I’ve been working on a card that is one the has a pull tab and pushes an image up into the center circle, and finally finished it.  It’s quite an accomplishment and took me a long time to make sure I was doing everything correctly, since I didn’t use a die.  I got it finished and handed it to Rich to demonstrate, he pulled the tab, and broke it off the pulley system. I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to cry…I’m not sure how to take the card apart, as it has about ten rows of foam tape holding the layers together.  Some days just don’t go like we hope they will.

I need to make a couple more cards in the next two days, as it’s one of my closest friend’s birthday and my sister’s birthday on the same day, November 2nd.  I’m already sweating because I’m late in getting my sister’s gift in the mail, so now that her cards not done, I’m feeling even more pressure.  Yikes, I need to get serious and fix today’s card (for my sister’s husband whose birthday was at the end of September….yes I know I’m a little bit late, and now I have two more cards to make.  I’m going to have to get serious about making them.

Did I already tell you about the three cards I made that were all the same except I used different mediums, so people would see that they don’t have to spend a lot of money on supplies to get a good look.  I used inexpensive watercolors, colored pencils, and alcohol markers, and you almost can’t tell which is which.  I think it’s a good project to help people really see the results you can get when using each product.

I didn’t accomplish much today, but answered a lot of comments and put up the demonstration video from the expo.  I have now been getting comments about people missing seeing me instead of the expo techniques…I guess they’ve seen enough of them.

Tomorrow I’m going to try doing the same stamped image, but making several of the same one, only with different mediums. I thought it might be fun to color one with watercolor paints, one with watercolor pencils, one with watercolor crayons and one with alcohol markers. I might throw a couple extra ideas in when I start doing them.  I thought it would be interesting to see which one has the most appeal and then I’ll know what mediums work best for me.  I’m not sure if anyone else will care about this idea, but it might help me in the future.

Rich has been playing with paracord.  it’s what they use for military key chains and a long time ago, we donated money to a group that retrains dogs for ex-military, and they sent us a paracord bracelet.  Rich loved it and has worn it until it’s so faded that it looks terrible.  He decided he wanted to try to make one for himself, and did.  He did a terrific job and I’m hoping it’s something he’ll be willing to do on video.  I haven’t seen him in action, but once it’s second nature for him, I think he’ll do the video.  I think he’s been delaying making his Christmas card video, and as much as viewers keep reminding me, he’s still a little leery about trying it.  I guess we’ll have to wait to see if we can get this show on the road.

Beverly Cole, from Sparkle n’ Sprinkle demonstrated how to make a glitter background with double sided tape at the Stamp and Scrapbook Expo Rich and I attended..

If you’ve never purchased anything from Sparkle n’ Sprinkle, here’s a link so you can get five free glitters.
https://sparklensprinkle.net/collections/5-free-glitters-new-customers
Beverly starts with 2 1/2″ wide double sided tape link: https://sparklensprinkle.net/products/2-1-2-double-sided-tear-ific-tape-small-roll-sat15
and took the back lining paper off of one side and gently laid a piece of cardstock on the side that’s now sticky. She rubbed it to make sure the tape was well adhered.  Next, Beverly removed the other release paper from the double sided tape to lay her stencil on.
Before Beverly adhered her Dreamweaver Stampendous stencil called Bare Trees (link: http://tinyurl.com/yc72y8aj),
she rubbed the back of the stencil with Hawaiian Coconut Oil Soap (link: http://tinyurl.com/y93xuopw)
so the metal stencil would not permanently adhere to the sticky tape.
Beverly made sure the stencil was well adhered to the tape, then took a clean flattened coffee filter, and put it under the project to catch her excess glitter. She used:

Purple rain glitter link: http://tinyurl.com/y945m9nj
Campfire glitter link: http://tinyurl.com/ydxn3wlv
Luao Green glitter http://tinyurl.com/y78a2tfk
Black Ice glitter: http://tinyurl.com/yd9ugjx4

