 It is Sunday, December something, 43rd. Wait, I have a phone, my husband's phone, let's see. Ha, yeah, December 23rd, 1117 AM, see it says right there. We are headed back to the Sacramento, we're headed to the Sacramento airport and headed back home from a holiday visit with the family here in California. And it's been an interesting visit. I enjoyed parts of it. But, and I got to shop at Daiso while I was here, which we don't have nearby where we're living in Oregon. So we are headed back to the airport and we're headed home. It'll be nice to get home and unpack and relax. And yeah, it'll be good. I think there's a crap ton of mail waiting for us at home though too. So we have to deal with all that because I think Christmas presents we're continuing to come in. So yeah, anyway, it'll all be good. All right, that's it for now, I'll be back. Hey everybody, we are back in Oregon. We got back yesterday afternoon and as you can see, we are puppy sitting. We are getting ready to go out and run a few errands, it is Christmas Eve and there are a few stores open and we actually need groceries. Otherwise Bob and I are gonna be eating who knows what out of the freezer tomorrow for Christmas dinner. So we're gonna go out and go get some groceries and we'll have to create her while we're gone. Anyway, we're gonna go take care of that and a few other things while stores are still open. We hope you all have a great Christmas Eve and that you're enjoying yourself with family and friends. And yeah, we're gonna just have a quiet night at home and we're looking forward to that. Anyway, we'll be back. Hey everybody, so Bob and I are headed to services for Christmas Eve. Go to church. Go into church. So fun fact, I was raised Roman Catholic and Bob was raised Lutheran. And I don't think either one of us are what we would either consider practicing Christians of much of any kind. Not that we don't believe we're not church goers. We're not average church goers. We're really not, because we're lazy in part I think. But anyway, there's something about the tradition of a service and church hymns that for us is just as part of tradition and I love a church hymn. Fun fact, in the art room, it'll be October or June and I'm listening to church hymns sometimes Christmas ones, right? Right, yeah. Anyway, we're celebrating Christmas our way. We hope you're celebrating your fall holidays or winter holidays, whatever they are, your way. Have a merry one, whatever it is, whether it's Christmas or something else. Maybe it's Happy Hanukkah. Shelly, if you're watching Happy Hanukkah. We miss celebrating Hanukkah with you this year, by the way. Anyway, so we wish you and yours a very merry one and we're gonna go and do our due diligence at church and we will see you all later. Hey guys, it is Christmas day, merry Christmas. We're having a quiet Christmas at home, just the two of us, well, and Lily. And you know, it's kinda nice. It's already after lunch, well after lunch. 1.56 p.m. or so the computer says. We open gifts and had breakfast and yeah, I've been playing upstairs in the art room with some old shrink plastic that I had in my stash of stuff that I found when I was unpacking. I'm gonna show you what I did, cause we've got some successes and maybe some successes and some failures. I just thought I would use the stuff up and play and so well, you know, hang on, I'll show you what happened. Okay, so this is the first batch and I have an HP inkjet printer. So I forgot, I don't know why. I forgot or I didn't realize how much the ink would run even after shrinking the plastic and when you try to put a top coat on it. Now I do think some of it was the top coat that I try to use because these are really cloudy. Like you can really tell this one never got really clear. Some of them, can you see that cracked? This was diamond glaze actually. So I don't know if my diamond glaze was old or I don't know, but these all ran, a few of them cracked. Some of them have that. So I don't know. Anyway, these are failures. I may take, you know, one or two of these and send them to each of the design team with a little note saying, here's some shrink art failures of mine and you know, maybe you can do, maybe let's see what you can do with them. I don't know, but they're kind of, I don't know. So these are all failures. So then I had a couple more sheets. So I did some more shrinking and this one, I didn't do anything too. I just tried a different top coat. This was Deco Arts clear pouring top coat. It still ran. And then I thought, okay, I really need something to, it probably has a lot of water in it, which didn't help, but I thought I really need something to seal the ink in before I put a top coat on. That would probably be handy. So then I have a little jar I've had for a long time of Judy Kins micro glaze, Rangers blaze, it looks