 Hello and Happy New Year! I'm Sandi Olnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and I wanted to bring you a little vlog to start off the new year and talk about a little inspiration. First I want to say thank you though to everybody who sent me all these gorgeous cards behind me for Christmas this year. Oh my gosh, it was so exciting to go to my mailbox and see them all the time and especially the ones where I could see that you're learning from what I'm teaching. These were things based on classes or based on YouTube videos and it means the world to me to know that I'm having an impact on your creativity and helping you to grow. So if you want to continue sending me those cards the address for my PO box is on my contact form on my website sandiolnok.com and I would love to see what you are making. Today I thought I'd answer kind of a roundabout question that I get in a lot of different ways. It's kind of the same question at its core which is how to stay inspired. How do you keep making things all the time? People ask me because I'm always making something and that is my mantra I've always realized that I have to make something every day even if it's just getting out a sketchbook and doing a doodle. If that's as much as I can do that keeps me sane and I recommend you do the same get a sketchbook and just doodle something. You don't have to ever show it to anybody just do something and I also want to talk about how I keep my inspiration going and some ways that I share my inspiration here on YouTube. So first in getting inspired a lot of times we get stuck we look at our desk and we have a blank piece of paper in front of us and we don't know what to do we don't know where to start and what I tend to do is keep in my business I keep three to four weeks ahead which means I know what's coming up. I have videos maybe 15 to 20 of them in the queue so that I don't have any pressure. It's not like I have to have something by Monday I have to come up with something. I know what I'm doing and I have a plan for how it's all going to flow out and I can juggle things around if I need to. If I need to move something, if a blog hop comes up or something else happens I'm covered. In your own personal crafting and what I do in my personal crafting I do the same kind of a thing. I think a quarter ahead I look at how many birthdays are coming up how many anniversaries how many thank you cards do I think I'm going to need am I going to be in a season of sending thank yous for an event or something make a bunch of those. Always keep a sympathy card on hand always keep a couple get wells and some general encouragement cards and if you have a list like that then you don't get stuck with oh my gosh next week I need one birthday card and I don't know what to do because you may have been thinking about that birthday card for a longer period of time by the time that comes up and hopefully you've nailed it long before the night before the birthday. As far as what inspires me to share here on YouTube I divide my stamps and things into four categories and that helps me sort of know where I'm coming from when I'm shopping as well as when I'm sharing. The top category is the top stuff the best of the best and there's very few things that fall into that category and it's things like my coping markers my Daniel Smith watercolors and my silver brushes there's a couple stamps that fall into that category and it's like there's just a few of them by Stacy Yakula a couple of them by Birdie Brown maybe okay here's one that's amazing which is that giraffe that came out last year for impression obsession yeah that's going on my best list because I have had too much fun coloring it for months now and it's going to be around for a while in my possession the second category is the I can't wait to color that category and for me that involves a lot of stamps of course because I see something I want to color the hair I want to color the fabrics for the the jacket that little child is wearing in the stamp or I see that fuzzy bear and I want to make a really really really fuzzy or I see a scene in my head and it's like these are the stamps that I buy because I've got to color that thing and I may get it out of my system with you know stamping it and coloring maybe three or four cards and then I'm done with the stamp set it's not like that top category that's going to stick me with me for a long time but oh is it fun to color really really fun the third category would be I can teach with that and these stamps may not be the best stamps they may not be the best drawn or whatever but they are the best for teaching that thing and it's something that I wanted to teach and sometimes it's a scene or a sky or something and I needed an element to to put that sky behind or I wanted to do some fabric on something and I haven't found any that's going to be able to for me to be able to teach a certain type of thing with a lot of different things can fall into that kind of a category and I use a lot of those types of stamps because I want to teach I want you to learn something and if you're learning something then we're all good right the fourth category is the I'm so curious about that and that category for me is just playtime it's finding a crazy interactive die and just see how it works see what happens with it those chibitronics came and went right I don't know how many people are still using them a lot but boy were they fun and I did a video on them because they were fun I wanted to show you how much fun they were they're not my staple because my staple is coloring and I love to color so that's where I put the the major portion of my efforts here on YouTube I want to share a little bit of news with you that's coming up in 2018 too because there's some fun coming up one is that my book is going to come out this year it's going to be out in the fall and later on in the spring I'll be able to tell you a little more about the book and what the topic is and all that I'm building a website