 Happy Sunday morning. Technically it's still morning, although it's almost lunchtime. It is Sunday, August 4th, and I'm still in my pajamas. So it's probably time to get my day started and take a shower and put some clothes on. I do have artwork to catch up on. I haven't done any paperclips or anything. Today is day four, so I have four paperclips to do, maybe some tags to do, laundry to do. It's gonna be hot today. Yeah, I better get my day started. All right, I'll be back. Just got a pleasant surprise. Who knew in Oregon the public library is open on Sunday? They're open seven days a week, I had no idea. I just assumed like in California, they're open a maximum of five days, Monday through Friday. California, some of them aren't even open that. They're open three or four days a week. I just was gonna use the outside box to drop my books off. That was a nice surprise. Picked up two more magazines, so. All right, we're gonna head to Michael's in the grocery store, I'll be back. All right guys, so. You know, I was watching YouTube the other night, I think last night, and Stencil Girl had this YouTube video with no sound. I didn't know what they were doing or how they were doing it, but I had a little bit of an idea. I decided I would try it. To be honest, I really didn't think it would work. I've tried it with a number of different stencils, including the four square charities one that we have going on right there. Limited number of these available once they're gone, that's it, they're gone until we do the next charity function. But anyway, this is my personal one. And then I also done this one, which is, do we know what this one is? It's one of the Black Paper Doodle ones. It's called Petals, yeah, Petals. This is so stinkin' easy, I don't know why we didn't think of it before. So I got some magazines at the library for, these are 25 cents at the library. My desk is a disaster. And I'm just gonna go to the magazine and I'm gonna find a page that has a lot of dark color that's saturated. And I'm gonna, I don't want the light part of here, I just want the dark part. I've got some 800 grit sandpaper. I'm just gonna cut off a little piece, fold it in half. I'm gonna lay it over the top of the stencil. You ready? Let me see, there you go. You ready? Okay. Seriously, I just, here's another piece I tore off earlier. The darker the piece is, the better the image that you're gonna get. Let's see, let's go this way. So with this four square one, I thought, well, it worked with that other one, but it's not gonna work with this one. It's too little. Wrong. So then I do the hand and then I'm gonna pick one of the designs and I'm gonna just eyeball it about where it should be. Oops, I moved it, but that's okay. It, I, yeah. So this is a whole new way to make some embellishment papers. I'm gonna be posting still shots on social media later tonight, but holy cow. So whatever stencils that you have, this is one from my collection that's called 10 Dot. Yeah, and old magazines. And I have to make some tags yet today. So I have this feeling some of these are gonna end up in tags. So yeah, sandpaper and stencils. And magazines, who knew? All right, that's it for the moment. I'll be back. Good morning. It's Monday morning, August 5th. I'm already starting to lose track again, holy cow. Anyway, it's just before 10 a.m. It's around 9.48, 9.49 a.m. somewhere in there. I'm gonna walk down to the mailbox and mail in at the order. It's a small, thin one, so it should fit now going mail here at the house. And I'm gonna come back in and catch up on daily postings, work on a paper clip. I'm gonna check the mailbox. It should be way too early for there to be any mail, but anyway, I'm not planning on doing much today, hanging out at the house, catching up on laundry, doing some art. Yeah, that sort of thing. All right, I'll be back. It's Tuesday morning, August 6th, I think. I think 8.52-ish a.m. We are headed out to, we, because you're all with me, right? Headed out to run a few errands. We're puppy sitting, starting tonight until Sunday. So it's gonna be difficult to go to the grocery store or anything with the puppy around. I really don't like to crate her for any length of time while I go to the grocery store and stuff. So I would prefer to do it now and or in the evenings, when Bob gets home from work, he can stay home with her and I can go do that or something like that. That's the thing, right? Ladies, and maybe some of you gentlemen know, before you leave the house, you hit the restroom one last time. Then you go, right? I know it's not just me. All right, I'll be shouldn't say. No, it's not, because I have a problem. It's because I don't like public restrooms. It probably comes from years of working retail. Bit of a germaphobe. Just put that out there. All right, I'll be back. So I spent, I don't know, an hour or so using up all of the rest of the air dry clay I have in some molds, because it didn't really want to do what I wanted it to with the Paddy Tolly Parish style of making tiles. But then I went ahead and used up some more of my polymer clay to make some more tiles and they're already baked. So everything's gonna just sit and dry. I'm not gonna paint or put the gilding wax or anything on any of them until I'll just do them all together. So I'm gonna let the air dry clay dry for a day or so and then we'll paint everything black and then we'll put the metallic rubs on them and then also on the polymer clay all at the same time. All right, I'll be back. I should be doing so many other things of what I'm gonna be doing right now, but I'm not. So I posted something on social media yesterday that I'd seen this technique. I think it was yesterday, it might've been the day before. Anyway, I'd seen this video on social media from Stencil Girl and it may have had sound but I didn't play the sound if it did and there was no description about what they were doing but it looked like they took a magazine page and laid it over a stencil and then sandpapered it. I thought, that's interesting. That'd be a new way to use stencils whether they're mine or somebody else's whatever you have in your collection. So I