box I’m covering with paper for our niece.  It’s definitely a project that’s going to take some time, I think.

So I decided to kick it to the curb, for now.  Wow, already terminology I’ll need to research.

Here’s the scoop.

It means “discard.” In many places in the USA, garbage is left in front of the house, at the curb, usually at the bottom of the driveway. This facilitates collection by the sanitation trucks (garbage collectors).

Huh, makes a lot of sense.

I have had an idea of a video I’ve been thinking of making for a while and today is the day to give it a try.  I saw Tim Holtz do this process with Carol Duvall from a very old video, at least ten years old.  He turns a rubber stamp into it’s own stamp pad.  I don’t think it makes much sense when I say it, so you’ll probably just want to watch the video.  I want to use my four bird stamp from Carolyn Shores Wright as it takes forever for me to watercolor pencil, and I refuse to do anything less with it.  Cross your fingers for me.  Wow, this is the first blog that had two pieces of slang that I need to find their origins.  Of course, I know what crossing my fingers means but I don’t know what the origin is. And now I do, well I maybe have a clue.

This is what mentalfloss.com has to say about it.

Crossing fingers to achieve your own good luck or in a display of hopeful solidarity that things go well for someone else is one of the most widely recognized symbols in the Western world. This is in part because of the gesture’s long history—although originally, it was not a solo act.

There are two main theories regarding the origins of finger-crossing for luck. The first dates to a pre-Christianity Pagan belief in Western Europe in the powerful symbolism of a cross. The intersection was thought to mark a concentration of good spirits and served to anchor a wish until it could come true. The practice of wishing upon a cross in those early European cultures evolved to where people would cross their index finger over that of someone expressing a wish to show support. Eventually, wish-makers realized they could go it alone and impart the benefit of a present cross to their wishes without another person’s participation, first crossing their two index fingers and finally adopting the one-handed practice we still use today.

The alternate explanation cites the early days of Christianity, when practitioners were persecuted for their beliefs. To recognize fellow Christians, people developed a series of hand gestures, one of which involved forming the ichthys, or fish symbol, by touching thumbs and crossing index fingers. This theory doesn’t fully explain how luck initially became associated with the gesture, but it does posit that the solo finger cross developed during the bloody Hundred Years War by soldiers eager for anything that might curry God’s favor.

So there you go.  I never realized how many of these slang sayings I use until doing this blog.  I’m a huge slang user and didn’t even know it.  Well at least if you aren’t familiar with these terms, I’m saving you the research into what they mean.  It might be easier if I just stopped using them, but what’s the fun in that?

 

 

I started working on what looks like a very big project.  Our niece is getting married in July, and is asking all of the guests to bring their favorite recipe with them.  I offered to make the recipe box for her and she agreed.  I found a great recipe box made by “Close to my Heart,” that is specifically made to be recovered with paper.  I don’t think they make them anymore and found mine on Ebay.   It’s white cardboard and has a magnetic closure.  I decided I want to use Graphic 45 Home Sweet Home paper and bought the paper and a lot of the accessories for it.  I really love the front cover with the woman outside, putting clothes on the line.  She looks like she’s from the 1950’s and the colors of papers are really nice.  I got my invitation and recipe card in the mail and the recipe card has flowers that match the colors in the paper pack.  Needless to say, it made my job a lot easier.  Now it’s a matter of making it look great.  When I took the box out of the plastic wrap, it had some weird spots on the edges.  Spots that currently aren’t taking any ink.  Yikes.  I didn’t anticipate that.  I’m going to have to email my expert, Linda, and find out what ideas she has to correct this problem.  I’m not sure how to protect the outside once I’m finished either.  I know I’m going to make an easel top, so she can prop her recipes on it, but I’m not sure what to do to make it stain-proof.  I could use Collage Podge or Mod Podge, but I really don’t like a finish I can see.  Again, I might need to defer to Linda for help.  This is really an important project for me.  I don’t like to let our niece down when I can avoid it.  I think I’m giving myself plenty of time to finish it, videotape it, and make sure it looks great.  At least that’s my plan, but, with something as big as this, I’m never really sure.

I was asked to do a haul video for the things I bought at the stamp show, so that’s my project for today.  But first, I need to rearrange my craft room for a really big set of shelves I bought at a church rummage sale for $3.  I thought it would be perfect for stamp sets, especially Stampin’ Up ones that come in larger CD cases.  Unfortunately, they don’t fit.  Now I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to put into the shelves, because they are really narrow.  At first I thought maybe it was used for old VCR tapes, but I don’t think it’s slots are long enough for those.  I’m really not sure what it was used for.  I also bought an IKEA cart that Rich just put together for me, so I’ll have to figure out what to put on that.  I just need to get organized.  I mean, seriously organized.  I’m not really accustomed to working in chaos and that’s what my craft room appears to be.  I’m really trying hard to focus on getting rid of things in my immediate work area, but that only lasts until the next video, when I load things back into it.

