NEW VLOG! New Art! New Pants!

Yes, it's past 10:30 already and I'm now just starting my day. I partially blame the time change because when my alarm went off this morning and I realized it was still dark out, I went back to sleep. But I needed the rest. My cold, which is still here, took a turn for the worse and my worst days were over this weekend. Um, so I tried to rest. I still did a lot of work stuff yesterday, but uh the coughing just got so bad. Although based on how today's going, I think I might be finally on the mend. I said that before, but I feel pretty good today. And so far, I'm not coughing very much. Also, today's Monday. This is supposed to be my last day of filming for the vlog. It's my first day. So, usually I wrap up the vlog edit on Tuesdays, but I had gone grocery shopping that day and was doing all the food prep, and it completely slipped my mind that I was supposed to be editing. And since I hadn't pre-edited anything, I had the entire vlog left to edit. So, I had to do that on Wednesday, which took up nearly the entire day. Also got some housework done cuz on Tuesday morning, Christian's parents came over cuz we had tickets to see Lay Miz with them in the evening. So, still had to do a little bit of order packing on Thursday, but just kind of like hung out, played some cards, went out for supper, went to see Lay Miz, which I loved. Okay, cuz I was listening through the soundtrack a little bit ahead of time, and I was like, uh, like I don't know how I feel about the music in this one, but it was so good live. Oh my gosh. And even just like the visuals of it all, like all the different props and set changes were fantastic. I was just visually blown away the entire time. And the talent was top tier. Like every singer was perfection. I was just I was having a great time. I was a little confused at the story with like they're rebelling, right? And then they're at the barricade fighting, but I was like, who exactly are they fighting against? Like this is a class war of some kind. But I feel like it wasn't really explained, so I was a little confused. But man, it was amazing. And Christian and I had pretty good seats. We didn't have seats with his parents because we bought our tickets first and then they later asked to join. So we were separated, but um Christian and I were like second row from the front, just way off to the side, but it was still a great view. Friday, game stream day. I ended it a little early just cuz I wasn't feeling so good. And then Saturday was kind of like a chill recovery kind of day. Although I did paint my nails. And then yesterday, like I said, I did get some work stuff done, which I will update you on. I signed more coloring books. Not through them all yet, but got a little batch done. And then I cut all the DTF transfers. And then I tweaked the Froggy artwork cuz I talked in the last vlog about some changes I wanted to make. And I also prepped an email that's going out today for the t-shirt restock because today is the t-shirt restock. Plus, I just have a bunch of orders that came in over the weekend that I have to pack. And the emails going out at noon, so maybe there'll be a small influx of orders. I expect just some to come in gradually over the afternoon. Um, so depending how much is coming in, I can try to keep up on that. But my main focus for this coming week is the froggy illustration because I just need to get cracking on that next collection. It's uh already delayed. Like I should have been working on this forever ago. My little schedule for the year. This thing completely out of whack. I think this big collection number one was originally slated for March, but it's just hard especially with certain products that I get from China with Chinese New Year. It was a bad idea to have it in March to begin with. So, I moved it to April. Is it even happening in April? Probably not. Probably more likely May cuz not a single product is currently ordered cuz I have not even designed a

single product yet. But that's what we're working on this week. At least like the full illustration I'm working on this week. And I also want some individual froggies. I technically did draw two already. Some of the frogs from the illustration though, I could just like cut them out from the illustration and do it that way. Or I could redraw them. Who knows? So, froggy illustration. Like I said, I was working on that yesterday cuz I wanted to make some changes. So, we had a frog eating a spider. And I originally was thinking buttons, but then I just made it a spider. And then I was like, you know what? The spider's giving me the creeps, but also it doesn't really suit the vibes cuz like a frog eating a fly or a spider or something, it's like, okay, that's normal frog activity. We need frogs messing with stuff. So then I got the idea that there's a sticker sheet down there and he's licking up one of the stickers. So hopefully the way I drew that it's coming across and then one of these is pure white because the heart sticker over here which I made a little bit bigger is meant to be the heart from the sticker sheet. Now there is another heart over here and a star but I imagine that those just came from a different sheet. Maybe I changed the scale and positioning of a few things like moved the position of this lid and moved the paint tube over. I think I shrunk it down a teeny bit. Move this cup forward. I don't know. I was just like moving things around, filling the space a little bit better. I changed the perspective on the pencil a bit so it's wider at the front. And I changed the froggy footprints to be hopping prints instead of walking prints. So that's what it's looking like. Kind of looks like bite marks. So yeah, just a few tweaks like that. And then I did a grayscale version to figure out the values in the piece. Like I don't want it overall too