I decided to give the paper bag albums that I’ve been seeing everywhere a try.  They aren’t really hard to make, but require re-measuring with each page as the bags I bought weren’t all the same size.  I did cut mine down so they were all “supposed” to be the same size, but actually, an 1/8th of an inch makes a difference when I’m looking at it, so I measured every page.  So far, I’m not really disappointed with my results, but the people who said you can crank these out in 20 minutes are kidding me.  Well of course it would take me a lot longer, measure twice and glue once.  It’s fun to do and I’m enjoying it, but it is a little labor intensive for me, requiring I take a lot of breaks.  Or maybe I just like taking breaks, you’ll have to decide that for yourself.

I thought I’d make three of four of these, but at the rate I’m going, I might make two and be done with them.  I prefer a project that is not only fun to make, but that doesn’t look like a paper bag when I am done.  I think the people who made the ones I have seen, have purchased ones that are of a higher quality than the ones I bought.  I bought plain white lunch bags, which is what one YouTuber said to use.  I don’t recommend them as they are pretty flimsy and (I think) still look like a paper bag.  Maybe if I had upgraded to a heavy duty expensive bag, the end result would look better.  I’m not sure, maybe one of my readers could let me know their thoughts on it.  In the meantime, I’ll finish this one and then maybe make one on video.  It’s a long process so I might cut paper before I tape so it goes together quickly.  I’m not sure if that will work or not, as the bag sizing might make it a total fail.  I guess we’ll wait and see.

 

 

I wanted to make something special for a friend who just had her birthdayI The outside sentiment came with the girlfriend stamp. I used 10″ tall by 7″ wide scored on the 10″ length at 5″ purple paper and lined the inside of the card with yellow paper that was 4 3/4″ x 6 3/4″. I used sentiments for the inside from Creative Times Floral Sayings and MFT True Friend Sentiments. I colored my girls with alcohol inks. I had a ribbon that was clear and lined it with a piece of matching pink paper. I made this card at 1:30 in the morning and would have put small stamps on their pants and shirts but ran out of steam, darn it. I lined the girls with a piece of yellow cardstock and then put the outside sentiment on a piece of purple and a piece of yellow cardstock as well. I ran a piece of pink washi tape around my envelope and stamped the envelope with my fruit loop stamp that I bought from Discount Rubber Stamps for $4.99 plus shipping. You just give them the sentiment and type it in the font you want and they mail it to you in a week or so. I love using them for sentiments that I repetitively use. I hope you like this card, Becky did.

Today, I’ve made two videos and will be making at least one more.  The first is a very inexpensive but cute dog toy that you make with fleece.  Most dog owners buy their dogs presents for the holidays and why not pay less than 50 cents for a toy that you’d pay almost $10 for at Petsmart.  The other great thing about this toy, is it can be made quickly and especially inexpensively.  I bought 1/4 yard of fleece in two colors of paw prints, plus one of black.  Here’s a link to the one I bought.

http://www.joann.com/blizzard-fleece-print-paw-prints-on-black/12755294.html#sz=90&start=1

It is currently $5.99 a yard which is about $1.50 for 1/4 yard, and you’ll be buying two of those for $3 total plus a cheaper plain color fleece which is roughly $1 for 1/4 yard.  Your total cost is $4 for the fleece plus tax.  I cut my fleece into 2″ wide strips and then folded the length in half to make two strips out of it at 2″ wide.  My end result is a toy that is 18″ long.  Keeping in mind that I have golden retrievers, they need a toy that long, but if you have a cocker spaniel, you could make yours 12″ long and if you have an even smaller dog, you could cut it even shorter.  My 1/4 yards of fleece will make 8 toys for my dogs, which means my toys are costing fifty cents each.  If you make them half as short as mine, yours will cost you 25 cents each.  Where can you find a soft fun pull toy anywhere for your dog for that price? Additionally, with cutting and putting the toy together, you might have five minutes involved to produce one.   I can tell you my puppy has had it in her mouth since she got it, and plays tug with the other dogs and Rich whenever she gets a chance.  It’s a great gift and would be perfect to sell at craft shows or to give friends who have dogs, just a great inexpensive idea.  I hope you’ll give this one a try.

My second video is to create your own pads of glue dots.  We all use them, we all pay for them over and over again.  Even if you buy them at the Dollar Tree, you’ll still continue to pay for them.  I’m going to show you a way to make and store them that will save you a lot of money.  So stay tuned to my channel, we’re going to be doing a lot of savings and distressing at a time when you need it most!