I came up with a really great ribbon storage system that I’m going to share on the haul video as well.  I think everyone should have an inexpensive system for storing ribbon.  And of course, I need more than one system since I have so much ribbon.  I hoping viewers will enjoy my idea and put it into action for themselves.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I decided to go along with Lindsay (the Frugal Crafter) and try to use pastels.  I’m starting with the oil pastels because I’m not crazy about how dusty and dirty I get with “normal” pastels.  Let’s just call them chalk.  I also don’t really want to worry about it smearing or smudging or having to put a fixative on it.  So long story short, I decided to try my hand at oil pastels.  The set Lindsay uses is really inexpensive on Amazon Prime, so I got mine there.  Her first tutorial was of an artichoke, so I drew it.  I showed it to Rich and he actually knew what it was.  (This is all sounding familiar, so I apologize if I’ve already told you this.)  Now I’m getting to the point of the story.  Today I found another tutorial from a different YouTuber, that was of an evening sunset or the night sky, I’m not sure.  I watched the video three times and then paused it and attempted to recreate it.  I’m not sure what I did wrong, but mine looks like a blue/black abstract of I’m not sure what.  I was really encouraged when I made the artichoke but I might be destined to stamping.  I’ve never been very artistic and today I remembered the feeling I get when I try to draw, and I’ll put it into words.  “Geez, what is that?”  Or maybe it’s, “This looks like crap.”

I guess I’ll wait for Lindsay’s next tutorial and try that before I throw in the towel.  You know it’s another saying that I have no idea where it originated.  Here’s the scoop.

Origin

This little expression of course derives from boxing. When a boxer is suffering a beating and his corner want to stop the fight they literally throw in the towel to indicate their conceding of the fight. This earliest citation that I have found of this is in the American newspaper The F ort Wayne Journal-Gazette, January 1913:

Murphy went after him, landing right and left undefended face. The crowd importuned referee Griffin to stop the fight and a towel was thrown from Burns’ corner as a token of defeat.

It was very soon after that that the phrase began to be used in a figurative sense, to indicate giving up in non-boxing contexts; for example, in the Australian author Clarence James Dennis’s WWI patriotic novel, The Moods of Ginger Mick, 1916:

No matter wot ‘e done. It’s jist a thing
I knoo ‘e’d do if once ‘e got the show.
An’ it would never please ‘im fer to sling
Tall tork at ‘im jist cos ‘e acted so.
“Don’t make a song uv it!” I ‘ear ‘im growl,
“I’ve done me limit, an’ tossed in the tow’l.”

Throwing in the towel was preceded by throwing in the sponge. Sponges were a common ringside accessory as early as the 18th century. Throwing in the sponge was then the preferred method of conceding defeat. This is recorded in the mid-19th century, in The Slang Dictionary, 1860:

‘To throw up the sponge,’ to submit, give over the struggle, – from the practice of throwing up the sponge used to cleanse the combatants’ faces, at a prize-fight, as a signal that the ‘mill’ is concluded.

So I guess I think I’ve been beaten, the towel is poised for flight, we’ll just have to wait and see if I actually throw it.

I went to the stamp show today and made a list of things I wanted to purchase before I went.  I thought it would help to keep me on task.  Well, that worked and it didn’t. Something I really try not to do is fall for really cute animated animal stamps.  I love them and buy them and then can’t think of what to do with them.  Did I avoid them, yes and no.  Did I buy any?  Of course, and more than I should have.

I was trying to find the “perfect” tool for the following:  craft knife, bone folder, glue tip or glue bottle, and glue gun.  I bought some glues but didn’t find any of the others that I considered “perfect.”

The big trends this year were the Ken Oliver Color Bursts, Brusho (pretty much the same as Ken Oliver’s Color Bursts, stamping with markers, and both Pan pastels and oil pastels.  We went later than usual with a two hour drive, and I didn’t really have time to watch any of the demonstrations, but did find time to shop.  I was really kind of surprised at the repetitive nature of the booths.  About 75% of the booths had a Ken Oliver type color burst product.  Although Stampers Anonymous had a booth, a lot of the vendors were selling the Distress Ink product line.  All in all, it was a lot of fun and I did buy a lot of things I probably didn’t need.  I thought I’d do a haul video, because there are some pretty cute stamps that you may never see otherwise.

I watched Lindsay, the Frugal Crafter, use oil pastels to make an artichoke painting and it was for beginners, so I thought, why not.  So today I used my oil pastels (the same set Lindsay had), and made my own artichoke.  Of course mine had absolutely no resemblance to hers but honestly, it did look like an artichoke.  Rich immediately recognized it for what it was.  I can’t tell you how happy I was that he knew what I had painted, drew?, pastelled?  I’m not sure what you would call what I did.  The bottom line is this.  I never thought I could free hand draw anything, so this is a huge moment for me.  I can’t even begin to tell you how thrilled I am at the results.

So tomorrow we are headed for Akron, Ohio, where they are having a stamp show called Adventures in Stamping.  I love stamp shows and spend way too much money on way too many stamps etc.  I’m like a kid in a candy store and just want to look at everything and watch the demonstrations and buy whatever hits my fancy.  I really love finding new and different things, and I’m hoping tomorrow will be no exception.  I’m like some light Spectrum Noir markers in tans and reds and hopefully I’ll find more of the acrylic blocks with the pink handles to buy for my next giveaway.  I’ve had so many people ask me about them, that I’m hoping to find them for viewers.

I also found a lady on Splitcoast Stampers that was a Tim Holtz trainer and is getting rid of a lot of her inventory.  I found a punch that my friend Linda told me about a long time ago.  It is a punch for punches with buttons so I’ll be able to use those punches without using my feet on them.  I can’t wait to get it.  Of course I bought a bunch of other things from her and will probably be buying more.  She had so many great unusual things that I couldn’t pass them up.  Well I could have, but didn’t.  I’m looking forward to getting these things in the mail and then using them in projects.