dark. Um, but I'm just trying to figure out, you know, there's the window lighting and so how is that affecting things? So, that's what I drew first and then I messed around with the color for way too long. Like I did multiple versions of the color. Um, and cuz like at first I was just taking the grayscale layer and then drawing on top of it using a color layer, but it was making thing like making the colors look weird. I kind of switched over to just drawing it in myself, like added the flat color and added some shadows and things and like some of this is showing through in places. But anyway, and then I overlaid that back on top and um set it to like some layer mode, some blending mode where it's applying that to the color. Although on this printout, it really doesn't look that different on my computer screen. The two color versions do look quite different, but whatever. I just printed out this off as like a guide cuz I'm doing this art traditionally and I want to know what color to make what objects and just know the general lighting cuz when I'm coloring with Copic markers, there's no undo. So, and the plan is for everything to have pinkish tones in the shadows. Some of the darker objects I might lean more towards purple, but yeah, pinky shadow tones, which is not depicted here. So, this is not exactly what it's going to look like. Obviously, this is just a rough guideline. Even just like what colors were going into this, I was going so back and forth on this. Like, at one point there were oranges. So, at one point all the frogs were different colors, which was cute, but I feel like it's harder to pick out the frogs in such a colorful scene if they're all if there's like yellow frog, blue frog, pink frog, and green frog. They're blending into the props too much. Um, the way I did this is like there's very minimal green props other than the plants. Like there's a green washi and some of the stickers are slightly green over here as well, but again it's just plants. The top of the strawberry is technically a plant even though that's like a ceramic cup holder thingy. Um, so that's why I did it this way. All green frogs. And then I took the line art and split it so that I could print it out big cuz we're going to do this illustration on an 11 by4 piece of paper. I have yet to glue or not glue but tape the halves together. I could glue them, but I printed it to fit nearly the entire size of the paper. I do want to extend the illustration out a little bit. So, at the scale I drew this, I would be coloring right up to the edge of the 11 by4 paper if I want to give myself a bleed. So, now I'm wondering if I should have printed it off like just slightly tinier. I don't know. I'm sure it'll be fine. But yeah, this is big. It's like a regular sheet of printer paper plus some. So, if I have time today, I would like to tape this together and then get this traced onto my mixed media paper and then it's ready to color tomorrow. It'll take me more than a day to color it, but I at least want to get cracking on it tomorrow and have tomorrow be a big art day. Um cuz yeah, today's main focus is getting the orders out. Oh, and the name for this piece, I think I'm just going to call it Froggy Chaos. So, I had named it Crafty Chaos when I first started sketching it, but it ended up being more of an art desk than a craft desk. And

someone did comment suggesting Creative Chaos, which I do love actually, but I think I'm just going to go Froggy Chaos cuz then you'll know exactly which illustration I'm talking about. It's the Froggy one, cuz I would love to do more arts and crafts themed artwork in the future. So, why not have a bit of a more specific name for this one? Rick's brush got a bit of a cleaning. I pulled this brush out and like scraped off a bunch of glue. Like you can still see some glue crumbies. This is it clean. Okay. It was covered, especially the outer edges in just gross glue. And I feel like it wasn't wetting the tape well enough and I'd have to go in and fluff up the bristles. And so I was like, "Okay, it's time for like a good soak and scrape off a bunch of glue, soak it some more. " cuz it does say to do that in the manual for this thing, but also I can buy a replacement brush if it ever gets too gked up. Probably should get some of these crusties off as well. Do a deep clean on this guy cuz the purpose is wetting water activated tape. So, there's the water tank here and it fills this little bin thingy which goes into here and the brush gets moistened from like the bottom up and those bristles moisten the tape. Tada. I'm dangerously low on certain box sizes. My 1- in flat rectangle is completely out. Then this is one size up where it's a little deeper. These are the final three I have. And these are the main box sizes I've been using. So, we're for sure going to run out today. Oh my god, we're out of the one that's one size deeper, too. The 3 in. We're out of and the 4 in. I have one 4 in folded. Oh, no. Wait, there's no way I can send people's orders in the 6in one. I'll uh do what I can. I mean, we do have some of these flat ones. Wait, is this the last of this one, too? This can fit one coloring book or two coloring book. So, I could put some orders in these, but it looks like I only have three cuz I did place a box order last week, but the packaging company is really slow at getting stuff. Like, it hasn't even shipped out yet. Um, but I'm thinking I did not order these. We do have some. We have some of that at least because that can kind of substitute the 1 in box if needed. Ideally, it's only for flat stuff, but I can make it work cuz yeah, I'm stocked up on all the squares cuz I didn't use very many of them in my last shop update cuz the coloring book obviously made things go into rectangles and the t-shirts. But I can squeeze the t-shirts into squares if needed. But of course, coloring