This time of year makes me remember the “old days” when people had Christmas Clubs and would get their checks in the mail in a few days from now.  For those of you who don’t know about Christmas Clubs, it was an account that you opened at a bank and you had a booklet for each week of the year.  Let’s say you wanted to have $250 to spend on Christmas next year.  You would open a $5 Christmas Club and then each week you would tear a $5 page from your booklet and deposit $5 into your account.  Then in mid November, a check would come to you and you’d be ready to shop.  It was a great way to save for the holidays, but over time, as people’s spending and savings habits changed, Christmas Clubs were no longer used.  I’m not sure if there is anything like them in existence today.  The reason I was thinking about them, is that this time of year is extremely stressful for people because of the expectations of kids for their gifts and the amount of money it takes to purchase them and everything else you would buy for the holidays.

If you watch my channel, you know I am really concerned with the costs of things and finding the best prices and the best products for my viewers.  I’m extremely cautious of overspending and have always been a saver.  I guess all of those years working in a bank will do that to you.  For a lot of my career, I was responsible for customers whose accounts were overdrawn and trying to help them figure a way out of it.  That kind of environment really made me who I am today.  I hate and I mean HATE paying full price for almost everything.  Some times it is unavoidable, but for the most part, I try to buy our household, clothes, crafty things, etc., at a discounted price.

As to the point of my rambling story, I thought I’d share some ideas in the upcoming month or so, to help my viewers find ways to save for the holidays.  I’m hoping this series will allow you to make gifts that are inexpensive, create tools that are cheater to make and use, as well as ideas for cost cutting.  I’m hoping this series will help you to avoid some of the stress that this time of year presents and make the holiday season so much more enjoyable.

I’m not sure what other YouTube/bloggers do when they have nothing special to discuss.  Today was a great day for me, but not in the normal way.  I went to a long lunch with a very old friend from my early days in banking in the 1980’s.  She’s a great lady who is now in her eighties and still as spunky as ever.  She had a stroke a couple of years ago and it made the left side of her body very weak.  She uses a walker now and has really struggled with her lack of independence.  She’s so much fun though, and makes me laugh so hard and she loves reliving our days in banking together.  She was our drive in teller and she knew every customer, their kids and dogs, what color lollipop the kids liked.  She was fabulous and so funny, with a laugh that you couldn’t help but join along.  Every time we have lunch together, she says the same thing, “You never change.”  Well why would I?  If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.  I’ve never felt the need to completely grow up, so I do silly things when we’re in public just to get her to laugh.  It works every time and makes my day.  So today was a great day.

After lunch we went to a vegetable stand at a farmer’s home down a horribly long rutted dirt driveway that is too narrow for two cars to pass and just a nightmare to traverse.  I always wondered why they didn’t move their vegetable stand to the end of the driveway where it would be right on the main road, but today I got my answer.  We walked inside and the lady that runs it came out of her house with her lunch in her hand and was ready to sell her veggies.  She must only come outside when people are at her stand.  Genius!  I wouldn’t move the stand either.  Let the people drive down at least a 1/4 mile long rutted driveway.  At least she’s warm and has her lunch.

So I bought a bushel of butternut squash to dehydrate for the dogs, (yes, I made a video of it) and some kale to make kale chips with, and their home grown popcorn.  It makes the greatest crunchiest popcorn I have ever had.  So the moral of my story is this.  If you have a chance to spend a day with an old friend and buy some popcorn to pop later while watching movies with your special someone and three dogs, do it!

Feeling a little better today and going to tackle the glue videos.  I know I’ve said that a hundred times, but since I already made the glue video once, I only have to fix the fact that it’s a blurry mess.  No big deal, right?  The other videos on glue sticks and small tape runners shouldn’t be any real issue either.

YouTube changed some of their editing tools and if you watch my videos on a mobile device, you won’t see any of the comments I post on the screen.  They want me to use the end of video screens that can be added.  I’m not sure how that helps me when I want to add a note to you, but I apologize if you watch on a mobile device and aren’t reading any of the comments I am adding.  It’s kind of a bummer for me.  I’m not sure if a lot of my viewers use mobile devices, and other than phones, I’m not really sure what it encompasses.  I get the impression that a lot of my viewers are on laptops or standard computers or tablets.  Is a tablet a mobile device?  Probably, so again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.  Since Rich does my editing, I’m not sure how he could add the comments.  I know he can, but he says that when I assume something I say is at 14minutes and 27 seconds on a video, if he’s deleted anything or sped up the video at any time up to that point, then the time stamp is different for him and he won’t be able to write the comment when I need it.  I wish I could figure out a different approach to this, but haven’t been able to do anything about it.  So that’s my scoop on what I’m doing wrong today.  I hope it’s a good day for you and you watch my videos on a non-mobile device, so you get the full scoop.

