 Hey everybody, so I thought that I would show you what I've been playing with lately. I've been taking photos that I take with my iPhone, like the one I'm showing here, and borrowing my husband's iPad Pro Mini while he's gone and at work, and his Apple Pen. And there's an app on his iPad Pro called Procreate, which is what I'm using here. And it's a drawing app, and I've been using it to create different designs in the app for making stencils. And when these kind of apps first came out, I didn't really see the necessity of them. Like when computers first came out, I thought, I actually said to my husband, I remember, why do we need a computer? And then the internet came out, and I said, why do we need the internet? I don't understand the point. Well, every time I've been wrong and I should know better, that's the lesson in that story. So this is no different, and Procreate is a really fun app. This is not a sponsored video, this is just my opinion. And I love creating these stencil designs in Procreate, and it sure does save a lot of steps because in the past when I've done designs for my stencils, or when I'm designing for my rubber stamp line, I do it the old fashioned way. I create them on paper with ink and a pen, and then I scan them into the computer, turn them into something digital, clean them up with a photo application or a photo editing program, and then send them off to be published or be cut. And that's the hard way, it really is the hard way, this is so much easier. So I can use the Procreate app and the Apple Pen to create designs in the application, obviously as you see, erased very easily. There's lots of different settings for what kind of brush or pen or pencil stroke that you want, what color you want. I'm just doing black and white right now, and erasing is very easy without wasting a lot of paper. I can go back and forth with the design as much as I want to, and it is just saving a lot of time. I can't even tell you. So starting in September, I'm going to come out with some JPEGs of some of these designs that are going to be available for download. You can use them of course as a digi image if you want, but they're intended to be used as a stencil design. So if you have a silhouette or other stencil cutting system that allows you to import and trace JPEGs, that's what these are created for. You can import, you can buy these and download them into your system and then trace them and cut them out and make stencils out of them. So here I'm working on one of these flower designs. There's a few different ones. I'm not going to show them all here, but based on these flowers that I saw at a party recently when I was out with my husband and some friends, and then I realized that we have the same flower in a different color in our front yard. I'm so observant sometimes. So I thought it would make a really cute stencil, and so I decided to play with it here and create a stencil. Now this is in real time. I haven't sped it up. It just really just takes a few minutes. It's just me going back and forth until I get the basic shape to be exactly the way I want it. And if I don't, then I just hit the little eraser and I just erase those lines and go back in and hit the pen again. And I just love it. Now the pen does have to be charged up. You charge it up by actually plugging it into the iPad, but it's a handy little tool and I can see me at some point saving up to get the larger iPad Pro and my own Apple Pen just for use in my studio. I don't think I will be carrying it around anywhere. I have an iPad error for that, but I think for studio work this is very, very handy and so, so easy. I can't even tell you and getting the image to your computer is I can't even tell you how easy that is. And if I had all Apple computer stuff, it would be even easier. I don't. I have a PC still saving up for an Apple desktop. Don't have it yet. So as I'm creating the design and looking at the flower in my photo and drawing out the basic outline on my iPad, on the Procreate app, here I'm fussing with finding a pen mark that I want to use to fill in when it's nice and dark. And I end up going back to the same pen style on ink color that I used to draw the picture to begin with, which is a studio pen. I think it's the name of it, and I don't know why it's called that, but they have interesting names for things in the app. And I just, once I have that outline that I like, then I just color it in with, so it's all black. And that gives me a better idea than just having the outline of the shapes and what they're going to look like in a stencil. You want to make sure when you're doing this kind of thing, however you're doing it, even if you're doing it the old fashioned way, that you leave enough space between your shapes that they'll cut out easily on home stencil cutting systems. If you have the spaces too thin and narrow, it's really difficult to get them to cut properly. I know from experience. I guess I might know that. If you've ever tried to cut yourself one of my doodle stamped images on a stencil cutting system, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. Those guys are a bugger to get cut because they're too detailed. So these center of these flowers were kind of really hairy and I wanted to give some indication or hint of that. So I just put these little hairs sticking off the top of the center of that flower. And then I just went around and cleaned up the edges. Now I'm going to fill in all the petals and the stem. And I will refine shapes as I need to as I'm going around. If I find that I need to change the shape of something. I do end up creating three of these flower shapes. I don't film them all, but I do end up creating three of these flower shapes the day that I'm working on this. And I've added those to a small library of stencil designs that will come out September 1st in my Etsy shop, again as JPEGs. If you have a silhouette system, then I have been using dollar store plastic file folders to cut my stencils. And I use the