book requires a rectangle. Hold on. There was a delivery. So, I'm gonna open this. Before I start packing, I ordered a brain. We have more Radbacks, the magnetic locking clutches for enamel pins. It's a way to convert your enamel pins into magnets by swapping out the clutch on the back. And this is at least my third time ordering these, possibly my fourth cuz I keep selling out of them. Now the packaging has changed. So they used to be in these little test tubes which are so cute. Everything's like medical themed and like rad is for radiology, you know, but they don't do the little test tubes anymore. But this packaging is still pretty cute. It's way better than that self packaging I was doing initially. Like when I wasn't ordering them in the test tubes, I was doing my own packaging, but it just, you know, doesn't look good. This looks way better. So, yeah. Now, they'll be in these little sleeves. So, this is a product in my shop that I do not get manufactured myself. They're made by Rad Girl Creations. I buy them wholesale and then resell them. Got more info cards. I think I still have a few cuz I kept forgetting to put them in people's orders, but these are perfect cuz they tell you how to use them. It's pretty much just like the locking clutches I sell, but a magnetic version. So, I can add these to my website, but I need to take some new photos first because I photographed the test tubes. So, I'm going to need to update it to show this. Okay. I was just looking into some orders. I had to pack up a couple replacement things. I'm having a lot of issues with this last shop update where packages just aren't being delivered. Usually I rarely have stuff go missing these days, but there's like a batch of stuff that's delayed to various locations. Like it's not like it just affects international. I mean, I think the Canada stuff is making it fine, but like even stuff to the US is being weird. So, I always have to assess the situation like based off the tracking. Do we wait a little bit longer to see if it arrives or do I send out now? Like it's such a mess. And like one I was just looking into, the tracking is updating, but it keeps bouncing around between three towns. None of which are where the recipient lives, but like it's nearby and it just keeps circling between these three towns. Like they can't figure out where like which

distribution center it's supposed to go to. So yeah, I just spent some time looking into that kind of stuff. And it's now past noon. So before I officially start packing, I'm going to go eat my food that I didn't eat earlier. Really? I was just going to say food is now eaten and I got a text from my friend while I was eating. She's in town today for work and asked if I want to meet up. So, we're going to meet up when she's done work, do a little shopping, go out for supper. So, that's exciting. Oh, just got a new order in. Oh, wait. Yeah, cuz it's past noon. The email went out at noon for the shirt restock. The email is pretty basic, but it took me a while because I built out a whole template in the email software that I use, like the website I use to send out the emails. You can build the email there cuz usually I just build them in Photoshop and then stick the images in. But I wanted to build a proper template. This doesn't even show everything because there wasn't enough to do there. The template's more involved than this. But I finally took the time to build that out. So I can just kind of reuse the same settings and swap out photos, swap out which f um which product listings are included. And when I insert a product this way, it automatically links to that product if you click it. Whereas other things like up top here, this is one image and if you click it, it just takes you to the t-shirts in general. There wasn't much to say in this email cuz it's just a shirt restock. So it's a bit short, but yeah. This is the full template with the pink at the top and then a white section and then there's a full image and then green. And it took me a while to figure out how to get the squiggles to line up right on this. So yeah, there it is. So it won't be as cute as my Photoshop layout ones, but it'll just be easier to write the text directly in there. Plus then there's like actual text in the email instead of it just being pictures. Let's pack a few orders. This one's for Elizabeth, and it looks like it's going to use our small box, the VHS box. We have a Luna moth sticker sheet, dainty flowers, washi tape, and a snail sticker. Now, about the boxes. I'm wondering now if I should place an emergency box order from Uline. I don't like sporting Uline. Um, so I get my all my boxes from the packaging company, but uh sometimes if I need something quickly, I got to use Uline. Look, if I ordered today, I would have the boxes tomorrow. And especially now with the t-shirt restock, I'm very nervous about the boxes. I guess I'll see how it goes today. Like if I'm like really in a pickle today as I'm packing, I'll order some. But like I've already ordered them from the packaging company. So do I really need more? No. But I just need them now. Oh, plus I can wait and see how many orders are coming in and decide accordingly cuz yeah, those other boxes haven't even shipped out yet and I don't know when they will ship out. The processing time is supposed to be 3 to 5 business days, but the last time I ordered it took a lot longer than that. Then I just had to ask them to delay sending them cuz I was going to be gone to Mexico. So, we'll see how quickly they get it out this time. But I just I'm not expecting them for like 2 weeks, possibly even longer. So, I might need to order some backup boxes. Okay, Katrina's getting a coloring book. And then some sticker sheets. Winter ephemera Luna stationery colorful gazebo cats strawberry forest cuddles and the stationery down. Wow.

