 Good morning. It's 11.15 a.m. Sunday morning. It's already been a busy morning. Fred's getting ready to power wash the driveway. Fred's his internet nickname by the way. His name is Robert or aka Bob for those who don't know. Anyway, he's getting ready to power wash the driveway, the driveway, not the garage, the driveway floor. The garage cabinets are delayed by a week or two, which is okay because we have time to sort through his tools and things that we took down, and he's sort of reorganizing things and getting rid of some stuff that again, even with his space that he's looking at going, why did I move this when we moved from California? My only reasoning is that we just got tired of purging things and we just said, just pack it. It's easier. We'll deal with it later. Those of you who have moved way more than we have, probably get that. Anyway, he's getting ready to power wash the driveway and he's already been to the gym and I've made a batch of garlic sourdough. It's proofing on the counter. Laundry has been working. I need to switch the loads. Dishes are done. It's been a busy Sunday morning already. The kids came by and borrowed my car because they made an IKEA run and I gave them a wish list. I guess IKEA is out of the pegboard like clips. She just texted me and said, that's okay, add them to your future list because I want some clips at some point. White ones. So if you all want to send me happy mail, white IKEA clips. I only need a couple more packages, but I like the little clips. Anyway, I think that's it for the minute. As you can hear, my neighbors either have their radio up really loud or they're having a very loud conversation in Spanish, which I don't speak so I have no idea what they're saying but it's very loud if you can hear it. I have the door open right now but even with the door closed, you can hear them. It's very loud. Anyway, I should also say the sourdough starter is proofing. There it is right there. I fed it so it's doing its thing. We are, yes puppy sitting for a couple hours while Becca and Polly is at IKEA and yeah, it's all good. It's a good Sunday. I don't think we really have to go anywhere and we can just chill at home and I'm okay with that. All right, that's it for the moment. I'll be back. Hey guys, it's 5 16 p.m. on Monday, August 10th and I don't think I've checked in yet today. I've just been busy catching up on paperwork and doing today's writing and laundry and dishes and so I got quite a few things crossed off of my weekly to-do list which I also got created anyway. I also covered our coffin box and lid and some, I had some brown, like natural colored tissue paper and deco page, Americana's deco page and matte finish. I do think my husband had a great idea although it's definitely gonna look more like a box and less like a coffin. Because of the lid, I do think we have some hardware. I may stick on the side some handles. So if you don't know, you know when I'm going to Hobby Lobby or something and they have some of these things in the clearance department, I tend to pick them up. I do think these were picked up on a trip, an art trip back east at the Hobby Lobby there or it could have been the one in Las Vegas. I actually don't remember now but I know they were picked up at Hobby Lobby clearance and I do have four of them so I am thinking about putting two on each side. I do have some, I think these are like Tim Holtz little feet. I don't know if I want to put those on the bottom or not. We'll see but I pulled out some of my hardware stash but I covered the box and lid with tissue to strengthen all the seams in the joints and to give the entire box a texture other than cardboard tape texture so that when we paint it, you won't really notice the tape and the texture of the cardboard. You're going to see more of the tissue when I purposefully wrinkled it and if it got more wrinkles in it while I was working with it, I was okay with that so it is drying right now and then we'll get to painting so that's kind of the priority right now because it takes up a lot of the desk so slow stitching is back there. I've got, I have two mission inspirations to do because I missed July. Yeah so I'll be working on those hopefully this week and I have to catch up my fabric coloring experiment book because I have some more pieces that are dry. I need to cut off samples and put them in my book. I might actually put them in the book now and then take the book downstairs and work on writing my notes about the particular dye and what did or didn't happen and all of that later tonight. Maybe. Maybe. Morning. It's Tuesday morning. I think it's August 11th. Pretty sure. I gotta, I gotta, other people have been driving my car again. So fun fact since this whole crazy world apocalypse thing started. I don't really drive that much anymore. Maybe, maybe once a week if there's Etsy orders that need to be like taken to the post office that don't fit in my mailbox here at the house. I don't even drive to the grocery store. Bob does. Like I don't know what's like the one thing that you used to do frequently if not every day that you just suddenly are not doing anymore besides going to work because you know nobody's doing that. Okay Etsy order dropped off and to my delightful, delighted surprise my first piece of happy mail to the new PO box came and it's from Nell Sorenson and in Nevada and Nell evidently saw one of my videos where I was talking about my new favorite DMC color that I have trouble finding even when I do get brave and venture out to the stores. 