She starts with the Purple Rain glitter to do the skyline (top third of the stencil,) then uses the Campfire glitter for the middle third, and Luau Green for the bottom third of the stencil. With each color, she used a different filter and really burnished the glitter into the stencil with her finger to ensure the glitter covers the area she wants..…it’s really important to make sure the glitter covers the entire area, otherwise, the black will fill it in later, and that’s not what you’re looking for.
After Beverly used one color, she tapped the stencil over her coffee filter.  With Purple Rain, she put the excess glitter back in the bottle.  After that, you risk cross contaminating, if you put the Fireside into it’s jar from the filter, as the Purple Rain could be in there too..If you look closely at the glitter that’s in the filter and it doesn’t appear to have another color in it, you can put it back in the bottle..It’s best to use a little less glitter each time, just enough to cover the area you want in that color, and tossing the rest, so if it does have other colors in it, you won’t be wasting much.
After you’ve covered the entire stencil area with glitter, gently remove the stencil from the paper…You’ll want to try not to put your fingers in the sticky area, as it removes the stickiness if you do. Once the stencil has been removed, take the Black Ice glitter (with a filter under your project) and cover the entire thing with Black Ice glitter. Really rub it in and then take a glitter brush to remove any excess..
Glitter brush: https://sparklensprinkle.net/products/glitter-brush-sg1400

Last night we celebrated Halloween.  I know it’s odd, but here we have always done trick or treat on the Thursday night before Halloween.  Then the Saturday night before Halloween, we have a Halloween parade in our downtown.  I’m not sure what the reasoning is for either date, but that’s how it’s been done here since I can remember.  For the first time since having the YouTube channel, I decided to videotape Rich. He likes to dress up like a vampire and entertain the kids. I thought my viewers would enjoy seeing how much effort he puts into the event.   Sadly, we don’t get very many kids, and this year we only had five.  Five kids, what a bummer.  We give full size candy bars or bags of candy to try to entice kids to come to us.  We live on a dead end street with several houses, but many of them don’t participate giving candy, so the kids that used to come here, now go elsewhere.  I think it’s a real shame when people can’t find it in their hearts to get a bag of candy to share with five to ten kids.  The most we’ve ever had is fifteen, and that was in one of the first years we lived here (and we’ve lived here twenty-five years.)  I remember one year, a boy came back to tell Rich that Rich gave the best treats on the block.  It made Rich’s Halloween…  Last night we decided to go big or go home, and made a bag with a Pez dispenser shaped like a witch or a vampire with Pez candies, small Snickers bars, chocolate eye balls, a couple of small Reese’s cups, and a pair of vampire teeth with a packet of fake blood.  Rich thought the kids who came here might tell their friends, so that next year we get a few more trick or treaters.  I love his enthusiasm, but doubt anyone will remember a year from now.  For his sake, I hope it works, but I’m starting to worry that we’ll hit a year where we get no kids, as many are not doing traditional trick or treating, and our neighborhood is aging, so we have very few kids to start with.

I put the apron video online last night and this morning I had a comment from Lindsay the Frugal Crafter.  Since I’ve learned almost everything I know from her, it’s an honor whenever she takes the time to watch one of my videos.  It’s so nice to know that she watches videos from small channels like mine…YAY!

 

I bought a canvas apron at A C Moore specifically to try the Arteza Fabric Markers on. The nice people at Arteza sent me the set of 24 fabric markers.

If you are interested in the fabric markers, here’s a discount code to use in October for an additional 10% and free shipping..the code is SPOOKY10. This link will take you to the fabric markers http://tinyurl.com/y9yznadh (As always, I don’t make any money from your purchases of the products I demonstrate in my videos.)

You can buy canvas aprons at any craft store. I wanted to use templates so my coloring would stay within the patterns I chose. So I took a rectangle die and a small circle die and cut them out of cardboard scraps. I made sure to cut them more than once, so I didn’t spread one color onto another. I accidentally did that with the yellow box, as I had orange on the edges of the cardboard template and smeared it onto the yellow rectangle. So make sure you change your template when you go from a darker color to a lighter one… I colored the markers in rainbow order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo an violet. I didn’t have a true indigo, so only used six colors (as I didn’t have room for a seventh.) I then used the circle dies with additional colors (staying on the pockets of my apron.) I put a piece of cardboard in the apron pockets while coloring there, to ensure the colors didn’t bleed onto the inside of the apron. After using sky blue, raspberry, bubble gum pink, and lime green, and tangerine, I realized they were much brighter and darker than I thought they would be.
As for the markers, I think they are terrific and if I was a true artist and could color images with them, I would have given it a try. I did notice that lighter colors show up better on the apron, as the canvas shows the fibers of the cloth with darker colors, and you need to really color the cloth in several directions to ensure true color coverage.

