 all your cracker barrel favorites, like our crispy southern fried chicken. I think I'm ready, baby. Good morning, everybody. Morning, good morning. Bronwyn, good morning. Alrighty, let's see. All right, so we have Mike DeConsmission Inspiration to work on this morning. I'm going to just read it again while we're waiting. Of course, I'm going to take some of it, but I'm not going to take all of it. Good morning, Laura. Magnificent machines. You know, do I have? I have gears, a gear stencil. That would be the question. I picked something else out, but I could draw a gear or a machine on before for his missions. So that's the thing. I think, yeah, we're going to just play it by ear and work with what I pulled and we'll see what happens. Good morning. Thank you for letting the ads run. If you all haven't heard lately or watched my vlog or one of the many others reporting on it in our little world of YouTube, we've had the freaking frugal channel, which has had a crisis. The wife on the channel, frugal mommy, had an accident involving fire and she had second and third degree burns on the backs of her legs, which involved a hospital stay, which they can't afford. She's going to be okay, but there's a few videos over on their channel called freaking frugal and then there's the needy family homestead channel who was involved in a drunk driving accident. Somebody was drinking and driving and hit them head on and killed the husband in the family and injured two of the children and the mother is still in the hospital, I believe. So it's just not been, you know, just if you guys know of their channels and you can put a link in the comments, please do so. Let's support who we can as we can. These are verified crisis. They're not fake news or anything. It's very, both situations very, very sad and the channels both can use help. When you're a full-time YouTuber, you don't have medical insurance. If you can do nothing else, watch their channels and let the ads run. Don't skip through the ads. That helps all of your favorite YouTube creators out tremendously, a huge amount. So if that's the only thing that you can do, do that and put a nice comment maybe. Yeah. Yeah, mine does too, Kathy, to both of them. I don't want to start the broadcast off on a bad note, but there you have it. Anyway, we're all struggling emotionally or something right now, so. All right, we are going to do the mission inspiration to get back to the subject of art. Our ingredients are a handwritten text, frame or border, fabric scraps, metallic paints and book text. The only thing on that list I was kind of worried about is metallic paints, because I don't have a lot. I'm not a huge metallic spam. Colors are ruby, not sorry, berry red, cerulean blue and copper. I may do with what I have and I pulled a few colors, so we'll see what happens. Good morning, Linda. And then the main inspiration says magnificent machines, cogs, gears, pistons, engines, levers and gadgets. I pulled a different icon, but now I'm getting kind of an idea of something I can do in the background, so we'll see what happens. So that's what we have today. I don't know what Mike did on the page for himself, because I didn't watch his video yet. Fun fact. I wanted to do my page first. I didn't want to be unduly influenced. Good morning, good morning, good morning. You know, I was heading to reading glasses on to read the mission inspiration and then took them off to cut this out. That makes no sense. That actually makes no sense. Yeah, this is the journal. Fun fact, whose paper I dislike working on. So we are going to, as we have been doing, see I did gears here, I did a gears page already last year, but I have an idea. So anyway, we're going to fast forward to here. So the last one that I did. Let's put a clip to hold this open. Otherwise, it's going to just make me completely crazy. The first thing we're going to do is glue our mission over here on the side, which is what I have always been doing. I don't know why I started doing that exactly, but you know, we're going to just go with it now. How are you all? I hope you're coping and managing and doing well. I need a card. I need a card. Okay. There we go. All right. Now I have one of Mike Deacon's stencils here. This is his son's stencil. I was going to pull one of my own and then, I don't know, I just, this one just stood out to me this morning. So we're going to go with it. I think what I'm going to do first is get the basic shape of this sun, the size of the circle on here. If my pen wants to write this morning, do you want to write? Maybe. There we go. I just want kind of like that because then do I have something that's about that size? Yes, I do. Maybe. I should be doing this in pencil, but I'm not going to. So I'm going to, I think draw a gear that's just slightly bigger. Now, if you have been following me for a while, then you know very well, I am not too concerned about extra lines on my work. I think they just make it interesting. The extra lines are marks. And I almost always do things in pen. I rarely do things in pencil that I need to erase later. To be honest with you, I just can't be bothered. I'm lazy. I'm not the frugal crafter. That's Lindsey Weirich. I'm the lazy messy crafter. So there you have it. Let's make this look here. Like, I don't know if this is going to turn out. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, but I don't know. We'll see. I do think I'm going to need a Sharpie at some point, which is behind the iPad. Of course it is. Of course it is. Now, if you're like me and a lot of artists, mixed media artists and crafters, I know we have lots of book texts and handwritten notes around. It gets to the point where it's hard to throw anything away because you're just sure you can do something with it at some point. So then we have a basic gear shape. Ah, Bronwyn. My sister lives in Cottonwood Heights if you know where that's at. Okay, so I've got this old ledger page that has handwritten stuff on it. So I'm going to, what is it saying on here? Oh, different people that were paying for services. Three dollars. Friday, February 13th. I don't know what year. It's a physician's ledger. OC. I don't know. I don't know what that stands for. Yeah, I love the parks in Utah, Cathy, and also Nevada. Red Rock Canyon is a favorite of mine. And my week's going okay. I mean, you know, we all can relate. It isn't horrible. Thank goodness. Okay, so this was just a guide about where I want my basic shape to be. So now we're going to get our other stuff on there. Collage my papers down first. I'm just using a Yoohoo glue stick. It's quick. It's easy. It's not super messy. And then I have a couple of books that literally are so old the pages are falling out. And this one, I don't know what the name of the book is. But one side of the paper says standardized systems, three kinds of space. And the other one says outline of philosophy, the romance of rationalism. I don't know. It's just cool old paper. Let's see. I'm just reading back on the comments. Montreal, Canada, I see. Yeah, I can't wait to get back to Utah not only to do some touring of the countryside, but to visit my sister. She goes hiking a lot up in the mountains somewhere in the snow. And I don't know Utah that well. But I would love to go hiking with her. It looks so pretty up there. Just making sure that, oops, the paper is not lifting. So fabric scraps. I'm using what I am inspired to use at the moment. But one of his things is fabric scraps. I do not know what I'm going to do with that. So out there in the universe right now, I have no idea. Now I think it's time to do a little stenciling and get the paint colors involved. I've got, of course, some gouache paints and one metallic paint. And then my parents used to live in Grant's Pass. Fun fact. I like Grant's Pass. Anyway, as I was saying, one of his colors is copper. So of course, he had metallic. So I picked a copper metallic paint, but I also was kind of looking through my matte acrylics and my gouache acrylics. If I had something that was maybe coppery colored sort of, but not metallic. The closest thing I could find was the yellow oxide, which I think will work. And I kind of want to incorporate. So we're going to put some of that out. And then, of course, I have the copper metallic. I'm going to incorporate some white. Now I don't really have the exact color of blue, cerulean blue in my gouache colors. I have a primary cyan and navy. I kind of think a little bit of a mix of the two might work. Although I do think the cyan is probably closer to cerulean, but I just think I should mix the two of them up a little bit. So we'll do that. And then I have two reds, a rose violet, which I think that's closer to a berry color. And then this one, which is primary magenta, but I think it's too pale. Oh, rogue river is gorgeous. I think we're going to go with the darker one, which is rose violet. These are all acrylic gouache or matte acrylics except for the metallic. All right. Now let's get this on here. This is his sun stencil. I designed my own stencils, but fun fact, I'm terrible with stencils. I put too much paint. So I think I'm going to grab a little bit of the yellow, the yellow oxide. And I'm going to just, I'm going to do the pouncing thing because again, I know, I know me. I know me only too well. I have this bad tendency to go at the stencils like a gorilla and put too much paint. I've already got some spots that I need to fix. Of course I do. I'm going to not clean my brush off and bring in some white, just holding the stencil down and kind of blending the colors through the stencil while the paint is still wet. Any parts of the image that I don't get quite right, we can go back and fix with a little bit of touch up paint. We still have to, again, we still have to incorporate the fabric scraps, which I don't, I'm going to do that. I'm not sure. I love his missions this year because it's kind of making us all take a second look at our supplies and which is something I've been trying to do anyway. You know, you get in a rut with your art and it's so easy to do. You just grab the same old couple of things all the time. This is making you rethink that a little bit. And all of the projects that I'm doing this year seem to be along that same idea, even ones y'all don't know about yet. By the way, if you haven't heard, I'm teaching a class with Bea Grob, Shell C, Peg Robinson, Petra Fuchs, Marie Linder, and the early bird money for, the early bird price for that goes out soon. Yeah, that'll work. Um, yeah, Kathy, I should be doing the makeup sponge trick. I definitely should be. You're not wrong. And it's not like there's sponges that are like far away from me. There's one right here. But this will work. This is fine. We need to try that now. Let's see before I do anything else. Get a smaller brush. This one. I should zoom in for you all. Let's see if I can do this without messing up. Good morning, Petra. Yeah, and I, yeah, I definitely know about the makeup sponge thing. I'm just impatient, that's all. So now I'm just gonna try to go around my son and define my shape. Maybe and see, I'm looking at it and I don't mind the gear shape that's in the background, but I'm just not feeling it. See, and I shouldn't make myself try to have it back there. I'm not going to try to cover it up necessarily. It's back there, but I don't think it's going to be my primary focus. Kathy, I appreciate the help. At our old house, I did a lot of stenciling when we bought the house on the walls. I do know the right way to stencil, but I'm just lazy. I didn't grab a rag. How did I not grab a rag? I should have probably painted that gear before I put the sun on. But then I think it would detract from the sun. I wonder if I just do that. Let's do a few of the shapes in the background that show through the sun in some of the blue and then see what we think. The black will still be there, but it'll be faded into the