Ask a Watercolorist LIVE! 12:30pm ET

Hi friends! Do you have any burning watercolor questions? Bring those questions to YouTube at 12:30 and you can ask me and my guest April from A Little Creative. April has a watercolor shop and is an avid painter as well and you know my background so it will be fun to have a couple of different perspectives!

Make sure you watch on YouTube at 12:30pm Eastern Time if you want to chat live and ask questions. Sarah will be there (as well as out other moderators) to relay your questions to me. We will get as many answered as we can in an hour. The replay will also be available in the player below!

So if you have questions on brushes, paints, storage, palettes, technique or anything else watercolor related we want to hear from you live at 12:30pm ET on YouTube!

On a fun side note I was interviewed for the Wall Street Journal on an article on Eco-Crafting. They were interested in my DIY Paper Straw recipe video I posted back in 2014. I must admit I was a bit disappointed that the article mostly focused on “what can go wrong” when crafting instead of encouraging readers to seriously try some of these projects. For instance they profiled a woman who made waxed fabric food wraps and it talks about her ruining her countertops and eventually the carpet in her office where she makes them to sell instead of showing a very simple, non messy, easy and frugal method of making them like I did in this video.  I guess for readers it’s probably more fun to read an article about craft fails than one where you actually learn how to craft sustainable products. I’m sure the former sells more papers than the latter and at least I’m told the article is on the front page of the print edition, so that’s cool. I hope it brings some new folks into The Frugal Crafter Family where they can learn it is possible to craft sustainably without an awful counter-ruining mess and have fun in the process.

See you at 12:30 for the live Q&A and til then happy crafting!

LIVE Ask an Artist at 9:30pm Eastern Time Tonight!

Hi friends! I have a treat for you tonight. I have gathered up some of the finest (and funnest!) artists on YouTube for an evening of artist Q & A!

If you want to take place in the chat make sure to watch at 9:30 Eastern Time tonight (Tuesday the 9th) on the YouTube watch page and you can type your questions in the chat. You can also leave your question in the comments below and we will get to as many as we can. You can watch the live show or the replay on this page but to hang out and chat you will need to watch it at 9:30ET tonight on YouTube.

You can ask Questions about art materials, art business, painting tips, anything art related!

Special Guests are:

• Cinnamon Cooney
• Marty Owens
• Steve Mitchell
• Lisa Clough
• Extra Special Guest, my better half, Jason (AKA Mr. Frugal) will be reading your questions!

My hope is that more of you can make a live show in the evening. Let me know if evenings are better than days for the live shows.  Here are the USA time zones when we are live tonight-9:30pm ET, 8:30pm CT, 7:30pm MT, 6:30pm PT, hope it helps! See you tonight and happy crafting!

Another Ask a Crafter LIVE tomorrow!

Hi friends! I wanted to give you the heads up that there will be another Ask a Crafter Live tomorrow at noon ET. You can ask questions on The YouTube LIVE watch page (you can even add them in the chat on that page now) or you can watch the show live here on my blog in the player below. I will not be able to monitor comments here though, so if you want to get your questions in you will need to ask it in the chat box on YouTube.

My Guests include:

• Kathy Oldfield
• Lorraine Swazey (hopefully she will be in studio with me if nothing comes up)
• and special Guest Cinnamon Cooney the Art Sherpa!

With these fun gals on board we are bound to have a great time! Hope to see you live tomorrow but if you can’t make it the replay will be available directly after the broadcast! I’ll be back later today with crafty tutorial but til then happy crafting!

Ask a Crafter LIVE!

Hi friends! if you follow me on Facebook or subscribe to my YouTube channel you may have caught the live Q&A session on YouTube today, if not, here is the replay!