like the same pot. And I don't remember the name of the product is, it's Judy Kins micro glaze in a different pot. That's all it is. Anyway, I've had this for a long time. It's great stuff. It's like a waxy substance that seals ink in. So I put some of that on all of the rest of these. And then on this one, I used more of the, did I use? I don't think I did actually. Yeah, so then I decided to use something, I did the micro glaze and I decided to use something that was a little thicker for a finish. Then the pouring medium was just kind of thin. So I used Deco Arts triple thick. It seems to be working. I don't see any ink running. I am getting sort of that kind of finish, like matted finish. Probably it's cause of the layer of wax underneath. So we're gonna let them dry. I'm probably gonna give them a second coat as long as no ink runs, but it doesn't look like any of the ink ran. I plan on turning these into some pins for my art bag. So I don't know, and I may share some with friends, but yeah, it's interesting. So if you have some of the kind of shrink plastic you can run through your inkjet printer. Remember like, okay, so on this one is the same as this one. So what I also learned from doing this first one was I forgot to lighten the image by about 50% or more. So I did, because when you shrink it down, it's gonna darken it. So I lightened it up a lot. And then when I shrink it, it came out like this, which is much better. So I would say on your artwork, don't forget to lighten it before you print it and print them to be two thirds bigger than you want the finished piece to be, approximately. Clear coat it with something that's gonna seal the ink in, whether you have the micro glaze or you have some kind of a spray, and then you can put some sort of clear finish on top, whether you use resin or you use that go where it's triple thick. I do love this stuff, by the way. This one's like half empty, I have to order another one. And yeah, then just let them dry. You can put pin backs on the back, you can glue them to your journal pages or your journal covers or make charms out of them. That squeak was Lily, she's outside the door, like grandma, why do you have the doors closed? Anyway, that's it for today. I hope you've all had a merry Christmas and that you're all ready for the new year and yeah, I'll be back. Hey everybody, it's Wednesday morning, December 26th. I got no clue what time it is, honestly. It's after 10, I think. And I only know it's December 26th because yesterday was Christmas, let's be real. Anyway, sweet Lily is in her crate and we are gonna head out. We have to pick up some things from the lawyer. We need to run a couple of errands. Husband needs new jeans because he's flashing his junk to the whole neighborhood. Yeah, same thing. So we'll be back. So we'll be back. It's by the way raining outside, but you know, it's the Pacific Northwest, so what do you expect? Anyway, we'll be back. Only 364 more days till Christmas. God, don't go there. Start preparing. Only what, 115 more days of rain? Yeah, something like that. And snow, something like that. Anyway, we'll be back. Hey everybody, it is Thursday afternoon, 3.13 p.m. I only know that because the clock, the stove clock is over there. And it's December 27th, I think. It's been a crazy morning filled with working out project product, packaging issues with the new rubber stamp line and running errands, doing paperwork. We had new blinds installed on the French doors. So I will no longer be blinded by the sun every single afternoon. Yay. And we just went out and got back from running a couple of errands and stuff like that. Anyway, I think we're just gonna chill for a bit at home. And if anything exciting happens, I'll let you know. Hey guys, so I was just cleaning off my non-stick mats and thought I maybe should tell you what I did. It's probably something that's been on YouTube before, but we'll throw it out there. So my one mat, it's cut down to size with this cookie sheet. It's what I do a lot of, obviously, alcohol, ink and things on. Also some resin stuff. Can you see that right there? So the whole sheet had lots of that on it and it had some drops of resin in this. And after a while, it gets to be too much. And so you need to clean it up. So I'm gonna show you how to do that. It'd be fun because I'm gonna do this one-handed because I'm filming with my phone, which is in my right hand. Anyway, you need some packing tape. And so I'm gonna put the packing tape on that. And then something to just push the tape into the mat and whatever's dried on it. Pushing in really good. This is a We Are Memory Keepers sandpaper thing. It's like a million years old. But anything will work, old gift card. And then just peel the packing tape up. And again, I'm doing this one-handed, you won't do. So clean because yep, see? It sticks