for it and pre-orders will start once we have that old ISBN number and a cover design and everything so as soon as we have that I'm going to be shouting from the rooftop so I can't wait to share that news with you some other news is that I'm going to be joining a design team for this year I haven't been on a design team in a really long time for a very specific reason and that's because I tend to think it takes away from my authenticity a little bit at times at least the ones that I've done in the past where I was given a stamp and said here go make something with this and it may not have been the thing that inspired me but I did it anyway and I don't want to fall into that trap so I haven't been a design team gal for a lot of reasons well this particular assignment came up or this particular offer came up and I consulted with my patrons because I trust them and their input they know me well and we had a good discussion about the pros and cons and what that can do to the authenticity of a crafter whether people believe you that you really do like the thing or you're doing it just because you were assigned it and when I told them who it was for they all said are you crazy go ahead and do it so I'm going to be on Ellen Hudson's design team now one of the reasons that I have said yes to this one and I don't say yes to others is because I love Ellen's business model I love how she runs her operation I love how she cares for her team of people that work with her on site as well as the people who work with her online she is a woman of great integrity and she's one of the very few that I found really wants everyone to succeed and that is her her real mantra as she runs her business she wants everyone to do well and sometimes that's to her own detriment and sometimes with other companies they'll tell you you can't work with so and so product you can't work with such and such and Ellen is not like that at all she has she's like go and do your own thing and just do a post for me on my site once a month and link to me from your blog once a month and I'm like okay I already do that so very little will change in that way because I already use Ellen's products on a regular basis anyhow so none of that will change I do receive her full releases when they come out each time and want to let you know that if you didn't know that already she has sent them to me and I told her no I want to buy them and she says no she will not accept a no from me I also receive MFT's new stamps and dies each month because I do a video from them an educational video for their channel and I need to have the new releases in order to do that and then I use one or two of theirs sometimes on my channel as well I get a few very rarely once in a while from a few smaller companies that want me to use their stuff I tend to try to say no to as many of those as I can simply because I want you to know that if I'm using something here on my channel it's because it fits into those four categories it's either the best it's I gotta color that or it's I can teach with that or I'm just really curious and when people send me stuff I tend to start feeling like I have to use it and I don't want that so I do say no a lot of times to those things but one of the best ones that does this for me and and I just love her for it is Michelle from purple onion designs knows how much I love Stacy Yackel's stuff she could just send me the whole new release but she doesn't do that she sends me a pdf and says which stamps would you use because there's some stamps in every release from every company that you're like yeah so yeah whatever I get to pick out just the ones that I would use and I really do appreciate that in how she works because then there's not extra product going around that is not needed the extra product that I do get that anything that's not going to be kept in my studio goes into my giveaway box and I do customer appreciation week every once in a while throughout the year I'll continue that through this year and I send it to random customers and students so you just might get a little package from me that you have no idea why you got it just says customer appreciation week on the outside and there you go get a little treat in the mail as for my schedule here on YouTube it's going to remain about the same still aiming for three videos a week four on a special week sometimes Monday Wednesday Friday we'll get split into Sunday Wednesday Friday or Monday Thursday Friday or that sort of thing when special events come along but for the most part aiming for three to maybe four videos in a week I will do a monthly vlog so if you have ideas on what you'd like to talk about in one of these monthly vlog chats let me know in the comments down below and also I have another channel my Bible journaling channel every Sunday morning I share a video there and what I'm going to do throughout the year this year is take the sketchbook that I've been doing on Instagram there's a link in the doobly-doo if you want to see the pages that I did in that and I'm going to turn those into Bible journaling pages and I will talk about how I got to that idea how I came up with that thought and found the resources to be able to draw that thing and then turn it into something that you can also transfer into your Bible because on that channel I also give you sketches for all of my original ones before I go I have a question to ask you to put in the doobly-doo in your comments and that is are Christmas cards changing? I noticed this year that I got very few with newsletters and really really few with photo cards like the pre-printed ones where they don't have to do anything they just put your address on it and put it in the mail I really have not gotten much of that this year it was a real surprise so it might be the nature of who I am it might be a trend in general but I'd love your feedback so let me know what you got in the mail this Christmas and I will see you again in my next video take care and have a really awesome 2018!