 Marianne Espresso Press Design. Welcome. Thank you for joining me on this beautiful Tuesday, March 12th, 2024. Today we're gonna do something easy because it's my birthday and I didn't feel like working. So I have a surprise for you and first the usual. Get my list out here. Thank you to all my customers and everyone who has left kind reviews and kind comments. Jolene, the second one is Japanese so I can't read Japanese, but thank you. Love you, Japan. Cindy, Marla, and Lynette. So thank you for your purchases. I appreciate it very very much. Three or four new papers for you and then we'll get into what we're gonna do today. The first is Primrose Path. Very lovely papers here. Let me bring these up because I know that my light is fading colors, especially the greens. Where do these seed catalog labels? I don't know if you're gonna read the seed company on there, but I only printed a couple. Well yeah, I only brought down a couple. Black set. Vintage Seascapes, collage type. Seascapes are a variety and what is this? Mixed Media Collage and that is your surprise today. I have a set. One set. I'm probably gonna make two sets because I fell in love with it and I had enough to make two. So I'm probably gonna make two sets. So what we're gonna do today is make some tags and I have mine already cut and I use these papers, which I have for you and I have three of them, three designs for you, which I already cut off to make these tags and if I have time I'll make another one or maybe I will make some ATC cards because it occurred to me. After I did these, did these would make great ATC cards. So maybe we'll have time to do that. But yes, it's my birthday and I didn't feel like working. So what you'll need, I'll have this PDF for you to download under the description in the description and you can create along with me or make your own tags however you want. And how did this come about? Well, my daughter's birthdays was Saturday and I made her a tag and I made this little gift card holder pop up. Well, actually I made two and then I just realized, you know, that's not her style. I know what she's gonna think when she sees that. She's gonna think little old lady. So I made her a completely new one and then it just occurred to me that I need some different styles of tags in my stash so that when this happens I don't have to be scrambling around for or make my own mixed media paper, which I have a bunch of it, but so I just decided what I wanted to play around with was some tags. So I made one and there it is and all my extras and whatever little scraps I could come up with. I added to it so it's a little little dimensional. So what you'll need are your tags. I have some scrap paper. I have some tags for words. I have some magazines and other stuff so I can make some washi. This new thing I did with the washi is tape the word underneath that says enchanting and that came off of this pattern. So I was looking for patterns. Things like that. So okay let's get started and I used some of my millefiori. I thought it kind of went well together. Don't be afraid to mix things. So that's what I did and I'm just gonna add a little bit to these too. So they're all similar in some way and I was kind of looking for one with more gold but I guess it doesn't really matter. There's enough red in there that this will work and I'm just gonna put a little strip along the bottom of this one because I forgot to put it on. I don't think I want the same. I forgot to put it on before I cut my tag. That's what I meant to say. So I'm just gonna go along the bottom or I might go across the center on the third one. I don't know yet. So that's what we're doing today. It's gonna be a beautiful day. Almost 70 degrees which is quite unusual for my birthday. Can't even tell you how many birthdays I've had. Two feet of snow got a snowstorm for my birthday but I don't know if I said I'm 62. 62 years young hopefully. Gonna have to start writing that on my forehead because ever since I've been 50 something there have literally been times when I forgot how old I was because not necessarily because I have Alzheimer's yet but just because I don't pay attention to that kind of stuff anymore. If you don't have to you know it's not like my daughter where you're looking forward to being 18 which she is. Can't believe she's 18 so she's looking forward to you know a lot of things. After 50 I kind of quit counting so that's why some years I literally forget how old I am. Then I just asked my husband how old are you and then I subtract two. Okay so I got that on there. So you're just gonna need the usual glue. I have tape. I have some stamps. I might do some stamping but I really don't think so. So now I'm gonna look for a word. Put it on there. Hopefully I have good paper here. Charming. Maybe I'll go with friend. I'm just looking this one real quick. So I hope everyone's doing well. Smiled and chanting. Okay I think I'm gonna put glorious and I see extraordinary and I see exquisite. I love this paper. You know sometimes well you all know sometimes I get tired of vintage and so does everyone. I think I should have put it was glorious. Keep that maybe. I think that space is calling for something so I'm probably gonna go there. I'm probably gonna use glue. So these really didn't mostly the design did all the work so that was helpful. So I didn't even get anything yet. I'm still deciding what I want. I have a wish list of my long so we went out to dinner already over the weekend. It's a co-celebration. Then I go to this place that has the best steak and the best hamburgers. They grind their steak or cut their own steak and grind their own meat. So let me see here. I know I want a piece of washi going over that. I think that's kind of cool. I see if I have something to do. It's probably a little too bright. How to work. Try to get that sleeve. So I get there and this is part alcohol which I always keep a little bit of alcohol in my water just so things dry faster. It's a little too much of a spray there. Let's see what I can get off of here. It's a little long. So anyway like I said I get there. That's what I got. And I can never decide if I want the burger or the steak. I'm