to the packing tape. I don't think there's anything I can do but the stains in around here. And I don't know that I want to, to be honest. You don't bother me that much. I probably could try rubbing it down with rubbing alcohol, but it's fine. As long as that big blob of glue and resin aren't on there anymore. So that's how you do that. And I cleaned that one and then I cleaned my big one, which was also messy. And then I wanted to show you this. So these are the ones I spoke about before that where I was using up my shrinky ink. So I'm gonna use it up thing right now. And I don't know if my diamond glaze was contaminated or old or if it had water in it. I don't know what the deal was, but it dried cloudy. Some of them dried with a crack. The ink on almost all of these ran. I forgot the ink would do that. And I didn't seal it before, so I put a diamond glaze on it. And the diamond glaze I think had some water in it or something, I don't know. So then I thought I'd try another batch. I would lighten up some of the images like this one, which wasn't too bad when it was big, but when I shrink it, it became way too dark. So I did that. And then I sealed them with a layer of the Judy Kins glaze, micro glaze. I know I mentioned these before, but anyway, we'll do it again. So Judy Kins micro glaze, which is the same thing Ranger has a glaze like this. It's made by Judy Kins, it's the same thing. So no matter which one you can find or order. So I gave them all a coat with that with a brush and let it dry. And then I gave them three coats of deco art, triple thick. It came out great. I had one that ran a little bit because I tried doing it without the micro glaze, which it still came out better than the first batch, but with the micro glaze, there's that same one. So no comparison. So, oops, I can do this totally one handed video. So the bottom one is the south of micro glaze, the top one is with, and they both have three coats of the triple thick. So these came out really well, much better than the first batch, nothing ran. And yeah, what am I gonna do with them? I don't know, I might try some of them into pins. Some of them, these are from Pinterest. So I might turn them into pins. There's something stuck in the micro, and they keep up with it. I might turn these into pins and stick them on my mini art bag, I don't know, we'll see. So anyway, this stuff is great. It does seal paper. It's actually made to seal ink on paper. It wasn't made for what I used before, but I know Ranger has a few videos on using their micro glaze, so you might check that out. Anyway, that's it for the moment. I'll be wanting to share with you all the stamp sets for 2019 came in. I've already put some of them in. These are the stamp sleeves from the Ranger stamp storage system. I actually need to get some more sleeves. But this is set one. They have fewer designs on them, but the designs overall are bigger and they're meant for mixed media work and journal work and jelly plate work. So we're gonna be doing some videos. They'll be coming out soon. This is set two. I kept the costs as low as possible. In fact, they're a little lower than they probably should be for you all. Because they cost me more to produce because the stamps are so big. So that means I have to charge more. And you'll notice on this one, it says right here, some images are smaller than the actual size, which means the card here, the images on the card, these stamps are a bit bigger. They don't all say that, but the first three sets definitely do. This is set five. And they're meant for layering and making sort of an atomic age inspired design. So you would stamp the solid patterns with paint or ink in one color and then you'd go over the top of it with one of these other patterns in black or a darker color. And this is set, I mean set four, sorry. So we will be showcasing these soon on a video by themselves, which is why I have a jelly plate out and a stamp block. I'll be filming that when I can. And they are up for pre-order listing right now. So you can order them now. Hey guys. So I've said before that I love my new art space, but we're having some lighting issues, especially like at this time of the day, where it's the end of the day. Sometimes I'm still up here wanting to create, work on my computer. As you can see, I'm kind of in the dark. There's a light behind me, but the light's very weird. If I wanted to paint, my easel's like in a dark corner. I did get- These clip lights, now these are from Harbor Freight. They're real cheap. I think they're like $7.99 or something. Each I'll put put prices and links in the video description. It has a daylight bulb inside of it. And that was great, but having to clip to the top of my easel, I'm short people. So I could never turn it on and off without a stool. That was a problem. Plus I wanted to change