I used Tim Holtz Alterations die called Tattered Florals and here’s a link to it. http://tinyurl.com/y7juvfc9  I wanted flowers on the pockets and near the top.  I used a circle die to cut the centers out of the flowers.

I used buttons to sew onto the small flowers I cut out of felt. I used a needle threader to help me thread the needle and here’s a link to them. http://tinyurl.com/y6w6jzfr

I used embroidery thread to sew the buttons to my flowers in the same color as the button. I used Fabri Fix glue to glue the flowers to the apron. I bought Fabri Fix at Joanns and it’s made by Beacon Glue.
I decided after gluing the large flowers to the rectangles, that I wanted to add black glitter to the center of them, so I took very fine glitter (don’t know the maker) and put the same glue into the centers of the flowers then added the black glitter into the centers and rubbed the glitter with the back of a plastic spoon to get it to stay inside. I used coffee filters and they removed the excess glitter by wiping the filter over the felt and tapping the back to remove the excess.

I finally finished the apron design that I was doing with the Arteza fabric markers.  I started the project with rectangles and circles and decided when I was done, that it looked like a five year old made it.  I wanted to do more, and after another night of sleeplessness over a project, decided it needed fabric add-ons.  In the end, I’m happy with the apron and hope you’ll enjoy the video.  The best part about the apron, is that I won’t have to ruin any more of my clothes from glues and inks that drop onto them.  YAY!

Rich and I celebrated our anniversary last night with dinner at Red Lobster.  It’s not like other years where we’ve done a weekend away or a big trip, we just wanted to get home to the dogs.  It’s crazy when our lives are dictated by our dogs, but Honey has such high anxiety that I hate leaving her for long periods of time.  So we ran some errands, had an early dinner and rented two movies, “Antman and the Wasp” and “Hotel Artemis” with Jody Foster.  You can tell that Rich chose the movies as one is an action movie and the other kind of action/bloody.  Both were OK, and I’m glad we didn’t go see either of them in the theater.  It was a nice day and I’m looking forward to the next thirty-six years with Rich

We were at the Stamp and Scrapbook Expo and watched a demonstration at the Sparkle ‘n Sprinkle booth. We were lucky to have our demonstrations done by Beverly Cole, one of the stamp designers for them. Beverly used Nuvo Shimmer Powders and created a lovely floral background. I loved how she gives all of the tips about using the product. She used 140 lb cold press watercolor paper and embossing powder from Sparkle and Sprinkle. She used Blue Bliss and Cherry Bomb powders and here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/ybzdlga2
The embossing powder is called Midnight Madness and here’s the link to ithttp://tinyurl.com/y7ytjt33
The image she used is one she designed and it’s called Asters and here’s the link to it. http://tinyurl.com/ybzgaxv5

When I got home with the background Beverly had created, I decided to turn it into a card. I cut it down to put on a 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ card base.  It was roughly 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″. I rounded the corners of the image and a pink card base that was made from Recollections Heavyweight card stock.
I used pink fun foam and wet glue to adhere it to the back of the image. I added glue to the other side of the foam and laid it on the card base near the top. I wanted to add something to the bottom, and needed a sympathy card, so used a die to cut out “With Sympathy” and glued it near the bottom of the card. It was a quick and easy way to make a card. I used a stamp set called Heartfelt Basics from Papertrey Ink to stamp a sentiment inside the card. I used a peg stamp called a cone flower type flower to stamp on the envelope with a blue ink called Ballet Blue by Stampin’ Up.