535 which is this dark gray she sent me a whole bunch of it and she says now the stores in her area are all out. Now thank you so much. She also sent me an ATC card which is so cool and of course it has a yo-yo on it. I love it. Now thank you so much and a really great note. So I am going to take a picture of all of that later when I get home and my car's just there's little pieces of stuff all over the carpet. Anyway I'm going to take pictures of it when I get home and I'll share it on social media later but now thank you so much. I appreciate it. I was so delighted I always go check the box but there's often nothing there. It really is just for happy mail which I don't get a lot of anymore or so that the people in the Etsy shop don't have my home address to be honest. So when I do get happy mail I'm just very delighted and I've already done this once but I'm doing it again. So anyway thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm just you caught me completely off guard wasn't expecting that this morning but it's a good thing. All right so that's it for the moment. I'm going to go run the rest of my errands and I'll be back. This is a shooting video in my upstairs bathroom. The guest slash art room bathroom. Anyway at the beginning of this whole apocalypse thing a friend of mine and I both noticed that golden had and I don't know if they've had it for a while we just now noticed that I don't know something called crash paint solids and it comes in a kit with a bucket and some chemicals and things and the idea behind it is that it's a two-step chemical process. I'll link a video about it down in the description below but it's a two-step chemical process for your paint water and what it does is it separates the paint solids from the water and the water then is safely easily disposable down your regular drain and the solids stay in this piece of paper and then you can just wrap it up and throw them away and so I am trying it right now. I have more paint water than will fit in there but it seems to be working. I don't know if you can see look how clear the water is and you can see better in here particles and it's made this sort of solid waste material out of it and then the water is over here. The water is probably a little bit more milky than it should be in here but as it's going through this fabric strainer it actually is pretty clear. Water looks like it's coming out that's pretty cool. I'm going to let what's in here drain a little bit and then dump the rest of the water in there but yeah I don't know exactly what the chemicals are but they seem to work really well and I was curious about that as was my friend Michelle so um oh and I've got paint on my shirt oh that's just lovely. Anyway so now we know it works and it works really well and so yeah that's all good all right I'm gonna let this drain in on to the next and I guess that means getting paint out of my shirt and I'll be back. What was I gonna say what is that this is sprinkler. Anyway hey guys it's a beautiful afternoon it's about 78 degrees or so. Yeah we're going walking before dinner just because the weather is so nice and uh get some steps in it's been a good day so far I think and uh yeah we'll see what we can see and hopefully it's not too peopling and all that stuff all right I'll be back. We're back in the art bathroom again um I wanted to show you this before I dump this first bucket of paint water um I'm gonna turn the camera on. The two buckets is still dripping and this is you're not supposed to dump the filter part and or the water until this is completely dry um and it's not dry and you can see some drips down there but look how clear the water is um yeah and when I've done this in the past if you've watched any of my videos about dumping um how I deal with the paint water in the past it was never that clear. This one's completely dry and this is all the paint look at that so that water is clear it can be dumped down the sewer. If you've watched my past videos you know that I do a coffee filter um strainer evaporation thing before this but even with filtering the water through a coffee filter over a big bucket um the water was still fairly murky and so when I saw this product I thought huh that might get more of the paint solids out of the water than I was getting I was getting a bit um I don't have an option of you know a corner of the backyard to dump it my backyard's not that big um so my only option was to let it evaporate or dump the murky water down the toilet evaporation takes a really long time and I tried hard not to dump it down the toilet because things were just really murky um but this way the water is safe to dump this part just goes in the trash and we're good to go now the bigger bucket needs to sit and dry the filter needs to dry out completely and the rest of the water needs to disappear out of there but holy cow that's a lot more um paint solids out of the water than I was previously getting with anything else that I tried I even tried the kitty litter thing where you have a bucket of kitty litter and you pour the water in there um the water evaporates the paint solids stay in the litter kitty litter and then you just dump the kitty litter right none of them are great I can't lift the kitty litter bucket after that it's too heavy so this I think is going to work great so anyway I'm very pleased so questioned does anybody follow my project pan art supply style videos have you noticed in the last two months at least that they've become more of a project purge rather than use use it up or even try it I'm just getting rid of things yeah I noticed and it's not just in the art room I have a load of handbags in the back of my car right now we a lot of the things that don't serve me may serve you that's why I put them in purge boxes and I put them over in the Etsy shop I do put a bit of a description of what's in the box in the description in the listing so check it out the links are below and yeah there seems to be a couple boxes every couple weeks that I add to the list they sell pretty quickly so um yeah anyway all right that's it for the moment okay guys so our coffin box is definitely done in drying I've got all of the here we are all of the handles on and the lid decorations are on it's been waxed with Dorland's wax which is an art wax so anyway I coated the box with that I got the decorations on there they're e6000 on and they're dry but take 24 hours to cure completely I got a piece of muslin cut for the shroud that's going to wrap everything and amline the box and keep the dolls from touching the painted waxy surface I did use Dorland's to protect whatever does touch it but at the same time we're going to take an extra protection and just drape a piece of muslin in the box I'm not going to sew it in or I'm not going to even hem it or anything and then we can fill the box with the zombies I'm going to put