 Well, hi there. I'm Sandy Alnok, and today I've got some more coloring in the Human Rainbow with a stamp by Mo Manning. When this blog hop came up and I was invited, I went to Mo Manning's website to pick up some digis. She does really great people stamps, and when I get in the mood to color people stamps, I often will turn to hers. They're much more realistic than you get from a lot of other companies, and I just love the freedom that she can draw with. She's such a great illustrator. When I saw this stamp, it had two great people of different ethnicities happy together. I thought that is what I want to see. I want to see us being happy together and not caring what someone else's ethnicity is, what their skin tone looks like. It doesn't matter other than it's beautiful. I love coloring all different kinds of skin tones. You might know I do the Human Rainbow. I have color charts available. There's links to all that for free in the doobly-doo down below. I have always been one of those people that's drawn to diversity. Maybe it's my love of color, and I love looking at different skin tones and picking out what colors would make up that person's skin, what makes them unique. That could be part of it. I don't really know, but I know that we need to get past the racism that has been rampant in America, and I really want to be part of that solution. I have been trying for years to be part of that solution and have some of those difficult conversations with my black friends. I have this one friend who had to come over my house at one point for something. I won't get into the long story of what that was, but when he came to the door, he said, no, I can't come in. Can we talk outside? Well, we sat on the front porch and had a conversation, and I remember it being really stunning to me that he said he couldn't come in my house. And I said, why? And he said, because I would need to ask permission of your man before I go in. And I said, what do you mean? He said, I'm a black man. You're a white woman, and all it's going to take is for one of your neighbors who doesn't know that we're friends to see me walking in your house, and they call the police, and then that's the end of it. The thought that my friend can't come in my house because we might have, I might have a neighbor who gets scared and calls the police over something, and it could mean his life, and he knows that. I don't have to live with that experience. And it was really shocking to me at the time, and I've tried to make the effort, and I haven't been very consistent with it, but I've tried to make the effort of having some of those difficult conversations with my black friends of late, especially when it comes to what they think of what's going on in society around us right now. What do they think of the protests? What do they think of the solutions that are being offered, and the reforms that are being offered? Because I can certainly have my opinion as a white person, but I don't know what that experience is for someone who's not white, and I need to learn to listen, and I'm not really good at listening sometimes, so I'm working at that, and I hope that everyone is, because while it's great as an artist and as crafters to make cards that show diversity and that celebrate that, the thing that's going to fix all of this is not the art that we make. The art that we make is going to help to convey that message, but the art is not going to change our hearts or anyone else's. It might inspire some conversations, but it's those conversations where I find the biggest growth is happening in me, and no matter how much art I do around the topic, I need to be in that uncomfortable place to ask those uncomfortable questions, to get those uncomfortable answers, and try to find out how I can change my behavior and my treatment of other people so that I am not part of the problem. And I know there's a lot that I can't do anything about because I can't change the fact that I'm a white woman, but I can change some of the things that I do and the things that I say and the way that I treat people in order to be part of that solution. And that's my prayer for all of us, that we can become part of the answer and not to further the problem. Because we have enough people who are deliberately trying to do that, and we don't need to accidentally do it. That's what I'm always afraid of is that I'm going to do or say something that I don't know what that means. And I think that's a big part of it for me has been learning that the language that I use is not always received the way that I say it. And the language that someone else is used is not received by me the way that someone else means it as well. We need to learn how to ask people what they really think about something, what they really care about, and what how something really makes them feel as opposed to just assuming that they think the same way that we do. And that goes for all of us on all sides of all issues, not just race, but all sorts of things where we have misunderstandings. So there is a rather large group of people who are blog hopping with us today. There will be information in the doobly-doo as well as over on my blog about all of that. If you'd like to see some more people creating on this topic, and maybe you'll hear some experiences from some of them that might open your eyes and your thoughts in different ways and hear about some other people's growth, that inspires me to see other people taking part in things like this as well and gets me excited to have hope for the future that we can be different. We can do things differently. We can resolve our issues. So there is my little coloring for today with of course some white pen out of at the end because nothing is a sandy piece of art if it doesn't have some white pen in it. And that is about it for me for today. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please click the like button and I will see you again very soon, as always, because I'm always putting out more videos. And if you haven't yet subscribed, please do that so I can send you some more creative inspiration. Take care. Have a great day. Bye-bye.