Here's Karen's order. So, this should fit in this box if I go with the deeper option. So, packing it like that. Usually, if there was a washi or something, I would throw it in a literature mailer style box, but that's all we got. And here's Laura's order. and Emily's order and for Evan. This order is for Kim. And I think I have to stop filming because I just need to package as fast as I can so I can get everything done before I go visit my friend. Okay, here's everything I packed. A lot of big boxes and I have 11 more orders that I can't pack yet cuz I need alternate boxes. Like if someone gets a coloring book and a sketchbook, I can't put it in this huge box here. But that's all I have left for rectangles. So hopefully the emergency box shipment comes early enough tomorrow that I can get the rest of the orders out. Okay, it's quarter after 3 and my friend gets off work at 4:30. So I have to hurry up cuz I want to change my pants and stuff before I go. Hello So, let's line this up, tape it, and then cut off the excess. Just cuz the mixed media paper is really thick, and it might be hard to see some of the detail through the paper if we are doubled up here. I need to make sure my straight lines are lined up perfectly. Now, I did not clean up this sketch because it's kind of clean already. Although some areas are messier than others, but like I don't know. I feel like if I cleaned it up, it would just be an unnecessary step. It's clean enough that I can trace it and make out the shapes. Tada. Maybe one tape piece on the back. And there we have it. That's huge. Now, we have a lot of border on the sides just because I didn't align the image to the side when I printed. Let's actually see how this will look on the piece of paper cuz it's possible I printed it too big. Like, I don't think an image with this level of detail needs to be this big. And of course, the light box is not big enough. So yeah, you can see the paper I just taped together sticks out further than the mixed media because of the way I set up the file, but the actual artwork portion looking pretty good. I just wonder if I should have a little more of a bleed top and bottom cuz those are really close. Nah. I'm going to say it's okay cuz as long as I color right to the edge of the paper, we'll have enough of a bleed cuz like if you submit a print file, it needs a bit of bleed, but I still want like I don't want too much of the edges of the image to be cropped when we do like art print and whatever else I end up doing with this. So, I'm going to call it good. Now, before I start tracing this, I am going to go like switch out my pants, figure out what jacket I'm wearing, all that stuff, make sure I'm ready to go for when it's go time. Okay, I'm now wearing black pants and black socks instead of my green sweatpants. And I got some reusable Bailey J bags in my purse for the shopping. Touched up my makeup. Yeah. So, I'm going to do as much of the outlining of the art piece as I can before I go. But first, I want to give you an update on my cryptic journey. So, my cryptic book is officially completed, including the large crossword at the back. I was running out of space to write down clues or like my solutions to the clues. So, I've designated this my cryptics book just so like while I'm solving things, I can write them in here. Especially since I downloaded the app that goes along with this and there's a daily clue and that's like on my phone screen. So, I still want paper to write down the clue solving. Like for today, I had to delete some letters from Chameleon. And so I wanted to write it out. And yeah, the answer was Helen. But that one little daily clue is not enough for me. I need more cryptics. So I've gone to the Guardian. So they have these weekly

quick cryptics. And what's great is you can download as a PDF and print it off. So I've been printing some off. I didn't print the whole page though because the solutions at the bottom. I didn't print off any of the solutions, just the puzzles themselves. And look, there's even empty space down here. I don't necessarily need the book. So, I was printing off the most recent ones. 101, I guess, was the most recent. If they drop every Sunday, then a new one came out yesterday. So, I was going back from 101. And then I was like, wait, they have all of them up to like the very first one they released. So, why don't I start at the beginning and then work my way through? So, I went back to number one and was printing. But the very first ones don't have PDFs. So I printed off a screenshot and which looks more like this. And then some of the PDFs are not formatted correctly. And so I just did a screenshot for some of them. But I've printed off until up until number 25. And so far I've completed number one. Now, this was a bit of a struggle because The Guardian is a British newspaper and this thing is full of British slang. Like here, I knew which letters to unscramble, but I was like, the only word I can think of is shot, but it has to start with to o. And I was like, that means it has to be tosh, but tosh isn't a word. So, I Googled tosh British slang. Yeah, okay. It is a thing. And like one of the answers was pong. And I was like, what does pong have to do with stench? Like all I know is ping pong and like the video game pong. So again, pong, British slang. Oh, okay. So that's how I had to solve some of it. There's also the word toss pot. They're all like touching your do. Pong, tosh, toss pot. And then one answer was ghee as in ghee up. And the only reason I could figure that out is because like the up and down clue, the G was the only thing that worked in the corner for like I don't know. That one was tough. And then the other Britishism was I had to find a word for noticed that sound exactly like the same as a word for wound. So I was listing them out here. Like the