The picture for my blog and YouTube are with Noel, the first dog who truly loved me.  We’ve always had dogs, but they were always more drawn to Rich than to me.  When we put our last dog to sleep, it was an awful experience for Rich, (I worked that day) and he never wanted another pet.  He said he couldn’t do that again.  It took the vet three tries to put our dog to sleep.  Rich had a friend that said his biggest regret was not being there when they put his dog to sleep.  He told Rich that he was his best friend and in his last moments, he wasn’t there for him.  That really struck home with Rich so when they our dog went in, Rich was holding him tightly.  He couldn’t get past those last few minutes and it took us six months before he would consider a dog.  It was Christmas and I really wanted a puppy and I was very specific about what I wanted.  I wanted a female yellow lab and I was going to call her Noel.  When we went to see her, they had photos of the father to Noel.  He was dressed up for Halloween and he was the most handsome yellow lab we had ever seen.  When they brought Noel to us, we knew she was ours.  She was so sweet natured and had the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a dog.  She had horrible separation anxiety so when we went to work, she barked.  By the time she was two, we knew we needed to make a change and found Aggie, our first golden retriever.  She also had the most handsome father we had ever seen.  Noel and Aggie were inseparable.  If we took one to the vet, the other fretted until we got home.  They were together for thirteen years.  Noel passed the day after these photographs were taken.  She was 15 1/2 years old when she died.  That was in 2014, but sometimes a dog leaves such a hole in your heart that you want her with you always.  I put the photos up so my best friend could be a part of my YouTube experience.  She left a big hole for Aggie as well.  About three years before Noel passed, the vet told us that our dogs were very connected (which we already knew) and that Aggie might not make it through Noel’s passing.  She said we should consider getting another dog for her, which is why we got Bella.  We’re not referencing the Twilight series, her AKC name is Parker’s Bella Mia, which is Italian for “my beautiful.”  She’s been a great companion for Aggie who really struggled when we lost Noel.   About two weeks after Noel passed, in the middle of the night, Aggie let out a howl like her heart had broken.  I’ve never heard anything like it and hope I never do again.  I cried the rest of the night.  Aggie is now 15, and we’ve started to worry about Bella being alone, thus the reason we bought Honey.  Isn’t it strange that the only dog we bought for ourselves was Noel and every dog after has been for our dogs?  We must be abnormal.  We never had children so our dogs have filled that void for us.  We still miss Noel and her weird quirky ways.  She was very routine oriented and every morning went to the refrigerator, waited for me to open the bottom drawer and retrieved her apple (that drawer only housed their apples and we never used it for anything else) .  She and Aggie ate an apple every day of their lives.  When Noel died, Aggie stopped eating apples.  Noel loved tomatoes so we planted grape tomato plants for her.  She’d wait until the tomatoes turned red and then she’d “shop” for them, going from plant to plant, until she found tomatoes that were ready to eat.  She’d come back into the house and her whole face would be yellow from the pollen on the plants.  When she was a puppy, she’d lay on my lap with her face pointed toward my face and her tail by my knees.  Until her death, she would  lie on me in the same way as she did when she was a puppy.   And she loved to lay beside me on the bed if I held her foot, and she’d lay like that for hours.  She was a sweet dog and I wanted to take a few minutes to remember her with you so you’d understand the photos and my love for this wonderful dog.

Every once in a while, YouTube completely stymies me.  I’m not sure what is happening or why and have no idea how to fix whatever happens.  It happened today.  Rich uploaded a video as “private” so I would be able to add the information about the video, and add icons that will take you to other videos, and notes that explain things I feel might be unclear.  Once I am done with that, I change the “private” to “public.”  Once I do that, the video is the first one to appear when I click on my page.  For some reason, it’s not there, but if you click on videos, it does appear.  Since I couldn’t figure out what else to do, I changed it to “private” again, and then changed it back to “public” thinking that could be the answer. It wasn’t.  I’m not sure how most people get to my most recent videos, but if they do it the way I do, they won’t know there is a new video.  Geez, this is frustrating.  It’s a really great video because Rich did a really cool  introduction for it.  What to do, who to ask?  The last time I had a YouTube question, their site lead me to a video on, wait for it, YouTube.  It didn’t give me the answer there so I was left scratching my head.  So I decided to give it another try.  I typed in “missing video on YouTube” and it gave me several video games and several  songs from Puff Daddy to Justin Bieber.  Well, those aren’t going to answer my question.  Maybe I should sing something like “Where oh where did my video go, oh where oh where could it be?”  Sadly, it gave me “Oh Where can my baby be” and weirdly enough, “Last Kiss.”  I guess I’ll wait until tomorrow to see if the problem has been resolved and if it hasn’t, I’ll try again.  Or give up and hope viewers find it another way.  Maybe they can read my blog to find it.