background and look like it's obviously behind the sun. And I actually think I kind of love that. Yeah, I do too. So I'm using a very small round brush with just a little bit of paint. I'm going to do the parts with the pen marks that I can still see. There are some that are under the paper that I collaged on that I can't see. We'll do those last. Oh, Kathy. You know, Bob and I just call it COVID brain because things are just so... Yeah, you all know. I don't need to finish the sentence, do I? Just when you can't remember words, much less other stuff. The stress is real. The forgetfulness is real. See, I do kind of like the way that's turning out now. I need parts of the sun that I mess up. I can always go back over it with the stencil again and line it up and put some more paint on there. So I'm not super worried. And this is usually the kind of... When I'm outlining a painting like this, it's usually the kind of thing I do with the music on. Just turn on the radio. Of course, you could do it with a pen rather than doing it with a paint brush and paint. But just turn the radio on and to mute some music, some happy music that you like and let go of all the other craziness that's going on. Yeah, I forget. I was having a conversation with some of you all one day. And then my husband later, and I couldn't remember the word buffering. It literally, I think, took me two days to remember the word. And it's not because there's any mental health issues going on other than what I already had pre-COVID. But it's just stress. My sister moved to Utah years ago because of a guy she was married to. That marriage didn't last, but she loves Utah and she ended up staying by my brush off. I'm going to take more of the yellow ochre, but straight, tap some of it off, touch up a few things. I think some of it's too light, just a little bit of a white. I had a good sort of mental health day yesterday because I was just able to just paint. Just paint. I just let things go and I didn't even turn music on or anything and I just painted and it was fabulous. How am I going to incorporate fabric into that? I have no idea. I do have a big thing of fabric scraps. I don't know. Let's dry it because I do like the way that looks. I'm going to just dry it. Yes, Petra, I did that before COVID. COVID hasn't helped walking into a room for a particular purpose and then not remembering what the purpose is when you get there. Yeah. Yeah. Meaning to write things down on the grocery shopping list and you get down to the list to write it down and then you forget what it was. If you guys are feeling any and all of that, you are so not alone. It's happening to a lot of us right now and all I can say to you is just remember to breathe. I know it's not always super helpful, but when it grabs some white pencils, let's see. This is a white pencil I bought a while ago at Jerry's Arterama and they have these fat jumbo white pencils in different colors. I was just going to get black and I ended up getting this jumbo white. I actually really love this pencil lately. I've used it on a couple of things and I can just go in kind of here where I got too messy with the paint. I'm not covering it up necessarily, but I'm just kind of adding some white over it and it's making it less obvious and maybe making it look like it was intentional. Yeah. I was always a person who made myself a lot of notes before. That hasn't gotten any better. So I've added sort of this matte yellow color, but I haven't added any copper-copper. So I do have copper metallic paint here that I pulled out. So let's grab our thin brush and this is a plaid folk art one stroke number one liner brush. Basically little bitty teeny tiny round brush. So there's some dots around the stencil. So I'm going to highlight the dots with some copper paint. I will post pictures of this later on social media, like to my Instagram and Facebook. If you aren't following me on those, there's a link tree list of links in the video description. I post art all the time every day and this is again, this is a Liquitex basic metallic. I'm not a huge metallics fan, not because I don't think they're pretty. I do. I just find that I don't use them that much. Probably because a lot of my work gets photographed or scanned. And fun fact, your metallic paints don't do either of those very well. If you're going to create something for reproduction, having metallic paints as part of the composition makes it very difficult. Yeah, I make myself a lot of notes. I have for a long time. So for those that don't know, I have anxiety disorder and when it gets bad, I get forgetful. And so I make myself a lot of notes and that eliminates the stress of, oh my God, I'm going to forget that. At least in my world, it does. In my brain, it does. I think it does anyways. There's all kinds of ways you can cope with the stress and the forgetfulness. Having people to talk to you and do art with, I do want to do like an arty party. I have some free time, I think, coming up towards the end of the month. So I think I'm going to try to do that, schedule something. It won't be on camera. It'll probably just be a Zoom call with art people, friends and patrons. So if you want to be part of that, let me know. We'll be just, you know, make art and talk about life and stuff. I mean, things. I hope you're all doing well and coping well and that you're managing okay and that you have people to talk to when things aren't, are too much. And I'm not looking at the chat right now because I'm decided to put copper on all the sun rays. So just FYI. If you're asking me a question, that's why I haven't answered yet. You can barely see this. So I'm not sure why I decided to do this, but now I decided to do it. Now I've got to do all of them. Any leftover paint I have, I don't waste it. I grab a old book or a pad of paper and put it in there or create a, start a background in a new journal or something. Try not to stick my hand in the wet paint, which is always a challenge