very first thing I wrote for noticed was saw, but I was like, that's not a word for wound. So I'm like going through the list and you know what? At one point I could tell it had to start with an s. And that's when it clicked to me. The answer was sore because it sounds the same as saw in a British accent. So that kind of stuff is going to trip me up so bad. I never saw that coming. But I managed to solve the whole thing on my own. Like of course I had I double checked that those words were actually British slang, but like I didn't consult the solution or anything like that throughout the process. Also, the way they do their homophones, aka sound alikes, are a little bit different. Like, you're supposed to get the word wild from Oscar, as in you substitute Oscar for the word wild, but that's a weird thing to substitute cuz obviously there's the name Oscar Wild, but why would you think of that? Especially with the name Oscar. Usually Oscar means O because it's part of the NATO alphabet. Anyway, so it's a little trickier. I got to expand my horizons cuz they do things a little differently. But that's actually kind of nice. got some different puzzle types written by different people and it shows you like which uh indicators to look out for in there. So, that helped especially with those tricky slang words, but we got there. I've got a lot of them printed out and a lot more that can be printed out when I'm through these. Okay, back to this. I have three pencils here, a pink, a purple, and a green. I'm going to outline the green things in green and then everything else in pink and purple. You know what? I'm actually going to grab a lighter green just cuz those leaves in the window still, they're going to be very lit up. Let's take this so I can see where my illustration ends, but I'm going to extend it a bit again for that bleed cuz I want the final illustration to be cropped the way it was illustrated. But I'm adding a little more. I really just should have factored in the bleed while I was illustrating it, but I did not. Okay, I've got about half an hour before I'm going to get ready to go. If my friend's off work at 4:30, then I think I'm going to leave around 4:30 and we should get to our destination around the same time. I might be there a little earlier. Depends exactly where she's at cuz she goes to multiple locations across the city when she's here. So, we'll do a bit of shopping, get some food, and then I'll head back. And as for this artwork, I uh I plan to work on it until I'm done. Like, I'm not going to start filming a new vlog until I've finished this. Now, does that mean this whole thing will be in this vlog? I don't know. It depends how many days it takes me to finish, but you'll at least get a lot of art footage in this vlog. So, if you're an enjoyer of that, yay. If you're not an enjoyer

of that, I'm sorry, but I need to get this done. And I'm just so excited about it now, now that it's fleshed out. And yeah, cuz sometimes I just get a little intimidated starting a big piece like this. But once I get going and once it's mostly illustrated, I'm like, "Okay, here we go. " Because I never used to do scenes like this. You know, I might draw a human character and then there might be a bit of a background or there might not really be much of a background. So, I've really been pushing myself to create this kind of stuff. I'm now switching to the pink. So, this is going to be a yellow pot, but still outlining it in pink cuz I feel like I want to add pink bits everywhere. I mentioned wanting the shadows to be pinkish. Um, but also, oh gosh, where's this line going? Bit of a tangent there, but probably won't see that once it's cropped. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. But like just pink bits throughout like the wood of the window sill and the desk. I want like pink wood grain texture. Just keeping it colorful. There's a bit of a lip to this pot, but I don't think I'm actually going to add that in. Just leave it. Okay. It's just funny cuz this morning I was like, I have to film as much as possible for the vlog today cuz it's just going to be like art footage after that. And now I'm like, all right, I'm going to go hang out with my friend. Bye. What about the eyeballs? Maybe I should outline them brown. Like I'm going to redo the outlines after an object is colored, but I just like to have it somewhat matching so it's not too different. Now, I should also mark where the light part of the belly goes. I'm scared I'm going to color in the whole frog green and forget that the belly is supposed to be a light ivory kind of color. Another thing it is I made this frog a little skinnier and stretched out like he's dangling cuz he was just very rotunded but because he's hanging he needs to be a little more stretched out. And you know also cuz this frog he gets kind of skinny when he's dangling like that compared to the blob of a loafing frog. He's still a little chunky cuz it was cute. I didn't want to make them too skinny. But uh that's another thing I tweaked. Got to make sure we get the little butt cheeks in here. I just traced a line thinking it's like the edge of the window sill, but it's not. That's further over. That was just the seam of the two halves of the paper. I can see that you can't fully erase this pencil. It's going to be a little visible. Hopefully not too visible once the piece is done cuz yeah this the side edge of the window sill is over here. That is just the seam where the two pieces of paper join. Why did I trace that? I'm not that far in. I could restart on a fresh piece of paper, but I think this will be okay. And I'm back from hanging out with my friends. We did some shopping and then had supper and just chatted a lot. Like we chatted for a long time after we were done eating and getting family updates too cuz we're not just