the book that inspired the zombie doll project in there I will be looking out for a newspaper headline front page or maybe if time magazine comes out with an article maybe at towards the end of the year summarizing the whole pandemic situation putting something like that in the box too with the zombies just for historical fact but anyway I'm gonna I'm planning on making more zombie dolls but I need to I needed really needed to get the box done so I have some place to put said zombie dolls so anyway it's all done it's drying tomorrow we can put it all together and switch to something else because that's done now and I can go back to slow stitching and maybe make some zombie dolls I also took some time today and I took I was experimenting with the idea of taking some of my own digital downloads and actually some of my friend Mike Deakins digital downloads and turning them into stickers so if you have a silhouette or similar cutting machine system there's probably a way you can do this you can print it on sticker paper and then cut it with your machine I don't know if Mike still has this one on his website or not this is what his digital downloads I think it's called wisdom and it comes with the owl and some quotes and then it comes with some vintage papers of course you don't necessarily have to print them this small but I wanted them to be stickers I could use in my in my daily journal so that's his and then I have some like watercolor spots digital downloads there's actually four different ones that I printed and made into stickers again all for using in my daily journals which I'm having a lot more fun making my own stickers than using the store bought ones that I have to be honest with you I also have one I printed a whole bunch of and made stickers out of of my son prints printed digital downloads so these are digital downloads that are in my Etsy shop so I'll try to remember to link them below and if I can find Mike's wisdom one I will link that too and just so you know that these decorations on top of the box I don't know if he still has them or not or if he doesn't if he's going to be getting them these are some of his laser cut wood Mike Deacon yeah they look great on top of the box all right that's it for the moment good morning it's Thursday morning I think it's August 13th maybe it's about 10 19 a.m about it's 10 19 a.m so the car clock says um I got an Etsy order in first thing this morning and forgot to change the mailing date on the mail on the mail on the label when I was printing it so that means it has to go out today there's a big those bushes back there that's where some of the wild sorry I did that on my accident those are all blackberries yeah they like to hide there and they like to eat them I like to pick them when I can get to them before the deer because they make good fabric dye so yeah mom's wandering off and she's like looking for her baby going we get over here good morning people it's 10 21 a.m Friday August 14th 14th I think we are headed out to do our weekly errands I want to say a day late and a dollar short we're not a dollar short though but we usually do them Thursday night as you all know if you've been watching the blog since the pandemic apocalypse thing started um but bob has today off and so we're going to go do them this morning hey guys I haven't done any art journaling in a journal in quite a while weeks if not longer but today I did um and I should say um traditional mixed media art journaling I have done some watercolors as you know if you watch the 30 and 30 and I have done um quite a few of Mike Deacon's mission inspiration prompts as watercolors this year technically they're probably not mixed media maybe a couple of them if I used pencil but they're not really mixed media sort of art journaling in my mind um except for today so I did this one let's see I did this one and it's prompt up funny because it's drying I used up some of the leftover paint to mark up these pages for our future our journal page this was the prompt which I always glue in on to the page I already had all of these dark black and blue colors on the background and I had some inspiration photo from my niece's wedding she and her wife Tiffany got married three years ago now maybe longer um anyway their wedding was in an aquarium I took a bunch of photos and I used one of them as inspiration for this sort of anemone shape suggestions in the background I used one of my stencils for the turtle and then to make him stand out a little more outline him with a black paint pen and then I used one of my rubber stamp sets which is C themed for the octopus legs and then a quote from one of my word sets my word digital downloads I think it turned out really cute but really wasn't sure where it was going when I was in the middle of it and I thought oh that's really ugly but I actually kind of like the way where it went to so I have this this was July which I never did which I yeah anyway sorry Mike I'm going to be posting it to Mission Inspiration tonight sometime I still have August today which is travel and transport so no idea what I'm going to do with that one but watch me on social media to find out and if you want to get any of my rubber stamp or stencil sets these in particular I will link my Etsy shop down below and you can look around there's all kinds of stuff over there I have over a hundred different stencil designs and I don't even know how many rubber stamp designs I've lost lost count at this point so anyway there you have it my Friday afternoon how's yours been all right I'll be back good morning it's Saturday morning August 15th I think it's 10 oh it's 10 something I don't know let's see 10 42 a.m yes it's the 15th of August but I do think we're going to go maybe for a drive maybe run a couple of errands maybe of course safely we'll bring masks and all the things I'm going to turn on the air conditioner before we do leave so the house is a blasting hot when we get back husband is downstairs getting dressed and yeah I think we're going to just kind of relax this weekend I think do you think we're going to grill some chicken later and by we I'm squinting at the air conditioner sorry and by we I mean Bob not me okay guys so I