I’ve never liked the way my colored pencils have looked on Mandalas until I watched Cherthefire blend using Vaseline to blend with.  She has a video that I will link here that gives twelve different blending techniques.

I am using my large set of Prismacolor Premier pencils.  I also used a set of colored pencils I got in a metal box from Michaels and I could not get them to absorb the Vaseline, so it didn’t seem to work on all pencils.

The least expensive Prismacolor Premiers that I have found is on my set of 132 was from Dickblick.com and it was $102.99 but you can get a set of 12 to try them for $12.19.  They are a very velvety texture and I’ve heard a lot of people discuss their quality control.  Prismacolors are supposed to have problems with the leads’ breaking, but I’ve not had that happen to mine.

The gel pens I used were from Sakura Glaze pens.  $13.99 at target.com.

I also used a black Sharpie and Staples currently has a 12 pack for $6.

Uni Posca Paint Marker White 3 pack from Amazon Prime $8.03

Beautiful Mandalas Volume 1 by Elena Bogdanovych was the book I was coloring in and I found it on Ebay now, for the lowest price.

My plan for tomorrow is to film the 500th subscriber video.  I was going to incorporate it into a bigger video, but why?  Let’s just celebrate the moment and talk about some prizes.  YouTube has very specific rules about contests so I’m going to have viewers comment on the video, and on a specific date at a specific time, I’ll go to a website that picks random numbers from a number it is given.  Then I count the comments until I get to each of the five numbers and those people will win the prizes.  It’s not hard to do and it complies with YouTube guidelines.

As for the prizes, I’m sending each person a Stampin’ Up set of stamps and hope they will enjoy them.  I know if I won anything from commenting on a website, I’d be happy.  Hopefully they will be as well.

I am so excited to exceed 500 subscribers and frankly, am surprised that we’re growing as quickly as we are. Rich and I hoped we would have viewers, but never thought about the channel growing.  It’s thrilling and we are so happy and proud that it is.  So thank you, for subscribing to the channel and we hope you enjoy the videos.

I had a great time today finding fun crafty things at rummage sales.  I found a really big set of shelving that will work perfectly for holding crafty things and although I don’t have a lot of room for shelves, I’ve found I find things easier when I arrange them within shelving units.

I’m hoping to get the shelving unit in and filled within the next couple of days.  It was such a great day, the weather was perfect and the sky was bright blue.  I found a couple of great places for Rich to photograph and we like to take small road trips to do that.  There was a chicken coop with probably one hundred chickens that sat in the middle of a field with nothing around it.  It was unusual because it had a solar panel on the roof.  I’m not sure why that struck me as odd, but I wasn’t sure why the chickens needed electricity.  I envisioned chickens sitting around a space heater warming their wings.  I need to get out more.

YouTube has a mind of its own. Every once in a while, I will upload a video and it doesn’t appear in the listing of videos.  It will, if you click on the word “video”, but it doesn’t appear under the name of my channel.  I’m not sure why, but eventually, maybe a day or so, it does.

I realize that YouTube is an online vehicle, but I never imagined that it would also be also impossible to find support.  If you have a question, you put the information in the search box for YouTube and hope that someone else has thought to make a video about it.  If they haven’t, you are out of luck.  You probably think that this is an exaggeration.  Here’s exactly what YouTube offers in the way of support.

Help Center

I decided to do a new card series using scrap paper and paper punches.  In the first video, I used two different size hexagon punches  (from Fiskars 2″ is $17.99 at Joanns and 1 1/2″ is $14.99 full price)–use a coupon though.
I used  black paper scraps and a black and white designer series paper from Stampin’ Up as well as 5 1/2 x 5 1/2″ pre-made cards that I bought at Michaels.  I also had purchased black and white washi tape at the Dollar Tree that I added inside the card..  The stamp set I used was from Inky Antics and it was called “Simple Sentiments” .  Here’s the link to it.  http://www.inkyantics.com/cgi-bin/stamps.cgi
I used a Distress Ink blank that I put Versafine Onyx Black re inker in.  Thanks Jennifer S. for the idea, it’s great!  Distress Ink blanks are $4.49 full price at Joanns, use a coupon.

I have two videos finished and I’m happy to be ahead of Rich.  Normally, I have one done and he’s working on it and I start to feel the pressure of getting another video completed.  I’m feeling pretty good about the projects I’m working on and the de-stashing that I am starting to get done.  It’s not easy to get rid of things like it is to accumulate them.  I have so much crafting “stuff” and need to start getting a handle on it.  I’d really like to get to the point where I can find my work space without having to push things around to get to it.