friends, we're also family. Our parents are first cousins so we're third cousins depending how people call it different things. We've always called ourselves third cousins cuz I would be second cousins with her mom. Whatever. Anyway, I want to show you some of the stuff I got cuz I actually bought some things this time. Last time she was in town, I didn't end up getting anything. So, anytime I'm out, I'm always on the hunt for pants because I just want more pants that are both comfy, but could also be worn outside the house that look a bit better than sweatpants. Um, and hopefully these fit the bill. So, it looks like light denim, but it's not. It's like a super shaft kind of material, but kind of looks like jeans, but it's wide leg. So, usually I don't go for widelegg stuff cuz I'm very short and my thighs are really thick. So, I feel like not a lot of widelegg looks flattering on me, but I just I had to go for it. And these ones fit nicely and they're comfy. Stretchy waistband. Oh, yeah. So, Mhm. They kind of look like capries from back here because wide the leg is. They are full length pants on me. In fact, they'll probably drag on the ground a little bit cuz I'm only 5'2. Oh, hi Kitty. I haven't even gone to say hi to Christian yet since I've been back. I'm about to go up. I have to do

my little haul first. So, next thing is this little folding hairbrush because I had one and it now lives in Mexico. I just stabbed myself with the tip of the scissors while trying to cut this off. Well, it broke the skin, but I don't see blood yet. Okay. Um, but this one's way cuter. My other one was just plain black. And to be fair, it was a little busted cuz this part wouldn't really stay open properly, but I still used it. Um, so this is the exact same thing, but in a cute shimmery blue, and it's got bubbles on it. So cute. So that will live in my purse. Item number three, slippers. Cuz I've been wanting some slippers cuz, you know, I wear my foam slides around the house, but I just wanted another option. Um, especially something where I could go barefoot because those foam slides, if I go barefoot in those, my feet sweat and I don't like that. So, some nice comfy ones. I just wanted like a plain color, like something that could go with any outfit slipper and ideally open toe, but also with a nice squishy memory foam heel. And so, I found these at uh Wyinners. Um, they do have this blingy stuff on them. Like I wanted some plain ones. So I'm torn if I should take these off or not. But also it's kind of awesome. Like look at the straws and cherries watermelon. Like that's so cute. I just mostly wear pastels. So I don't know how I feel about it being red, but you know, I kind of like it. the extra bling. So at least for now, I'm going to leave it on. And then I was in the winter's checkout line and I was like, I got to get a snack for Christian, like a little treat. And end up getting two things. So, we have chocolate covered pistachios, and then the sour rainbow belts. Is this also a gift for me? Yes. Yes, it is. So, that's the haul. The pants, the brush, the slippers, and the candy. Now, I'm going to go upstairs and do the next cryptic crossword. There's less empty space on the ones that are screenshots, so let's bring up the book just in case. Oh, and I don't know if I mentioned this, but I have five here stapled together just so I can jump to the next one easily, but also it's a bit of cushion for the pen. Like, if you're on a hard surface, I don't really like writing on one sheet of paper. I want a stack of paper cuz it's softer, you know? And it's now Tuesday. I did my little crossword last night. I got all of it. I had to Google for some help. Like, I got a word right, but I didn't understand how we got there. I was like, "How does silly person equal clot? " There's one thing where the clue was European vegetable. So, it needs to be a type of European and a type of vegetable, but it's the same word. Uh, the answer was Swede. I didn't know cuz we call it rudabga here. At least that's what I assume is the more common term for it here in North America. So, on that one, I had to Google vegetables that start with the letter S to see which one sounded like a European country or something. And I came across Swede. But other than that, it looked pretty good. And I can move on to number three. Now, today I've been editing the vlog so far. Got a decent amount of footage yesterday, which is nice because it's pretty much going to be art footage from here on out. Um, I do have more orders to pack because like you saw earlier, I'm waiting on some boxes to come in. And according to the UPS tracking, it says it's going to be delivered between 9:00 a. m. and 1:15. 9:15 to 1:15 and it's currently 1:00. So, in theory, it should be here soon cuz I already booked the mail pickup for today. I booked it yesterday and then I was like, "Oh, what if I don't get the boxes till late? " Um, so I guess I'll continue doing the outlines on the art until the boxes come in and then I will pack orders. Also, let's take a look at the pants. I'm wearing the new pants. I took the string out because the strings always bulk underneath. This would probably look better with a crop top, but because the pants are baggy, I have to go with a tighter fitting top. Otherwise, it's just like too frumpy for my liking. Um, so here it is. I don't know if it's the best look on me, but I like the way it swishes when I walk. And I like the color because I wear a lot of pastels and this is a nice light blue. So, I feel like it's perfect to match with so many of my shirts. And I have the slippers on. And I was thinking if I want pink instead of red, I could probably use my gel polish on them, cure them under the light, and that could be how I change the color of the blingy stuff. So yeah, that's the out, right? Kiki, that's disrespectful.