because my middle name is not Grace. I've kept up my, my challenge to myself of 10,000 or more steps a day, most days since the end of January. I have upped my daily step count from about four, well between 41 and like 44,000 a week. Now it's an excess of 60,000 a week, which is wonderful. See, I don't know if you guys are going to see this on camera. Hey Michael Ann. Okay. So I don't know if you're going to see this on camera. I'm going to try to tilt it this way. Can you see the metallic on there? You'll have to tell me. I'm not sure you're going to see it. Okay. So one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to take, I have a smaller one than this. I do, I do, I do. Okay. We're going to take a little tiny blending brush, this little, this is one of these little tiny short, flat, like stiff bristled. I always have some of these around because I use them for like blending paints and things and backgrounds. One of the things we're going to do is we are going, I'm not going to hide it completely, but I want to put a little bit of paint here, white, just white. I want to push some of this paper into the background. If I can, it's not wanting to stick where the, I think the glue is because I don't think the glue is completely dry. We have to go back to the little tiny brush. Yeah, I will try to post a picture later. I was pretty sure you weren't going to be able to see much in the way of the metallic on camera because I think it's, again, metallics don't do cameras very well. That's the bottom line, but I will try to get a good picture later for you all because I think you're going to enjoy. I think you'll like it. I'll see if I can, at least I'll try to get a good picture on. I know we'll see. I'm up near Portland and we don't have too many days where it's not cloudy, so not this time of year anyways. It's so funny. I went when I was out yesterday. I went to go buy a sleep mask because I want to do a blindfolded art challenge. I haven't done one in a while and I couldn't find my old sleep mask. I might have purged it before we moved. I don't remember. Anyway, the lady at the store thought I was buying it because spring is coming in. We're going to get that obnoxious northern spring light that just blinds you and you can't sleep. It was funny. I didn't want to explain to her. I just told her, oh, thank you very much. Oh, you'll have a good night's sleep now. Yes, I will. Thank you so much. All right. I'm kind of liking that. We're going to just let it dry naturally for a minute. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with fabric and I need to find a piece of fabric to figure out what I'm going to do with that. So I have no idea how to incorporate fabric into this except for maybe there's a thing on here about doing a border. I could do a border on a page with like this piece of lace. What do you all think? This is just my scrap bin from slow stitching. Like all the scraps just get jammed in here until I either put them away proper or do something else with them. We'll have this fruit in season at all times and within the reach of every hand. That's interesting. I don't know that it goes with the sun, but it's interesting. I do need to add a quote because I always add a quote. What do you all think about all of these? I mean, I have orangey colors, but I think that just detracts from the sun too much and he's kind of cute. So I don't want to do that. We want to add to the piece without detracting from it. Let's see. Do I have a piece of canvas here? If I made sort of a canvassy tag that I could then add to as maybe a flap, that might work. Yeah, I don't mind the cold cloudy weather. My asthma is happy with it. So there's that. For the most part. I mean, now that we have the wildfires, I'm back on a daily inhaler. So there's that. I can't say we'll never move again because you just never know what the future holds, but Bob and I don't move often. We just, that's just not what we are, not those first people that move all the time. I think I want to stick with those colors. Maybe. And what if we took this piece of canvas? I'm just not sure. Oh, Petra, put that in the friends chat over on Facebook because I'm always looking for new channels to watch. See, I'm not sure. I'm just not sure about covering up that much of a page with this. At the same time, I could just add a little bit of a border with like this pink ribbon here on the side. Or even go wild and crazy and put it here. I could actually, there's enough of it. I probably could put it on each side. Yeah, I, yeah. So first to address Kathy's comment. I never understood why my parents who one is born in Chicago and one is born in San Francisco. My parents are born and raised city people. But as they got older and older, they moved farther out into the country. And I for years have not understood what they're thinking was behind that until we moved. And compared to where we used to live, where I live outside of Portland right now is definitely what you would call more, way more country. I have deer that come and eat my front yard. So I get it now. And if we did move again, it would probably be close to services like medical, but definitely not in the city, city proper again. I just don't think I can do that. I'm kind of liking this. Yeah, I kind of like that. Do I, I did pull a rubber stamp out, but I don't know. I don't know if I want to use it. It does have a border on it, but I don't know that I want to use it. So I think that's going to get set aside. That's not going to get used because I don't, the way this has turned out, I don't think I want to put that back before we glue anything down or staple that trim down. Let's look for a quote that maybe fits. Actually, I guess before we do that, we should do something with this extra paint here. Have this dollar store drawing book we were working in last time. And just grab a palette knife and or the brushes I already have out. And let's just go to a paint blank page, grab the