played a little bit and I made this one and this is just a dark magazine page which I think the only thing you need is a dark page but we're gonna try a couple things. A stencil and some sandpaper. Now I did find that the finer grit sandpaper work better. That being said, I used 800 grit on this and while I got a really great image after one initial rub, you can see here because it's such a fine grit, there was no more tooth on the sandpaper. So you don't get very far before you have to get a new piece of sandpaper. So that was a little discouraging. So I wanted to get some other sandpaper and other sanding blocks and items which I got today so that I could play and try. So I got a 220 grit piece of one of these foamy things from the hardware department of Fred Meyer. And I went to the beauty department and I got a variety of, these are from the nail department. So nail buffer things. So they're different ones. I think that the finer grits are gonna be better but I don't know how fine a grit. We're gonna take like this dark scrap and just play and put the rest of these aside. Got some of my stencils. I also have a few stencils for my friend Mike Deacon. If you don't know who he is, I will link his website and YouTube channel in the description below. He's also a designer and he has his own line of stencils and stamps that he sells, not only through his website directly but also through Indigo Blue. I'm gonna try first, this is by, it's called Flowery. It's some kind of nail buffer thing. And I don't know what grit it is but I don't know if it's gonna work or not but let's try. Yeah, it works. That works great. How far can you get before it? You can get really far, much farther than you can with that 800 grid sandpaper. I'll probably be using some of these on today's paper clip. How cool is that? Okay. So that worked well. Let's grab another piece of paper and a different, this is another one of Mike's stencils and let's try this one. This one has three different like coarse, fine and then just fine and then a buffer. So I don't know. But I like the shape of it. It seems like it might be easy to hold. Oh yeah, it's really easy to hold. That worked really well too. So nail filers and nail buffers work well. It doesn't seem to matter which one you use. This one has a few different sides to it. See that was the gray side. Let's try the white side. That works, but not as well as the gray one. And then let's try this light gray one. I bet you it doesn't work at all. Oh no, it does. It does, but the coarser one works better. And this just feels like your normal, ordinary, like nail file block and it's the same on all sides. So that's probably the kind that you want. Here's one more from Mike. Let's get one more piece of paper here and try this one. Honestly, this feels just like this one. It just has arrows and that's cute. It doesn't have to be cute. You can get these at the dollar store. I see them there all the time. Worked great. So really you're just rubbing the pigment on the paper off to reveal the white paper underneath. Okay, I have, let me grab another piece of dark paper. Okay. I have one more I want to experiment with. Let's use this underneath. This is one of my stencils. It's called Plus. This is 220 grit sanding foam blocky thing from the hardware department. This is by 3M. Okay, that works, but I think the nail buffer works better. To be honest, and I don't think it's the stencil. I think the nail buffer works better. Let's see. It's not, the nail buffer works better. So that answered that question. So the nail buffer works better. So get a nail buffer. They work really well. And it still has plenty of tooth on it. This one by Flowery, I think might be the best one. Okay, so then the next thing I wanted to do was I wanted to try this on red paper or well colored paper. This is from the, these are all from the same magazine. I just wanted to choose ones that had dark pigments. You, cause, oops. You really want dark pigments. You don't wanna move your paper around cause it's gonna give you a funny image. That works. Maybe not as well as the dark paper and I moved it. So let's try that again. Let's try, ooh, let's try this one. This is Modern Atomic number one from my collection. And let's try this white one. Yeah, let's try that same one on a piece of dark paper. So the darker the better. It's gonna show up better on dark paper. But those are both cool. And then let's try, I think I have some lighter papers now. There's a little piece of this one that's light. So let's try that. So who knew a new way to make collage papers, it is messy and you do get the dust from the pigment goes everywhere. But it makes really interesting background papers. So thank you Stencil Girl for showing me how to do that and I'm gonna keep sanding and I will be back. It's Wednesday morning. I don't know what time it is. 9, 14 a.m., August 7th, I think, yeah, I think. Anyway, I know it's Wednesday. The vlog is live. We are, did you hear that? Yeah, we're puppy sitting lily bean. I'm chatting with some friends. You can kind of hear a little bit of them in the background and yeah, I'm just gonna get my day started. I'll be back. Good morning, it is Thursday morning, August 8th. Did I vlog yesterday? I don't know. I think I did for like a few seconds. I'm back downstairs watching our Joy of Sharing's live broadcast and letting the nail polish marbling dry upstairs. We did do some, it turned out cute and equally well on the scrap of plastic that I had and the black cardstock so didn't think the black cardstock would work but it seems to have worked. So we're letting it all dry. The windows are open upstairs because now the art room smells like nail polish so I'm gonna finish my coffee and watch our Joy of Sharing. I'll be back. I'm chatting with my friend, Mike Deacon this morning. I'm back up here in the art room. I was unmolding a bunch of the air dry clay pieces that we made the other day. I'm waiting to put metallic rubs on anything or paint anything until everything is dry. I wanna do all the air dry clay and the polymer clay out at the same time. The air dry clay is still, there's a couple pieces