Do not use the eraser on the back. Apparently, it's old and crusty. Kiki's claws were digging into my forearm real bad. So I was like, "That's it. We're trimming these claws now. " So went upstairs. Christian held kitties while I trimmed their claws. And then when I went back down to the main floor, the boxes were out sitting outside the house. They were delivered. The emergency boxes. So Christian's folding the literature mailer style ones. And then I'll fold the ones that need the tape from Rick. And then I can get to packing Okay, I got through everything that I left yesterday as well as everything that came in overnight. So, there you have it. Thank you guys so much. Okay, back to this. Okay, I'm only going to include a little bit of the tracing process because you've already seen me do some of it earlier in the vlog and it's a little bit boring to watch and a little hard to see, but just using my different pencil colors to trace the artwork onto the paper. And I'm hoping I got the correct side of the paper because usually when I rip out a piece of paper, I make sure to remember which is the top side and I don't flip it around. But I was kind of flipping it around when I was like attaching the paper to the back like the sketch paper. So, I think I'm confident. It doesn't sound very confident. I think I do have the correct side of the paper facing up because it just feels less flat in a way. There is texture to both sides, but I think I have it correct. And the markers are working fine on the paper. It's mixed media paper. It really soaks up a lot of marker ink. And my colors look a little darker on this paper compared to my card stock. And um what's nice though is it's just it's thick. It can handle a lot of layers. Although thick means it's harder to get flat color. With thinner paper, it's much easier to get flat color, but it can't handle as many layers before the ink starts to get all splotchy looking. So anyway, I've been using the mixed media paper lately. Like my go-to always was card stock, but I've been loving this. And the ink does bleed a little bit across the paper. feathers, which can be annoying, but I like it in a way because it does help the colors blend better because they will the ink will crawl forward and mix into the adjacent color. So, it's harder to stay within the lines, but easier to blend. And I've also been using this paper just cuz it's bigger. I'm using a big 11 by 14 size. I think I do have some big card stock I got at Daiso once and I don't know if I've ever actually used it because there aren't even that many sheets in the pack, but I've pretty much switched entirely over to this other than the card stock that's in my sketchbooks. Like that's card stock still, but if I'm using a standalone piece of paper, it tends to be mixed media these days. So, I mostly finish up the purple walls. Everything you see here is a work in progress, okay? because I might need to add in more shadows or like some reflected color from a nearby object. I'm just decided to start with the background though and then after I color in some of the froggies and props, then I can tweak the background colors a bit. The paper was supposed to be a light yellow and I kept going through all my light yellows and I wasn't super thrilled with them. And I was like, well, what if the paper's pinky? Because we're going to have a lot of pinky shadows and stuff. So, I did that, but it was a peachy pink. I should have used either my RV's, which are like the true pinks, cuz R is just light red. So, I tried to fix it a little bit, but then I did end up adding more yellow. It still looks quite peachy, but I was like, you know what? Let's just not touch it for now. I'll come back to it after more stuff is colored in, and then see how it looks in comparison to everything else. Cuz I want the pinks in this to be like true pinks, leaning towards purpley pinks. We're not going peachy pink. And I had that same struggle here working on the wood of the window sill. Some of the light pinks I grabbed were a little peachy. So, it was kind of like my

testing phase on the window sill, testing the wood because I was going to use the same colors for the desk. Um, yeah, just figuring out like what colors are we even going to use? So, I'm using a lot of my E70s and E70 is a little bit too dark, which is crazy cuz it's a super pale color, but again, on the mixed media paper, they show up a little darker. So, I was mixing like an E40 or E41 with a super pale pink. Uh, just trying to make an even lighter color for where the window light is hitting, but also incorporating some pink streaks into the wood texture cuz we're adding pink everywhere in this thing. But it's also made me realize that like I'm using the E70 and then I go up one color, E71. It should be a little bit darker, but it's actually a lot darker. I almost need an in between. I need one more empty Copic marker where I can mix my own custom in between color. I really should because I use the E70s all the time. They're one of my favorite browns cuz it's a nice neutral brown. A lot of the Copic colors, the browns are on the orangey side. And so this is more neutral. I like to call it my purpley brown even though really it's not that purply. Like look at it beside this purple. Not purpley. And speaking of the purple walls, I had to layer different colors to get the shade I want because there aren't a lot of purple copics. And so I wanted a lot of warm purples and there's a lot of cool tone purples. So I just again layer colors. Layer pink with the purple. Boom. I don't know if the far left wall is light enough. I'll reassess the situation