the angle, I really couldn't. This way we got this bracket at Home Depot. It's actually a shelf bracket. It was I think $3. Again, I'll put links and prices in the description. My husband then hooked it to the wall. We clipped the light to it. Now I can reach it. And it lights up the corner I needed to. Plus this light is movable. So I can move it, I can unclip it and point it in a different direction very easily. So that solved that issue in this corner. And that changed that a lot. Then I had two of them. So here's another bracket with another light. And I can turn this one on. Again, it's the same light, same daylight bulb. And that makes a big difference with shiny light towards the table. Let me keep the phone this way. That's without, that's with, right? Then I got these two things. So I have an uncle, his name is Tom Johnson. He is the owner of Johnson's digital media. He does a lot of video and voice recordings, mostly voice recordings. He records musical groups and singers and musicians. He's fabulous at his job, by the way. I will link his website in the description below. I got some really great advice from him regarding lighting and the echo that you're hearing right now. I don't have time tonight to test his theories about the echo. I don't know what to do about that, but I'm going to, hopefully before this vlog is finished, so we'll see how that works. These are two LED video lights. They have enough lumens to simulate daylight. So I am going to get them plugged in in a couple of different spots and we're gonna turn them on and see what the difference is. Okay, you ready for this? I already tested one by mistake. This is the room without the two lights on. Hang on. This is the room with the lights on. All of them, including the new LED lights, holy moly, are they bright? And they're on long cords. So if I need to, I can move them pretty close to the art table. I have it kind of tangled up right here now, but they're on probably six or eight foot cords. So I can move it away out of the corner. Then I can move it to about, you can't see me, I can move it to about here. So I can move it pretty close to the table. The same with the other one behind me. Wow, does that make a big difference? I'm gonna include links for everything in the description below and tomorrow or the next day we'll test the microphone. Hopefully, so far his advice is spot on and the man knows what he's talking about. So anyway. Hey guys, I wouldn't say good morning, but it's already almost one o'clock. It's Friday, December 28th. I only know that because today we're donating blood late this afternoon. That's the only reason I know. So we just did something scary for me anyway. We drove into Portland and dropped my little brown art case off at a repair place. That makes me nervous, but they're gonna see if they can, I know, I know what's unreasonable. Anyway, they're not gonna only gonna see if they can give it a refurb, the leather's really dry, so the hardware needs fixing or replacing, but the guy who does that kind of work also does custom work on the side and he's gonna see how comfortable he is and what it would cost to make me another bag similar. I'd love to have a spare. So we're gonna see how, where that goes and in the meantime, they're gonna at least clean the bag and yeah. I don't know, it makes me nervous, but as you can, and as you can see, we have Lily in the back. She's just loved the car ride. Anyway, we are headed home and we're gonna have some lunch and I've got some more laundry to do. We already dropped off the Etsy orders and stuff like that, so. We have to give blood. We have to give blood. We need to drink a lot of water because we need to give blood, so I'm gonna be spending the rest of the afternoon drinking a bunch of water. Anyway, I'll be back. Okay, so we're gonna perform some lighting and microphone tests and I have gotten a cable to hook my snowball mic up directly to my video camera. I don't know if that's gonna work or not. I guess we'll find out. I forgot to turn the camera on. I'm gonna play that for you all. I've already listened to it once. It doesn't sound any better than with the lavalier microphone I already have. And if that's the case, I'm gonna just use what I have, but I'm going to also record a little piece with the lavalier microphone again as it kind of clips on your shirt. So I'm gonna record a bit with that one. I'm gonna play these tests with the snowball mic and you tell me what you think. So this is position one of the snowball mic, the blue snowball mic. It's white. The name of it is blue. I know it's confusing over there for you on the blog. So testing, testing. This is position two on the blue snowball mic. Testing, testing. This is position three on the blue snowball mic. Okay, this is position four. Testing, testing. How's the echo? I don't know. None