I now know everything I have done incorrectly with embossing powders in the past.  Maybe not everything, I’m sure I can make a ton more mistakes before I’ve mastered it.  I’m now committed to making all kinds of things with embossing powder just to prove I can.  I’ll probably even burn myself in the process since I haven’t done that yet.  I have a plan though, and if it works, it will be in a video.  If it doesn’t, you’ll never hear about it again.  I’m thinking I need to come up with a secondary plan that involves the Vagabond (which I haven’t mastered), embossing folders (which I haven’t mastered) and embossing powders (you know the rest.)  I may even throw in a couple other things that I haven’t mastered just to be on the safe side.  What else could there be?  Trust me, if there is a crafting technique, I probably haven’t mastered it.

I do have a plan though and that should count for something.

I can’t believe it is March already.  The winter has really flown by.  I dread winter and as I age, I dread it more with each passing year.  It’s not the snow necessarily, it’s the way the world has no color.  It is grey (or is it gray) here from mid October until the middle to the end of April.  Honestly, it is a very drab world.  By the way, I did the research on gray vs. grey and here’s what it says.

Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word, and both are used throughout the English-speaking world. But gray is more common in American English …

And now I know.  So I have roughly 45 days until there is any sign of color.  I’m hoping our groundhog had a clue and it is less than 45 days. I swear this is the first time I can remember that the groundhog said we would have an early spring and I’m pretty sure the committee of “groundhog whisperers” got together before the big day and said something like, “Well we’ve had a really easy winter and our temperatures have been high so maybe we decide this will be an early spring.  All in favor?”  If you remember Fred Flintstone and the fraternal order he belonged to.  So I picture this group having groundhog-like fur coats  and making groundhog-like noises to agree to the motion.  This is the moment when you realize that I have way to much time on my hands.  Way too much.

 

I must be a little bit dumb.  I can never get embossing powders to work the way they are supposed to.  I have heard that I put the embossing buddy powder on after I stamped the image, but this isn’t  the first time I’ve had trouble with embossing powder and I only used the buddy when I did, so people wouldn’t ask me why I didn’t.  I normally forget to use it entirely and still can’t get my embossing powder to stick.  I’ve used new embossing ink and still bad embossed images.  If you saw the video of the steampunk journal, you saw the embossing powder didn’t do well on that either.  I had two different occasions where the embossed image was not very good.  It involved two different powders as well.  I was crafting in my basement for almost a year and although I run a dehumidifier, I wonder if somehow it made my embossing powders go bad.  I’m confused when everyone on the internet are able to emboss with no difficulty, and mine almost never look good.  What to do?  It’s a dilemma.

I made the card that looks like it has water in it.  I’m really happy with the results.  I never know if I’m going to end up with a horrible mess when I venture outside the normal stamp and ink process.  I kept my mess to a minimum and it looked pretty impressive when I was finished.  The only reason I’m so proud is because I made one of these for my nephew last year and I filled it with way too much gel.  I’m surprised it made it through the USPS without any mishaps.  It’s a fun technique and one I mentioned when I was taping the video on my crafting journals.  I had intended to do a video using this technique, but wasn’t sure when.  I got a request from a viewer, so I made the card.

I’m still wondering what went wrong with the embossing I did on the Just for You card.  I don’t understand why it works when I use the embossing marker, but doesn’t when I use the embossing stamp pad.  (It was a new pad by the way.)  I’m sure someone knows what went wrong, but I’m still in a quandary about it.  Maybe it’s me.  I’m cursed.  It’s possible.  Especially since I lost one of my Misti magnets.  Those things should never come off of the Misti because they are so powerful.  Where it went continues to be a mystery to me.  Maybe the reason it disappeared is because I just ordered five more Misti magnets.  You never know..Or maybe I’m cursed, we’ll wait and see.

So after two days of trying to make a card with the caulk embellishments, I finally came up with a card that was video worthy.  I had one video that I used the ferns on, it was not attractive and Rich agreed, so I scrapped it.  I made another card that also went into the trash so this was three strikes and you are out.  I actually am pretty impressed with it.  It was the first time I had tried four step stamping and I was a little hesitant.  Especially as there are no instructions included in the packaging about do you start with light inks and go darker or dark to light.  With some serious mistakes, I decided it is light to dark.  The stamp set I had was great though and I really liked the rose.  I have the matching die set so will definitely be using these again.

I spent most of the day in Pittsburgh and bought a ton of things at a huge Dollar Tree and then found a Michaels that was selling off most of their Martha Stewart paper products including her large score board and a ton of her punches.  I found a punch that I had to have and even though I’m not crazy about her punches, this one works really well (hard to believe).  It is a row of cherry blossoms and leaves and cuts like a ribbon.  I know I didn’t need another punch, but this one really spoke to me.  I got it home and immediately tried it and it is the best Martha Stewart punch I’ve ever used,t and it was $6.99.  For an edge punch, it was a great bargain.  All in all, it was a great day.

The Oscars are on television right now and although I love the red carpet, the rest of the show runs way too long and I’m too impatient.  I worked on a card when I could be watching Oscar. Darn.

I used the texture paste stencil project I did with latex caulk and it came out really well.  I really struggled with how I was going to use it but in the end, I think the card came out fine.  It’s not my best work, but it’s not my worst either.  I’m trying to come up with an idea of what to do with the caulk doilies and ribbon, but that’s a thought process for tomorrow.  For today, my video is in the bag and I’m ready to go to bed.