I bought these note cards at Michaels last week, which would have been the week of Halloween, 2016, in case you are interested in buying them.  They were $1.50 for six of them.
I started coloring them with colored pencils and didn’t love the results, so I started using a white eraser from Prismacolor, and erasing my coloring. The result was a very subdued, vintage looking card.  I also used some Vaseline to help with blending and erased that and was able to build more color on top of that.  I really liked the end result and just added a few pearls to the centers of the flowers for some dimension and washi tape on the envelope.
I hope you like this technique discovery and will try it for yourself.

Today is my sister’s birthday and I planned on uploading the video I did of the gift that I made her, but unfortunately, time ran out before I could get it done.  These things happen to me, don’t they.  On the other hand, I was able to get the video made of the weird new technique I discovered for colored pencils.  I’ll put that video on this page next.

I’d like to say that I have more crafty plans for the day, but I’m suffering from a urinary tract infection and feeling kind of crappy.  I’ll have my game face on tomorrow, (hopefully.)

I love the Tim Holtz “Crazy” stamps and made a really great card with this set just before I started my YouTube channel so don’t have a video of one, so I thought it was time to make a slider card as well.
I made a card that is 10″ long by 7″ wide and scored on the 10″ length at 5″.    I have a top piece of cardstock that is 6 3/4″ x 4 3/4″ in a sky blue color.
I stamped my birds on white card stock with archival black ink and then colored them with alcohol markers then cut them out and didn’t cut out their feet and legs or hair.  I stamped the birds again on the blue paper and then glued the colored birds over the stamped birds on the blue paper so then they have hair and feet.
I used an old Stampin Up set called “a little birdie told me” for my sentiment on the outside of the card.
I cut a long strip on the blue paper between the two birds.  This cut strip needs to be wide enough for a foam adhesive piece to slide in it.  The strip can’t be as wide as a penny.  You’ll put a foam adhesive piece on one penny and lay the penny under the blue piece of cardstock in the strip you cut out.  Put the other penny on top of the strip and attach it to the foam adhesive on top of the blue paper.  Attach the kite to the penny on top and the kite should slide back and forth.

Today is my one year anniversary for the blog with over 500 posts on it.  I’m really excited that my YouTube channel and blog are continuing to grow.  I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t had a lot of responses to the contest I’m running on the YouTube channel as I’m not asking for much, just a comment below the video saying what video they enjoyed the most.  Doesn’t seem that hard, but then again, this is a busy time of year for people, so they might not have the time to watch the video and respond.  Also, because I didn’t mention a number of viewers, the people that troll for contests didn’t find it, so that’s a great thing.  Mainly my subscribers and viewers are the ones who have responded, also a great thing!.

I started thinking about what I must have been doing a year ago since I didn’t have YouTube videos to plan or comments to make on the blog.  I know I read a lot more than I do now.  Maybe I watched television and don’t have time for that anymore as well.  I probably had a lot more free time and didn’t have a lot to think about.  I really need to get serious about fixing my glue video and getting it up and making a similar video with glue sticks and small disposable tape runners.  I think it’s important to know which glues work and which don’t.  I’ve had people recommend tape runners that didn’t work at all for me and wonder how they could work for the person that recommended it.  That’s another reason these videos are so important to me.  If they have nothing to compare their tape runner with, then they probably do think they work well when they definitely don’t.  I like to make sure I test them for immediate sticky and then long term adhering plus whether they dry clear or shiny.  The tape runner that was recommended is not a permanent bond (although the tape runner says permanent on the label.)  I need to get the video up so the referrer can see what other tape runners work like and know that theirs isn’t up to par.  I know that I normally would bring up the par reference, but as a golfer’s daughter, par is a golf term meaning the average and if you are shooting below par, it means you are better  than average.  So my reference is saying that I just want the glue to work the same as all glues should work.  There, now I’ve made my own reference explanation.  This is a first for me.  I’m savoring my brilliance, and now I’m done.

Before I go, I wanted to tell you that my girlfriend loved her child’s chair converted into a flower/plant holder and liked her card even more.  I was happy to see how much she liked both.  Yay!  Her card and chair videos will go live in a few days or weeks depending how many videos Rich has ahead of it.  Poor guy!