palette. That's too big. That palette knife is not going to work. What was that thinking? We'll just use this brush. And yeah, Petra. So I mean, sorry, Michael and yeah, the fires, I was off my daily inhaler because my asthma was very much under control. And then we had all the wildfires here on the West Coast. And it just, yeah, I definitely went backwards. I mean, my goal is to be healthier and get off some medication. I just don't know if that's like really a practical right now. I can tell in the mornings when I haven't, you know, gotten up right away and taken my medicine. I can tell when I need to. So that was the extra paint that was there. And that's an interesting background and start to something else, a tag, another journal page or something. So that can just be set aside to dry. Now let's go back to the words. This is my sort of folio of words. Oops. I'm going to have the sunny image off. It's just off camera to the left. And I'm going to have it where I can see it. Let's go through these words first and see if there's anything in here that just quickly stands out that I think might work. Ooh, right away. This one does. That didn't take very long. Holy cow. Okay. So before I go over that, so I have some words that I've printed or punched. I do have a letter punch. And I have printable files in my Etsy shop of words. And so I've printed them on label paper. I've also printed them on fabric that's intended for running through your printer. You can get inkjet printer fabric from Amazon. Right? This is a good quote. I also cut them out from magazines. I know I post those tea bag quotes and fortune cookie things all the time, just so you know. No, I don't throw them away. These are purchased word cards, letter cards, quote paper, some letter stickers from like my Moleskine journals, Tim Holtz chat stickers, big chat, little chat, and random other letter and word stickers. I do love my words. Okay. So this is Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I think that's a great quote for this page. I think I'm really liking the way this trim looks on here. Now the question is how do I want to attach it? So this is the quote. Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself. The quote storage thing is created from clear pencil pouches from the Dollar Tree. And then I have a number of them and they're connected with these cable binder ring things. So you could connect them, you could put them in a binder, you could use just loose binder rings. I have one, two, three, four. I have seven of them together. For me, that was a number that worked really well. I've been using this quote storage thing for a long time now like almost since right after we moved and it's worked fabulously. As soon as I was able to start getting the art room together after we moved, this undoing the old quote storage, which was in a set of little drawers, which wasn't working for me in the new space at all and putting them in here was a huge difference and I use them constantly now. Old eyes. Don't get me started, Kathy. I'm officially old now. I have mild cataracts in both eyes, along with a floater in the right eye. So oh, fun times. Yeah, I agree. So I'm going to put a little bit of glue on it. Fabric trim. Wow, that didn't want to come off. But I'm also going to put staples. Now, let's try to glue it right side up, shall we? Glasses, speaking of glasses. Oh, yeah. I think one of you all sent me this trim. It could have been Antbeck's creations. I don't remember because she did send me an envelope of stuff that I've been using and enjoying. If you're in Mike Deacon's Facebook group, Mission Inspiration, then I will be posting pictures of this in his group later today. I haven't watched his video on the mission yet. I will be doing that also later today. But if you're not in his group and you would like to be, it's a fun group, I think. Of course I have no staples. Every time I go to use this thing. Okay, so the floater? No, not right now. It's not. I go back in a month to just kind of keep an eye on things. I also was born with, oh, how do I say this? Weird optic nerves. So, and this is a new doctor. So she wants some baseline tests. So I go back in a month. My mother's also a diabetic glaucoma sufferer. So we're keeping an eye on me for that. That can be hereditary. So anyway, got some issues. I was born needing corrective lenses. I was legally blind without glasses up until I had Lasik a few years ago. The floaters probably won't go away, go away. They may get less noticeable. But anyway, I took a fall late September, early October and I hit my head on the concrete. And then after that I started noticing a floater. And so there is one in there. It's pretty large. There's really nothing they can do about it. It may go away on its own. It may not. And it just kind of is what it is. And I have to learn to live with it. It's annoying sometimes, but I can deal with it. It's fine. And the cataracts at some point, you know, they'll need surgery at some point. I'm not going to stop creating. If I have to, I'll rename my channel the blind artist and we'll just do things that way. Because I'm not going to stop. I do like to read books, but you know, that's what Audible's for. But I do have a really nice new doctor. She's really nice, sweet. And she's an ophthalmologist and she's, you know, she is new. So she's doing a bunch. She did a bunch of tests. Everything looks fine and, you know, normal as can be expected. My inner ocular pressure hasn't changed. It's the same as it was when I had my Lasik surgery done in 2008. So she's going to do some peripheral vision tests and things like that. They didn't have time for when I was there last time. I like this page. I don't know what that is about that page. So anyway, the floater is most of the time it's, you know, doesn't bother me. Every now and then it just seems to be like right in the middle of my face. And it just is like there constantly and drives me completely crazy. Most