vinyl setting. I set my blade depth at five. And I set my speed at three, no, four, four. And the thickness is 33. And don't forget to hit double cut. I'll have directions for that in the description below in case I got one of those numbers wrong. I'll have the specifics for that in the description below. And in all the Etsy listings in case some of you have silhouettes and in case I got any of those numbers wrong just now, because it's first thing in the morning and I've barely had my coffee, to be honest with you. I still have a cup here, but I don't think drinking coffee is going to sound great over the microphone. So here we're going around and we're just coloring in. And once you start coloring in your shapes in black, then you can really get a great idea of what it's going to look like as a stencil. And if you're going to like it or not, and if you don't like it, then this is really easy to change it on here. You know, if this was paper and a pen, you'd have to get out some white out or some white paint. And then when you go to scan it, it's not going to scan properly. And there'd be a lot of things to clean up. You'd almost have to go to a clean piece of paper. And believe me, I've done plenty of that. This is so much easier. It takes you literally just a few minutes and you've got your design done and you can download it to your computer and print it or scan it with your cutting software and cut it out. And it's just so much easier. I was completely wrong when I said, why do we need that? I, yes, I want more, please I want more. So right now I'm saving up for an Apple desktop and my own iPad Pro. So here we go. We're going to color the last petal, but first I'm going to change, yeah, see, so I was doing some erasing because I didn't like, there were some little tiny fine pen marks, little hairs that I wasn't happy with. I wanted it to be a little smoother. So I'm going to go back in. And depending on how hard I push on the pen gives me a thicker line. So if I want a very light thin line, then I just don't press very hard and I get a thin, a thin line. So here we go. We're going to color in the last one. And then I'm going to completely change my mind about the flower center, although there's nothing wrong with the way it looks right now. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, at least not in this instance. So I'm taking a look at it and I'm thinking, hmm, it's not exactly what I want. I click on the eraser, I do something drastic. Yeah, and erase a big blob in the center of a flower. I know, I know. You'll like the way it turns out, trust me. And there's a couple. Like I said, there's a few other versions of it. You may like one of the other versions of this flower or the flower seed head thing that I did from the same photo. Go look in my Etsy shop. If when you see this, the listings are live. I will post the links in the description below. If the links are not there, it's because it's not live yet. And then I just clean up my lines and I'm just turning it around. So I'm hopefully not getting my hand on the surface of the iPad Pro too much because you can see the little black dot that's off by itself on the left side there of the screen. If I hit it the right way, then I can make a dot just like with paper and pen when you smudge it. Yes, see, there I go. I'm going to erase it. I'm adding more of the little hairs to the flower center. And I just kind of like the abstract, suggestive shape of having a center of that flower head like cut out like that. I really like that. So there we go. So now I am going to forget exactly how it is that I want to save it. Well, after I fixed the stem, I forgot I did that. I decided the stem was too thick. I wanted something thinner and more delicate. So I redrew the stem. I forgot about that. There we have it. That's the finished design. So before I do anything, I'm going to just really take a good hard look at it. And you can, of course, save this at any stage that you decide works for you. And if that way you have a progression. So say that you'd go too far and you decide you like an older version better. That works. So I'm going to click on the little wrench. And I forget how I'm trying to figure out or remember how it is that I send it to myself from my husband's iPad. And I'm constantly forgetting. First, I'm taking a look at it and deciding if I like it or not. And I do. And that is fine. And I really end up deciding that what I just said, that I really want to save this version before I go on and change it at all. And so I'm going to do that. But to do that, I'm actually going to need my iPad. So I go walk out into the living room really quick and I grab my iPad. Which is just an iPad air. And I turn it on off camera. So that hopefully you guys don't see my password. Although I think I've shown it by accident on camera before. There we go. So there's my iPad. And I open up my photos on the iPad. Sorry about the glare from the overhead light. Then I click on the corner. And that's wrong. So then I click on the image again. I click on the wrench. And then I was like, OK, wait. What do I click on to save the photo? I forget. Nope. I can't keep clicking on that. What is it? It's a save artwork. It's right underneath my hand. I just don't even see it. It was like I didn't have all my coffee this morning. I don't know. So there we go. Save artwork. So then I hit JPEG. And then I give it a minute. And I'm going to air drop it to my iPad by hitting the GA. And then it shows up on my iPad. And I hit accept. And there you go. From there, I can put it into Dropbox. And once it's in Dropbox, I have access to it everywhere. So I hope this gives you some ideas of what you can do. And that you have some fun with it. And if you have some kind of drawing app, give it a shot and see if you can come up with some stencil designs. I'd love to see what you do. Don't forget the most important thing. Go out and have some fun. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll talk to you later. Bye.