that still aren't quite dry. And I did, they're dry enough to demold so I did do that and I should be able to paint them tomorrow maybe or over the weekend. I did pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was able to and I did do, I have a goldfish mold or a fish mold and I didn't think it would work because of the nature of air dry clay. I thought for sure it would break when I took it out. It didn't. And I don't know how well you're gonna be able to see that until I get it painted. Super cute. I can't wait to do that one. What am I gonna put it on? I have no idea but he's so cute. I also, so now they're all gonna dry another day or two before I can, hold on, there we go, sorry, before I can paint them. And then I did all of these and they're drying too. So very cool. And there's one piece of clay that just fell in there so I'm gonna have to get that out of there. All right, so that's it for the moment. I still have to do a paperclip and a tag so I guess I better get to it. It is Friday morning, August night I think. I'm pretty sure it's August night anyway. Headed out, it is what time is it, 9.46 a.m. Our auction, charity auction closed at midnight last night, Pacific Daylight Time. And I was emailing the winners this morning. So the first four boxes have already been paid for and are off to the post office right now. I'm gonna also just stop by guys. Good morning, I think it's morning. Yep, 11.01, technically still morning, Saturday, August 10th. I only know that because it's already 11 a.m. and I have checked social media and things. Anyway, I've got a couple orders that have to go out today. Sorry for the obnoxious light, there's no good way, maybe that way. Anyway, I have a couple of orders that have to go out today and we desperately need to go run some errands and get some groceries, which means we have to see our ATE, Lily Bean, because we're still puppy sitting and till tomorrow afternoon. So, yep, that's a thing. She's not gonna like it, but it is what it is. Anyway, pass that, I don't know, I think we're gonna hang out at home and probably end up, of course, doing some art. I did go through a few things and found two journals that I started, kind of, I did a few pages in each one, but I'm just not feeling them anymore, so I think I'm gonna leave the artwork that's in them and I think I'm gonna list them on Etsy. And I did find another empty journal that's a Flora Boley art journal, hardback, that I haven't worked in and probably never gonna work in. I've had it over a year, I'm just not feeling it, so I'll either sell it on Etsy or I'll take images out of it. I doubt that's gonna, latter one's gonna happen and probably just gonna sell it in the Etsy shop or on Amazon or something, so that's a thing. And of course, there's always laundry to do, chores, you know, the normal, what are you up to today? Anyway, I'll be back. Okay, one crazy weird thing for this week. I don't know, seems like every week there's a crazy weird thing in my art life. I don't just always film it, but anyway. I use lots of strange bits and pieces in some of my work. If you've been following my paperclip art, and these are the three things I pulled to start today's paperclip with, then you know I always use, not always, but most of the time I use some kind of strange thing, whether it's the little plastic tab thing that comes on your loaf of bread to close the plastic bag or it's the metal top from a soda can or a broken piece of plastic CD case or it just, it could be anything. So usually when we have dead electronics around here, I usually don't let the husband just toss them out. They're not easily recyclable for one most of the time. I usually try to take them apart and see if there's anything interesting in them I can use in my art before we recycle the rest or just toss the rest. We have a bunch of headphones around here, none of which work or some of which don't feel comfortable. So we went out and the husbands, which were these are skull candy headphones, which we love, but none of them last forever. And this one, one side is completely dead. And this one, if I'm not mistaken, yes. These are old Apple headphones. And then are just like, there's a couple of spots that are interesting. So I'm gonna see if I can take them apart and see what's inside of them. Wanna find out? Let's see. Cool, these especially, these are pretty neat. And I can see me maybe using these right away in today's paperclip. So anyway, those are from the app. This is all the wire. That's it. Go for a walk, huge walk. She's just a little excited guys because we're going for a walk. We started spelling it before we were ready to get her excited. Like Mike Seakin and Ian Campbell do with Bentley because she gets excited like Bentley does. So anyway, that's a thing. I will leave any relevant links in the description below. It's been a fun, crazy week. Lily goes home tomorrow afternoon. We love her, but yeah, lots a lot. Anyway, next week is gonna be I don't know, I don't know what I got a lot to do. I pulled a bunch of journals out that I wanna work on in between doing paperclips and stuff. So I've gotta get that done. I need to work on some bookkeeping again and I need to work, continue to work on the Etsy store. So yeah, and I wasn't gonna design any more rubber stamps right now but I've got at least one new design. So I don't know when that'll go to production because it's expensive, but yeah, I do have one. Anyway, if you'd like to support the free content here on YouTube or over in the Facebook art groups, there's a lot of different ways you can do that. You can also just follow me on social media, click on the link tree list of links, sorry, click on the link tree link in the description below and you'll get a list of all the different places you can find me on social media and you can support the free content. There's also my PayPal tip jar down there, my happy mail address is down there. So check out the video description always. And that's it for right now. Go out and have a great day, have a great week, like, share and subscribe. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you later, bye guys.