of the time it's fine. I'll wait to put that away because it's going to be a problem. All right. So that's that page. We have time to do something else. Yeah, I really like that. I wish you guys could see the metallic on there, but I don't know if you can. But just a little bit of copper. So this is a great page. Take that over here. I always have other journals. So let's grab one of these. Oh, good. I'm glad. Yeah. So yeah, that was my adventures with the eye doctor. So it could be a lot of things. What I would say though is just, you know, I know at times they're tough right now and I know we're all completely stressed out. And the last thing you want to do is go to the doctor. But don't put off your health and well-being just because of COVID. That includes getting your eyes checked, like go get your eyes checked. You should be going once a year at the most every two years, especially as we get older. Cataracts are very common and very fixable. So they're not necessarily a huge deal. And, you know, if you find a doctor's office like the one that we found where they're taking all of the COVID precautions they possibly can think of and you keep your mask on the entire time, you know, they make you feel very comfortable when you go in. Just looking to see if there's something in here I want to use in this journal. But yeah, so the cataracts don't really bother me. The floater doesn't bother me. I've had floaters on and off in the past before. This one is because of an injury. She did lecture me because I should have probably gone in right after I fell because I did hit my head on the concrete. And that can cause some serious issues with lots of things, including your vision. And I just was stupid and didn't go in. And, you know, she said it seems to be stable, but that was another reason why she wants me to go in a month, in a month and just make sure nothing looks like it changed. But I do have new glasses on order and my vision with them is 2020. And so, you know, I did get really fun large light blue and like a peachy rose gold colored cat eye reading glasses. Wait till you all see them. They're funny. They're just going to be funny. They're going to just make you all laugh. I hope I think they're hilarious. I don't know if any of these are standing out to me at the moment. Maybe this one. Yeah, we do have vision service plans. So it wasn't, you know, like it caught maybe this one actually. I guess I should leave that open so things don't dry and get glued together. There was another piece of plastic in here. Where'd it go? I don't know. But you know, as we get older, cataracts are super common. And, you know, they're not necessarily something to be worried about. Yeah, that works. I, you know, I of course had, you know, I had an issue. So I couldn't just go to Costco. I knew I was going to probably see need to see an ophthalmologist because the floater was really an issue. And, you know, again, I was born with kind of strange optic nerves, which of course they want to look at because she's a new doctor. And, you know, they've really not seen that too much and story of my life. It's like when they hear my heart at the doctor when I have any doctor and then they want to do all sorts of cardiac tests because I was born with a cardiac issue too. Yeah, so you can have very mild cataracts. I am no doctor. Let me start this off. I was a licensed dispensing optician, but that was almost 30 years ago. And you should always get advice from a healthcare professional that knows what they're talking about. Right, Laura? Anyway, cataracts can be very slow growing and you can have a mild cataract for years and years and years before they're bad enough to impede your vision to where you need to have surgery. The joke with Bob and I right now is that his, so his mother is deaf. Just so you know, almost completely deaf. My parents have terrible eyesight. And as we both get older, we're both susceptible to cataracts. And my dad also has hearing issues, but it's from an accident anyway. Our joke at night when we're walking is, okay, is it hazy because it's foggy or because we both have cataracts. And then he says, dear, did you hear that? And I'm like, no, what? Like, so are are we both just not hearing things well? Are we both not seeing well? Like we give each other a hard time about it. Because what else are you going to do but get stressed? Like, it's better to have fun with it, I think. Because I think I want, if I'm going to do this, I want a couple of other colors. That's the color I want. This one. So just have fun with it. I mean, don't ignore your health. But, you know, at the same time. Yeah, so we just, you know, we've decided to have fun with it. We give each other a hard time. And, you know, I'm constantly asking him, okay, so is it hazy because, you know, now I know I have cataracts or no, it's, it's, you know, it's foggy, dear. Oh, okay. So this page kind of had some red leakage through from the other side, which is fine. I'm not going to try to cover it all up, but I don't want it to be as obvious, I don't think. And I'm just using this like silicone squeegee thing. That's way too much of that orange, but okay. I'm using matte acrylic and matte gouache paints because then you don't have to worry about your art journal's pages sticking together. And they're less likely to be sticky. And for you to have to worry about covering them up with clear gesso or a matte finish of some kind or wax or something. Let's get the dryer out. I love these colors. They're not colors I would normally put together, but I love them because of the class that I'm teaching in June with Bay of Robb and the others. I've been working more with color, which is bringing out kind of the experimental side of me because that works and it's handy. And I don't have to reach out and grab for something else because hello, lazy crafter. Ooh, I also, you guys should watch the vlog next week because I will be filming the before and after, but