 guys, welcome to the review video for my creative year for May 2018. So we do a product or book review or tip video or something at the beginning of every month. They air on the third of every month at least for 2018 this year that we're doing them. And I have been bringing you reviews. This month is kind of more of a tip video. So a little bit of review throwing in and I honestly couldn't make my mind up about which one I wanted to do. So we're going to do like a couple of them. Some of them are bits and pieces from other videos I've aired on my YouTube channel in years past. But we're going to just kind of group them all together and my favorite things. Two of them are sitting right here on the table. Three if you count this down here. So first thing this is the Dina Wakeley media journal. This is the new one for this year or I should say the new one I think for last year. And this is the review of the video. I do like this journal. I find it interesting to work in a journal that has a mixture of different kinds of paper and fabric in it. I find that interesting. So you have a cotton rag paper. You have burlap. You have canvas. You have craft paper here, craft paper all in one journal. I find that interesting. However, the cotton rag paper and I'm very carefully calling it cotton rag paper is said to be watercolor paper but as a water colorist I find I don't like this paper. If you're just doing a Dina Wakeley style journaling on it, you're doing a little spraying on it, putting acrylic paint and collage on it, it's fine. If you're trying to watercolor on it, it's not so great and it pills like crazy. Yeah, I'm not super crazy about it for watercolor. That being said, I do think it's an interesting journal and if you have a chance to pick one up I would recommend that you try it especially if you find the idea of working on paper and fabric interesting in all in one journal. Of course you could probably do some kind of a DIY but I do like her journal and I like the fact that it's hard covered on the outside. So that being said, there's number one. Number two is this. This is how, this, right or wrong, this is how I dry my brushes I have for years. I wash them out in the sink in the garage. I soak them in a mixture of Murphy's oil, soap and water and then I scrub them on one of these make up scrubby things and then when they're clean I lay them down on it. This is a dollar store cookie sheet with a rag on it. Easy, it's, you know, and these are from the Yahoo, I just, this is, I'm filming this on April 18th and these are from the Yahoo photo shoot. I just did a photo shoot for Yahoo Small Business and I brought brushes and paints with me. They're a little crusty so these are going to have to be washed a second time. That happens sometimes with my brushes, especially when they've been sitting in paint on the way home. So there's a few of these I'm noticing that are, no see that one's fine. Anyway I lay them on their side flat and let them dry and that works great and it gets them nice and dry, they get nice and clean. These are all my old stained kind of ratty brushes, see that one's a little crunchy. But if they don't, I don't quite get them cleaned the first time which happens occasionally especially with things like traveling then this is my jar of water with a little bit of water and then some Murphy's oil soap and it's just enough water to soak the bristles and not cover up past the metal ferrule on the brush which is this part because if you have it like up to here then the water's going to seep in here and it's going to make the handle swell and it'll get loose and it'll loosen up the glue. That's crunchy, yeah some of these, so I'm going to go through these I might have to clean them again. Here's number three, this is my palette. I got asked about this a lot at the photo shoot, this is a porcelain plate from Target. You don't have to go out and spend 20 bucks at the art supply store to get a palette. You can use a plastic or porcelain plate or a glass plate from the Dollar Tree from Target. I like porcelain or glass because I find it's easier to clean and things don't get as stuck to it and it looks nice all the time and it's nice and white, it doesn't get stained and gross and when you're mixing paint for me I need a clean white background. So yeah just a plain old white plate, you can even get one at the Goodwill, whatever works for you. Are you ready? I've got one more. So this one I know was on my channel recently and I got these dye storage little binder box things from my friend Vicki Brown and she said when you go to put in your dyes I don't have any of the magnet pages but just use magnetic vent covers from the hardware store and I was like hmm okay those are interesting and so I did that it worked out really well. This box isn't quite I don't think packed correctly but anyway it worked out really well and so you can get these three you can get packs of these three magnetic vent covers at the hardware store I got these at Lowe's and they were less than $5 for three big sheets they measure 8 inches by 15 inches not only do they work well for things like storing your dyes in binders you know those loose ones with so many shapes on them they work great for that. But I realized recently after making this little watercolor kit out of an old candy tin I really I got it done I thought it was great but I really wanted the inside of the lid to be white for mixing space and I was like I really don't want to have to dig out the enamel spray paint and that's going to be a pain and then I was like wait a minute hold the phone we have some of that I still have some of that vent cover stuff so I cut a piece to fit it sticks on the inside of the lid works like a charm I love this stuff it works for so many things I keep finding new uses for it in the art room so magnetic vent covers I think it's good to just have one pack around in your art room anyway I think that's enough tips for you this month this month is going to be a lot of fun we've got some fun props coming up in my creative year if you want to see the other review videos you want to follow us and see what we're doing over on Facebook chat and be part of the community the link to the groups in the description below have some fun this week go out and make some fun art and don't forget the most important thing do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later bye guys