I bought a tower for my Stampin’ Up inks and would really like to put them in it, but where to put it once I fill it, that’s the dilemma.  If I could do that, I think I’d be really happy.  I bought a lazy susan type craft storage device thinking I would really love it.  It holds a lot of things, but it takes up so much space and it’s almost impossible to spin because it’s so wide.  I think I should have considered the width of my desk before buying it.  Honestly, so much of my storage is narrow, and that’s part of my problem.  I have a lot of paper scraps that need to go as well.  Ones I don’t like the look of.  I’m thinking I would feel a lot better if I just donated a big pile of things to the library for kids to use.  Once I get rid of those things, I can start to make inroads into my messy craft room.  Some of the best storage purchases I’ve made have been vintage suitcases.  They hold a TON of stuff and I have all of my Christmas stamps etc. in one and all of my cardboard in another.  The third is currently housing miscellaneous things that I could probably store elsewhere.  I love them though, because they look cute and they stack on top of each other standing up so they don’t take up a lot of space.  I may be buying more of them in the future because you can normally buy them for $1 at garage sales because nobody buys them.  They don’t know what they are missing.

I’m meeting my college friends for breakfast on Saturday and begs a non-shopper to buy a storage rolling tray from Ikea that I’ve been wanting for a long time.  I’ve seen it in other craft rooms and think it will help me with my storage problems. Here’s a link to it if you have and Ikea near you.  http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30216536/

The great de-stashing continues…

I made this photo album that was supposed to be 6 x6 for a friend whose birthday came a month after getting her new bullmastiff, Samson.  I wanted to make something special for her, so I had Rich photograph him, and this is the result.

The book came from 7 Gypsies and was 6 x 6″ and had the two cardboard covers, twenty pages and three rings to hold it.  I had it in my stash and couldn’t remember where I had purchased it.  I looked online and found something similar at Etsy, only smaller than mine.  Here’s the link.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/165207704/7-gypsies-425-x-412-ringed-board-book-10?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=7 gypsies album&ref=sr_gallery_16

I apologize I couldn’t find it in a retailer or the same size as mine.

I used Tim Holtz Idea-logy Photo Corners Antique Metallic that sell full price at Joanns for $7.99 for three sets.  (use a coupon)

I used Tim Holtz Idea-logy Swivel Clasps Antiqu Metallic $3.99 full price at Joann’s for 12 of them.  (use coupon)

I had some chipboard hearts and a big “S” from Stampin’ Up that I colored with Tim Holtz Distress Stains $5..49 full price at Joanns (use coupon). Tumbled Glass, Wild Honey, Vintage Photo and Old Paper and Weathered Wood.  I also distressed the pages with the same colors in Tim Holtz Distress inks. $5.99 full price at Joanns.(use coupon)
I had antiqued eyelets in my stash and used my Crop a Dile to attach the eyelets into the album.  $29.99 full price at Joanns for a Crop a Dile

Papers are from Marcella by K Clove All in One Scrapbook pad that came from Big Lots and was in my stash for a long time.

The covers came from a stamp show and the inside papers came from Stampin’ Up.  I ended up using six ball and chain rings to close the album and made four pockets out of the album so that each of her four grandchildren could write a story of Samson on their page.  I put each grandchild’s first initial on their page and attached the Tim Holtz Idea-logy Swivel Clasps on the pages to make page pulls out of them.
I tried to show as much of the project as I could but ran out of time so only showed the initial making of it.

So today we are at 500 subscribers.  We are thrilled.  In the grand scheme of YouTube, 500 is a small number, but we never thought the channel would gain momentum like it has in the last few weeks.  It is so hard to believe that we have 500 people who consider our videos worthy of subscribing to.  Thank you to all 500 subscribers.  We hope to continue to make fun and informative videos that you will want to tell your friends about.  This is a great day for us!

Part 2 of the perpetual birthday calendar video went live last night.  I’ve gotten several nice comments, mostly focused on the fact that I didn’t quit when I could have, and that I left the mistakes intact.  I didn’t think it was right for me to have a YouTube channel for persons with physical limitations and create videos where every project is perfect and easy to make.  That’s not the reality of crafting and if other crafting YouTubers were honest, they would admit that they have deleted a lot of their videos before putting them online.  Of course they do, otherwise there would be a lot more videos like mine online and I have NEVER seen one.   EVER.  I’d love to see Jennifer McGuire say something like, well here is the card I made but it failed and here’s how I corrected the problem.  We would all learn so much more from a video like that than we do from one where she shows this lovely card and talked about how she made it.  Hey, I could have deleted all of my mistakes and said that I planned on putting the ribbon on the back.  I could have, but wouldn’t.

Maybe I’m taking this honesty thing too far, but I think people want to know there is bad with the good and they also want to know they are not the only ones who make mistakes.  It’s only fair that someone show them the bad.  So here I am, bringing some bad, but more importantly, showing exactly what I did to fix it.  So if someone else has a Zutter and sees my video, they will know exactly what not to do.  I’m a trailblazer (and MacGyver.).  Who would have guessed?