Thursday I finally get my haircut after a year. And I'm getting kind of a lot cut off. So thank you, Kathy. And yes, Bronwyn, it's just so important to have a sense of humor and things aren't always going to be something that you can laugh about, but you have to have a trusted group around you that you can laugh with, cry with. This is just a random folder of small bits. If I have small bits, I don't want to throw away, but I don't know what I'm going to do with. I literally, I just stick them in here like it looks like this. It's just literally just full of stuff. I'm going to just pull out a few things that are the right colors. So many people, I don't want to like poo poo and oh poor me like too much because so many people have it so much worse. And everybody's having such a hard time. It's not just me and it's, you know, it's just tough. I don't know if those will work, but we'll pull them out and take a look at them. So I was going through old optical files and this shows you I used to be a licensed optician in a lab tech because I found these. So these are the pattern shapes they put on the machine to tell the machine what shape to cut your eyeglass lenses. I did, and these are some old lenses, I think from my dad's old glasses. I didn't even know I had those. And of course I saved them because I don't know what I want to do with them. You know, they might be good for something. I'm crazy. I know I'm crazy. I'm aware. I'm aware. So I have that one too. There's some birds and things down here. Look at that. Also on my little angel from my stamp set, but her worst or other wing. Oh, there it is. Her other wing came off. Yeah. And you know what? If you don't, if you're having trouble maintaining the good attitude and the smile and the positivity, I can so relate to that. Go out and go for a walk. Find again, find some people that you can trust to talk to, to vent to, you know, if you feel like you're on that, you know, sort of cliff's edge that can talk you down, all of those things. And don't be ashamed of the fact that you have to do that. Well, that's a good idea, Michael Ann. That's a good idea. Okay, so we have all these pieces that I found. That's a little watercolor painting of mine. I'm wondering what if, I mean, she would be cute to use on there, but she doesn't really fit. I do save her because I did her for a video for something. And she's, I have a stamp set that has all these different parts in it. It's in my Etsy shop. And she's so cute. And I want to use her on something, but I haven't figured out what that something is yet. So she's still living in the envelope. I even up until recently, Michael Ann had a piece of an old flip flop because the bottom of the flip flops had such an interesting pattern on them that I saved it to do something with. I kind of like where this is going. I don't know what that says exactly, but I like where it's going. Yeah, normal C. I don't know what normal C is. I have no idea what I've lost track. So these are magazine pages and you lay them over the top of the stencil and then you take some sandpaper and you just sand away basically, it'll sand away the lines of the stencil. It will leave you with this textured, the darker the page, the better usually. And you end up with this is just magazine paper and a stencil and sandpaper. I'm thinking of using some of this one maybe. I don't think the pink works. The pink doesn't work. What is in here? I've lost track. Somebody sent me this. Oh, it looks like a little journal. BB creations. Oh, darling, I keep forgetting this is in the little envelope. Yeah, it's a little mini journal. Okay, we're going to just have to make this like a video at some point. I'm going to just have to fill this up with like mini collages or something. That's cute. I keep forgetting it's in there. The effect is very awesome and it makes a great, you know, again, great papers for texture for your collages. And this is like, this is something that's in the small bits. These are Tim Holtz ideology wings. This is just a pack of transparent wings that I got not too long ago, but of course, haven't done anything with. What colors do we have in here? Not a monarch. A little blue one. Is there a littler one? There is a littler one. Ha. I can't wait to like do like museums or zoos or I'm with you on that one. I love to do all of those things. You know, I'm not the one who's the best at things like road trips and stuff like that. And I don't like camping. I don't like camping, but now I'm like telling my husband, maybe we should buy a camper. Just like, you know, just because you want to get out. So do you think these wings are like too dark? I have some clear ones. Maybe these clear ones are better. Oh, thank you, Kathy. Oh, you know, I know what this needs to say now. I just was putting those on there and I know exactly what I should say. Where's that one little dark blue and yellow one? These are hard to pick up. I have like no fingernails. The idea, Laura, is to just rent a camper, buy a camper, borrow a camper, and just go on a road trip. I want to drive up into Canada. I want to go over to Utah, see my sister, other family in other states, but we won't tell them I'm coming because I don't want to go there. That's all I'll say about that. But yeah, I want to visit my friends. I want to, you know, I want to, I haven't been to Canada. I wanted to go forever. Why? I'm not going to put it off anymore. I want to go and I want to sit and have coffee with my friends. I want to go hiking. I want to go shopping. I want to make art in the park. All of those things. You're welcome. Have a great day, Kathy. Okay, we're going to need a piece of white paper, which I have a piece here because I know what it needs to say. I'm going to have to write it out. We are going to get all this on here. I think we're going to use staples for some of it. I like the idea of adding staples to things. I just think it looks interesting. It just gives it one more sort of