going to try to make sure I can see that word through there and if I can't I'll use it. I might not use it. It's not there. So let me see if I can get another one with a little white, a little clear left. Don't go so close. This tape is... I always think that there's the end finally. Okay. I'm going to get a little clear. There we go. I'm going to put some blue on this too. So anyway I can never decide which one I want when I get there. And they also make the best potato salad. So when if they don't have the potato salad then I have to go to plan B. So I always say well okay if they don't have this then I guess I'm not having that. So I always end up just going for the burger because the burgers are so fabulous. But this time I did try a different burger. So I skipped the steak because I didn't... I feel like if I'm going to have steak I want the whole premier meal. And I want all of their signatures and their potato salad is a signature. They're always sold out of it by the time we get there. You have to get there and go much earlier to get the potato salad. Okay. So there's that. There's the bottom. Now I honestly don't know if these need any more. I was toying around with cutting out flowers and putting them on. I have some buttons. I have some stamps, some butterflies. Those little flowers go. There's one. I think those, if they go anywhere, they're gonna go on here. If they go on. We'll see. I'll see if I can add anything at the end. But I'm really have a little stamp. I'm really thinking they don't need much. Just let the design do the work. So yes after this, this evening, I might shop. We'll see. Trying to decide what what I want. I might end up buying a craft iron. Okay. So I have glorious enchanting, extraordinary, or exquisite. Probably exquisite. And there's the bottom. If you can hear that, I don't know. It's kind of... Let me see where I want to put the tape on this one. I don't know if I want to go up and down because probably not right there. I'm thinking. So that was pretty much that. As far as birthday. Let's see. What colors do I have left? I don't know if I'm gonna get anything off of here. This paper is a little thick. That's a little busy. What else do we have? Let's go for a little spot of that. Let's see how that works. I went to buy new tape and new glue. I accidentally left my glue stick open and I'll probably have to wait till near Christmas before they come back out with the invisible tape. A dollar tree. And they did not have a glue stick. So I just got that little pattern. I don't know if you can see that. Let's see what that's gonna do. It's even gonna show up barely. Okay. Let's see. Come through here. See if I can get something a little more exciting. Oh, that's kind of interesting. There's any glue in there or not. Maybe. Let's try that. So I saw some interesting Etsy news this last week. Apparently if you open a new shop, well first of all let me practice by saying that they had a survey and they got so many responses they had to shut it down early. That's not much better but I don't want to take the time. Let's see how it shows up if at all slightly but at least I can still read my words. So anyway they had a survey and had to shut it down early and then apparently if you open a new shop you're gonna have to pay because they want to get rid of people who aren't serious. Yeah, like two years too late. So I don't know what's gonna happen on Etsy but it's not looking good. Why they did what they did in letting two over two million, oh wait how many is it? Almost five million new shops in two years is beyond me but they did and now this seems like a retro, retrofit solution to a problem, a self-created problem. So I've been thinking I don't know how much longer I'm going to be on Etsy. Just gonna play it by ear, which I've been doing for the past year and a half since I recognized, since I discovered there was a problem and began to investigate as to why there was a problem. So I used every little scrap and I just created some extra tags and I'm gonna string these up hopefully quickly and see if those tags need anything else. I was toying with putting a paper bead on somewhere but I couldn't make it work. I ordered some new bulb pins and now that's your fraying already. I didn't even get you in the hole. Let me get a needle. I do have a safety pin project possibly coming up that I've been wanting to do for a while. Okay, there's number two but I don't know. It seems like Etsy's going to jump the shark if they don't come up with a solution. You can't make it through the churn and you can tell just by your stats that people aren't seeing your items and because there's too many shops and there's nothing you can do about that unless you want to spend all your time marketing for Etsy and going outside and hoping to draw more customers in, which I'm not about to do anymore than I already do because that's why I'm on a platform in the first place to take advantage of. It's like being in a mall and there's no advantage to being in a mall. Why be there? Okay, so with just that many shops and that many products, if you can imagine seven million people probably have at least a hundred products and even if you advertise you're probably not getting on page one. I don't know if they have a tier structure for advertising. They don't go by conversion rate. It's praying a little bit but I'll fix it later. Okay, they don't go by conversion rate so they might put bestsellers on the front page but they don't seem to go by whether a store is... they don't seem to go by stats most people would go by. Let me put it that way. So I don't know. Okay, so there's tag number two. Very simple. Number three. That says Exquisite. I don't know if you can read that. That's just scraps. I wanted to use every inch of that paper I cut off and I did use most of it. There's tag number one again. Enchanting. Very simple but I know my daughter would probably like something like that a lot better. So now I have some tags and paper and I love this paper and I probably will make some ATC cards with it because that would be a lot of fun. Okay everyone, thank you for stopping by. I'll see you next time. You have a great week. Bye.