because I might even need to go back in and darken shadows on the window wall because in theory the window wall should be the darker wall because that's the side the light's coming from. And like then the light's casting onto the sidewall. I don't know. I'm doing my best with the lighting in here. But again, it's all work in progress. Like my shadows might look dark now because the rest of the paper's white, but once I color in more items, I'll be like, "Oh, actually that wall corner isn't dark enough. Let me go ahead and darken that. " So, it's all subject to change. And now the desk, which that was a big area to color in. And I drew some long lines across so that I could remember the perspective of the wood. Like make sure I'm drawing in the wood grain in that direction. And what's nice about it being wood is it doesn't have to be solid color cuz filling in a large area like this in solid color is difficult without it looking streaky. And so I was like, well, it's wood. It's supposed to look streaky. So that worked in my favor. Also, the way I outlined a lot of objects and then colored them in. I don't typically work that way because that's how you're going to get a darker outline around objects, but it was just a way to prevent like that ink bleed. And because I'm doing such long strokes, I didn't want to accidentally color into a neighboring object. But that's not a technique I typically employ. But again, large area, had to make some changes. And then I did go over the wood a second time because I was like, "Oh, is there too much wood grain texture? " Plus, just wanted to, you know, get more ink down, darken some areas because we want it to be lightest around where the paper is and then darker around the edges of the desk. So, just going back over various areas. Although, I did go in and add even more wood texture after I smoothed it out. But that was mostly in other colors, like adding pink again. I even used some E42, which is a little bit yellowish, uh, just to add some color variation in this because we don't want it to all look just like the same shade, like the shades of the same brown. We need to add in other bits and bobs. And then I was adding in a lot of the cast shadows from the neighboring objects, which makes it look really funny. I feel like it looks like a sticker book where you have to add color by placing a sticker over that area. That's the vibes it's giving me cuz it's like oh the background is colored but the objects are not other than the paper at this point. And it was a little nervewracking like intimidating adding the shadows cuz like I don't know if it's correct and I don't know if my shadows are long enough and like how much of the light source really is coming from the window versus coming from the room. Like I'm assuming there's still some kind of light in the room, some kind of ambient light, but the stronger light source is the window. Um, but I didn't want stuff to have like huge shadows. And now looking at like the ribbon, I'm like, okay, I drew in the shadow for the ribbon spool, but there's not really a froggy shadow. Would we see a little bit of that on the desk? I got to decide that, I suppose. Um, things like that. Work in progress. Okay. Um, but I'm liking how it's turning out so far. Here, I'm adding more shadow to the desk, which is a little tricky. Like I said, the E71 was a bit too dark. But at this point right here, the marker was drying out and I was like, "Ooh, this is perfect. " Like it looked a little splotchy in a way, but also the ink was coming out lighter than it normally

does. So, it was like the perfect in between color. And then eventually I did have to refill it. But that worked out nicely in my favor. And there's a little bit more I did that I did not film, but I'll give you an update right now. So, here is where we're at with this. It's a lot of progress, but it also doesn't feel like a lot cuz it's mostly just background stuff. But it's a huge portion of the paper that's colored in already. And it's currently Thursday. I'm going to be working on this more today. But you're not going to see the progress in this vlog. You're going to see that in the next vlog cuz this vlog goes up tomorrow. I need to export the video, make the thumbnail, get it all uploaded. So, whatever I filmed today, you'll see in the next vlog. But we didn't see footage of was me adding all the shadows back here and just adding that gradient across. I feel like I maybe pulled it out a bit too far. I can try to lighten it with my colorless blender. Just this area here. Um but that's how it's looking so far. Oh, and there's kind of a double shadow on the paint brush cuz I drew it at this angle first and then I was like, wait, that doesn't line up with the angle I was drawing all the shadows at. So I moved it down, but you can still see some of the original shadow. But maybe once I do more with that area, we won't see it as much cuz there's like the frog shadow kind of got covered up a little bit. But I want to color like color in the water first cuz I want more blue on the table cuz the blue the water will show on the surface of the desk. Stuff like that. So, um yeah, lot done but a lot left to do. But I'm feeling good about this so far. It's looking pretty close to what I've envisioned and hopefully I can keep that up and not mess anything up too badly. I thought I would have more done to show you, but my days were just busier than I thought they would be. But I'm still going full steam ahead on this, trying to get it done as quickly as possible. So, yeah, that's all for this vlog. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.