Today is our 36th wedding anniversary, or our 22nd, if you count our Vegas one.  (But that’s a story for another day, haha.)  We got married right out of college and two weeks later, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. If not for our ignorance about the disease, we probably would have lost our minds.  We had only heard the term arthritis on television commercials.  Two women playing tennis and one rubs her hand and says her arthritis is bothering her…Her partner says she should consider rubbing Ben-Gay on it and it would be fine.  That’s what we thought we were up against.  And five years later, I had my first knee replaced, and two years after that, the other knee, and on and on…

I chose very early in my disease to ignore it, and I hoped that if I did, others would too.  When I ultimately took disability from banking, customers would see me in stores or restaurants and ask where I’d been.  When I’d say I was taking disability, they didn’t understand.  You probably think that’s odd, but it was the greatest accomplishment of my career.  I personally think my arthritis is really visible, from my hands, to my limp…the fact that others don’t see it, means my decision to ignore it did help others to ignore it too.

What’s that have to do with our anniversary?  It’s how we made it through.  We ignore it as much as we can and live our lives.  It’s the best advice I can give anyone with arthritis.  Choose to ignore it and find joy in the things you can and ignore the rest.  If people ask me how I am, I say I’m fine, no matter if I am or not.

Our great niece whose 17, just asked me the secret to staying married for so long, and I told her to find someone you have fun with, that’s your best friend.  And that even now, if Rich has been away for a couple of days, when I see him, my heart still skips a beat.  He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and if there’s a reason for things, I’ll take arthritis if I get to have Rich.  It’s more than worth the trade-off.

Today is my mother’s birthday…She passed away in 2013.  As a kid and young adult, my mother and I had a terrific relationship, never any teenage angst…I really loved and respected her.  Then my father passed away when she was sixty, and I think she lost all sense of herself and her worth then.  She had friends, but distanced herself from those who still had husbands, and found even small tasks difficult to accomplish.  I knew she was depressed and missing my dad, so no matter how many hours I worked, we always took her out for dinner every Friday night.   My sister moved to North Carolina, and that compounded my mother’s insecurities, and she became more judgmental with me, telling me if I didn’t call her every day, I didn’t love her.  I was an area manager for PNC Bank, and worked long hours..With that and keeping my home and Rich as a priority, I didn’t have much left to give.  She started having mini-strokes, and that changed her personality even more.  By the time she passed away, I’d already been in counselling, as I saw myself as a bad daughter and couldn’t shake that I did nothing for her that made her happy.  After she died, I went to two more counselors, and none of them could help me with my guilt and certainty that I had failed her.  My mother and father never had a lot, so after my dad died, if Mom needed a new refrigerator or washing machine, we’d make sure she had one.  In the months before she died, she told me that I was always there for her financially but never emotionally.  And here it is, over five years later, and that remark still leaves a mark.

I realize that she had emotional issues from the strokes, and losing my dad devastated her, but it’s my failure that still bothers me.  I’ll say this, I gave as much as I could in the way of emotional support.  I know it wasn’t enough for her, but it was what I could give.  In the final days of her life, people who came to see her would mention how good her family was to her, and she’d respond with “Until a few days ago, I didn’t even know that they loved me.”

So what do you say to that?  And five years later, I’m still wondering.  I loved my mother, and I failed her.  It’s the people who are closest to us who leave the biggest marks.  My mother’s death came as a relief to me, and that also makes me feel guilty.  Three counselors and I can honestly say, sometimes you just need go give yourself a break.  You can’t be everything to everyone, but you can do your best, and that’s all anyone can ask of us.   On my mother’s birthday, I’m remembering the mother who made my favorite dinners for my birthdays and who showed me how to appreciate giving back and adopting strangers for Christmas.  (I’m not sure what to do with the rest.)

I’m starting to think about all of the different social media that is attached to a YouTube channel.  Since my channel isn’t monetized, (meaning I don’t make money from it,) do I really need to have the other social media?  I’d really like advice from those of you that read this blog.  I do the blog because I always thought you had to have a blog if you have a YouTube channel.  I have an Instagram account, but only because (at the beginning) of my YouTube channel, A C Moore contacted me to discuss using my social media for a possible link to their company’s social media, and specifically Instagram.  I had almost no photos on Instagram then, and still dread uploading photos to it, since I postpone until I have a bunch of videos that need uploaded there.

Since this is a hobby for me, exactly what elements of social media are necessary?  I think a lot of my posts here are repetitive, and wonder if there’s a benefit to those of you who read it.  Do you enjoy it and should I continue doing it, or would you rather spend your time doing something else?  I don’t really know what the answers are, I’d just like to get some input.