was right earlier we are going to go for a drive and get out of the house a bit and sorry I have a cough drop in my mouth because allergies um we're going to drive towards downtown Portland before any of y'all yell at me I know we're going to of course be safe stay in the car stay in the car we're not getting out of the car we're not walking around and of course if things look too sketchy and crazy we're not going to go any further and we'll turn around but we will take you with us we will show you a real unedited not lied about view of downtown as far as we do venture and we'll see what happens all right we'll be back that was a drive through part of downtown and near the mall where we usually like to go shopping it did look like the doors were open for business but we're not stopping to get out of the car I don't know where the federal building is neither of us do but there's a lot of boarded up windows and graffiti a lot more homeless on the street than normal it was nice to see some people picking up trash and that sort of thing and as a artist and a painter I admire some of the artwork that's been put on some of the windows and walls that being said it has been done um in you know not the right way it's part of the violence and the riding and graffiti and destruction of personal property which I'm not okay with that being said some of the artwork is beautifully done so I do admire that part anyway we're headed back towards the river part of Portland we did not film um an interesting situation people walking in the middle of the road throwing things at trees and somebody who was mostly naked um yeah I don't know stopping to get ice cream at salt and straw because that's what you do when you haven't even had lunch yet right yeah I think so evidently according to the thing we're supposed to box so anyway I'll be back and if you saw this clip you saw a clip of me packing yet a couple more purge boxes most of these boxes are filled with journals um junk journals journals with blank pages things I've either made or been gifted that I've just never gotten to use ever and I have so many of them I'm never going to use probably most of what I have that I've even that I've kept so the the extra stuff I'm purging has got to go onto a home where it will get used and loved there's a couple of glitter tumblers in each box and care instructions for the tumblers there's also at least one art bag in each box and the boxes again are very full so anyway they're all listed in etsy um coupon codes are all active and updated and I think that's it I think I'm going to turn the computer off and I did find um first of all I put some drawing stuff in this bag that I wanted to be able to take up or downstairs with me the little tote this little bag I picked up at the dollar store it's gonna work great for that I got a zebra mild liner um somebody recommended this to maybe at some point replace the other gray one that I've been loving and I do believe this is double-ended so I'm gonna test it out later I'll let you know what I think and I have a bunch of these collage match paper papers if you were part of crazy island family d remember these um I still have most of them so I'm going to take this one downstairs I just grabbed one at random I did keep all of them and I'm going to use some of the papers in here um for the daily drawing journal that I've been using I also found this book that I had spiral bound a long time ago I'm a big fan of Danny Gregory and I'm going to do try to do one of the pages in here um a day um to fill to fill this up and work through this book so we'll see what happens or at least one a week I don't know we'll see what happens I'll be carrying that around with me and a lot of the journals by the way um where as I said either made by me uh gifted to me some of them are from crazy island family days the same same days as where this is from and I've had them that long they just they need to go on to a forever home where they're going to get loved so anyway it's been an interesting day it's blasting hot outside um although it is hot the husband's going to barbecue some chicken and I think grill some asparagus for dinner I have some avocado downstairs I think I might cut one of those up sounds really good to me yeah so it's going to be a interesting weekend and one in which we probably don't do a lot because it's too hot outside so anyway all right that's it for now I hope you all are having a good time that you're keeping busy and you're de-stressing however you need to times are stressful right now for everybody around the world and I wish you all the best and if we can help each other find ways to de-stress and stay occupied and not dwell I would love to start that conversation over in one of my art groups on Facebook either my personal art group a life of art and self-expression or the one that I run with a group of other artists my creative year I would love to have that conversation you have my permission to start it in either group tag me in the post if you want to make sure I see it and let's let's do that let's give give each other some ideas for me of course it's art and reading and books and watching interesting youtube um so yeah I have an endless list of possibilities of things to do so anyway that's it for now don't forget to stay safe stay creative and stay healthy that's not how I should say that stay safe stay healthy stay creative there you go also like share and subscribe support the free content here on facebook and over in the here on facebook here on youtube we're over in the facebook art groups by shopping in my etsy store or using my paypal tip jar joining patreon um something and not just for me all your favorite creatives out there on youtube and facebook most of them have a way to support them and they all I know would appreciate your support so however they garner support do that um whether it's shopping in their online store or patreon or something we'd all love that um and um yeah if you can't find a way ask because they probably maybe they're just not advertising it for some reason anyway that's it for this week don't forget to go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it i'll see you next week bye guys