of those sounded any better than my other microphone. Let's try. So I'm gonna insert some audio here and or video from the video camera with the clip on microphone. It helps if the green little buttons turned on. Anyway, testing, testing. How does this microphone sound? Let's try something I haven't done since I moved in. Let's try closing the doors because maybe part of the echoes are because of the doors are open. I don't think so, but let's try it. Okay, how does that sound? Doesn't sound any different to me. I can't, I forgot to turn it on. This is with most of the nude lights on by the way. And I'm just clipping the microphone into different places, the little one that I have to see if it makes any difference which I don't know that it is going to. So here it's clipped to the camera. And okay, this is using the camera's built-in microphone without any extra anything. But again, this is the new lighting which is much nicer than with just the old lighting above the table. With the doors open and with the doors closed. I don't think it makes any difference. The lighting was easy to fix. Although the lighting is not on right now but it was easier to fix. I don't know. I'm not the audio expert. I'm gonna look into the other lavalier clip-on type microphones my uncle recommended. If they're not expensive, I might get one and try it but we'll see, anyway. At the moment I'm just frustrated. I really don't wanna put up sound panels around the room. That's really ugly. So I have no idea. All right, I'll be back. Good morning everybody. It is Saturday morning, December 29th. Moaning. Yeah, moaning. It's 10 33 a.m. technically it's still morning. We are headed out with Lily in the back. There she is. We are taking her for a car ride. We're going up to the snow. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Or at least we're headed that way. I don't know how far we'll get but we'll see. Going on an adventure. Yeah, so anyway, we'll take you with us. We'll be back. 211 or something. I'm in the art room turning things off. I've been catching up on drawing. I was chatting with friends doing laundry, typical stuff. Once we got back from the snow anyway, which was fun. You've seen the pictures of Lily already. Say good night, Fred. Good night, Fred. Yeah. I heard you didn't know what it was. It's me. Anyway, I'm going to insert some pictures here too. One picture here too. I was cleaning up my embroidery floss counter. Which didn't fare the move very well. As you can see from the inserted picture I'll put right here. The drawers of floss, of which there are two, did not fare the move very well and when I opened them they both looked like the image on the right. So I spent some time this afternoon reorganizing them and cleaning the drawers so everything is back in nice, neat and in numerical order like the one on the left. I'm not that way about everything but I am generally that way about most of my art stuff. So anyway. And I only found out that the floss was a mess a few days ago because I hadn't up until then opened those drawers. Yeah. Anyway, tomorrow morning we're gonna go meet my daughter and her fiance and his parents for breakfast. And we're gonna leave Lily here because we're still babysitting her for another week or so. And if she sees her owners, her mom and dad then she's gonna wanna go home with them and they're leaving to do some more stuff with Polly is his parents. So it's better for her, I think emotionally to just stay here. So we're gonna do that. We'll probably just come straight home. If we do anything, it'll just probably be stopping at the grocery store or something not exciting like that. I know we have to, I shouldn't say that. I know we have to pick up mail for the kids and stuff like that before we come home. But yeah, anyway, nothing too exciting. Anyway, I hope you've had a great week. We have, I hope everybody had a happy holiday. And I don't know about you, I'm looking forward to the new year, let's try to not get the glare there. And I hope you all have a happy and safe New Year's Eve. And let's start off the new year with a bang and a smile and don't forget to like, share and subscribe and hit that little bell icon down there. If you want notifications when new videos come out. I have a bunch of links in the description below for my Etsy shop and anything I've mentioned in the vlog. I think you guys might be interested in. There's a link to a site called Linktree. If you click on it, you're gonna find every place I am on social media, you can follow me everywhere. I am considering some changes for the YouTube channel for the new year. When and if I decide exactly what they're gonna be, I will let you all know. And that's it for right now. I hope you've all had a good one. Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I will see you later. Bye guys.