dimension of texture. I'm going to just put some tacky glue on the back of some of these wings. That should stick them down well enough. And then we can put this doily down with some glue, a glue stick. Yeah, I haven't been on a long road trip since I was 17. And my grandparents were still alive when we went on a road trip to most of the western United States. Unfortunately, we came home and a few months later, my grandfather passed away. But I really appreciate that we got to do that before he passed away. And I would like to do another road trip. Get this glued down. I might want to stick a staple through those. What's on the back side? Staples won't matter too much on the back side. Nope, can barely see them. Okay, let's do a staple here too. So this is an old Moleskine weekly notebook. By the way, I had to break the spine on it because it's getting to be way too fat. So sometimes I'm creating a page and I know exactly what it should say. So I just write it out, which I'm going to do. Oh, crud. How do you spell afraid? Does it have one F or two? I think it has two. Where's my phone? Oh, I hope it only has one. If you ever create a journal page and you spell a word wrong, it's okay. Been there, done that, posted it on YouTube and then figured out I spelled it wrong. You aren't alone. So I'm going to put on here. Don't be afraid to stand out. Never be afraid to stand out and be yourself. I want to put it up there. Glue takes a long time to dry. The little bit of metal in the staples just adds another like piece of texture and interest to your pages. And you know, it's quick and easy. It's like the glue stick. It's quick and easy. And then you get, you know, a journal page. I'm going to move this over a little bit because the stream yard thing is like in the way. Let's see. Whoops, that's too far. So yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with just sticking a staple in there. And on this side, on this page, you can barely see where the staples are. Like you really can't even tell they're there unless you look carefully. So anyway, I think that's it for today. Who else is with me where you kind of like, I like the way that looks like I just like the way that looks at the paint, the stencil with the paint on it. I may have to take a picture of that because that just looks really cool. Yeah, your pages don't have to be hard or complicated. They can express what your current mood is or not. That's up to you. But they should be enjoyable and you shouldn't have to think about them too much or agonize over them. They won't all turn out good. Some of them are going to just be very questionable at best. And you're going to just go, huh? Yeah, well, but you know, that's okay. You don't have to be crazy like me and show them on social media. Okay, wait, Laura, what do you mean you got deleted by Google? Michael and I'm just reading back a little bit in the comments and yeah, Coronavirus is creating wonderlust in a lot of people. Like I said, I'm not a big, I don't enjoy camping. I did it a lot as a kid, but it's not my thing. But now I'm thinking we need to rent a camper or buy a big SUV or something and just go on a long road trip. Thank you for the compliments on the page. Appreciate that one. Okay, afraid. Thank you. A comment got deleted. Okay, wow, I didn't delete it. Okay, that's weird. But Google's been weird. Anyway, if you're connected with me on social media and you're in one of the Facebook messaging chats, do check in and let me know how you're doing. I hope you're doing well. If you have questions, comments or concerns, you can leave them here down below or you can DM me on social media somewhere. You know, just know that you're not alone with the stress and the agony and the chaos. It's just, you know, we're all there with you and, but at the same time, don't put off your self care, whether it's turning the devices off and going for a walk for your mental health, doing art or getting your doctor checkups. Please do all of those. I understand more than most if you have issues with white coat syndrome and going to the doctor and assuming they're going to find stuff wrong and expecting the worst, hoping for the best. I understand all of those things. I suffer from all of those. Don't let it stop you from doing what you need to do to take care of yourself. I want y'all to be with me around here for a long time to come. So anyway, that being said, we are going to do this. We're going to do it together. We're going to make some art and we are going to make it work. And don't be afraid to stand out. This is a cute page. This is completely unexpected, but I love how it turned out. All right, please support the free content on social media, on YouTube and Facebook as you can. At the very least, don't fast-forward to the commercials. Let them play and let them run. That helps us out a lot. You can also, of course, shop in my Etsy shop. Become a patron on Patreon and or use the PayPal tip jar or any of those things. There's a lot of different ways in my link tree list of links in the video description. Check it out. Just be there for each other. There's a lot of people suffering right now and my heart goes out to all of them. The knee homestead and freaking frugal in particular at the moment. Please go catch their channels later. If you have trouble finding them, again, send me a DM and I'll get you the link. Needy homestead is K-N-E-A-D-Y, by the way. And it's freaking frugal without the G on freaking. It's not freaking frugal. It's freaking frugal. Anyway, that's it for today. Please stay safe, stay healthy, stay creative. Please wear your mask even if you've had your vaccine. Go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Walk in the fresh air if you're able and capable. It really does help. And turn off the devices early. That's been helping me a lot too. All right, that's it for the moment. I'll see you guys later. Next week, same bat time, same bat channel. See you later. Bye, guys.