I think I will plan on doing a live Ask a Crafter every 2 weeks. We may have weeks where Kathy and Lorraine can be live in my craftroom with me but if not they can join me via google hangouts. I know not everyone will like this new format but it is the only way I can continue to do Ask a Crafter with my (and my busy guests) schedules. I also wanted to interact with the people watching so I took the questions live from the viewers in the YouTube chat box and because I was not hampered with long upload times (one of the reasons I had to shorten the Ask a Crafter show last year) we could go until we ran out of questions. The chat moved really fast and we might have missed one (We are not perfect) but we did out best and had a great time. People have commented so many times that they like to listen to Ask a Crafter when crafting or doing chores and I think this format is good for that. I hope you enjoy the friendly crafty chat! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

I almost restarted recording but thought nah…oh, and winners!!!!

Howdy friends! I just got back from my kids elementary school band concert, it really means the school year is almost done when that rolls around! Last week when Kathy and Lorraine came over I talked them into filming a second AAC episode for you! I am not sure when the next one will be because I am “right out straight” until the Heirloom Stamp show. Speaking of that, I have winners to announce!!! The following people will get a free admission ticket to the Heirloom Production Show in West Springfield MA, don’t fret if you did not win you can still get discounted pre-sale tickets online for $6 each ($8 at the door) and while you are there you might want to sign up for one of my watercolor for stampers classes. I am so excited about meeting many of you at the show! If I had fewer than 12 people enter to win I was going to give some winners extra tickets but since we had many more than that each winner will get one weekend pass to the show. The winners are:

Marnie 

Brenda

Syd Howard

Stephanie

Ginny Maxam

Betty Wlazlo

Jennifer

Sara

Jen Johnson

janinep325

Carol Blais

Sgrovo

Winners, I have sent your email addresses (the one you used when leaving a comment here) to Heirloom and you will receive a custom printable ticket via email. I can’t wait for the stamp show!

And now, here is the latest Ask a Crafter, we got off to a rough start, well, what’s new right LOL!

I’d love to chat more by it is getting late and I need to chillax…OK it’s late, I normally don’t talk like the cool kids, well, like they did 5 years ago LOL! Have a great night and til next time happy crafting.

AAC is Back & Sign-up to Win Tickets to the Heirloom Stamp Show!

Hi friends! I spur-of-the-moment called Kathy and Lorraine yesterday and asked them if they could shoot an Ask a Crafter episode, turns out I had enough questions in the jar for 2 (yay! there will be an AAC next week too!) I really wanted to have them on because we are getting so excited for the Heirloom Stamp Show in West Springfield June 6-7 and Heirloom is giving me 12 tickets to give away! Just leave a comment saying you want to win tickets if you will be in the W. Springfield Massachusetts area June 6-7th so I can make sure someone who can use them wins. Also note if you could use an extra ticket, that way if fewer than 12 sign up I can make sure that none go to waste. I will give the email addresses of the winners to the folks at Heirloom Productions and they will email you printable tickets (no need to put your email in the comment, I can see it on the back-end, that is why I am doing to contest here and not on YouTube because it is hard to get hold of people there if they win.) I’ll pick a winner next Wednesday. Oh, and I am teaching 2 watercolor for stampers classes on June 5th at the convention center. There is room in the Watercolor Techniques for Stampers class but the Using Watercolor to Stamp is almost full (it might be sold out because you can’t register online for it anymore, you have to call) so if you are interested in either of those classes sign up now! I also think we ought to have a meet up, maybe at Chili’s Friday night, or at Micheal’s Craft Store…anyone?

OK, enough of that, I don’t want anyone to be sad if they do not have a stamp show near them (heck, we have to drive 5 hours so I feel your pain, at least I have good company for the ride!) so let’s get on with the show!

That WAS fun! I am so glad I got caught up on projects and was able to squeeze in time with the ‘girlfriends! Thanks so much for spending some of your busy day with us and til next time happy crafting!

AAC & a SILVER play button!

Hi Friends! It is Wednesday and time for Ask a Crafter, yes singular. A viewer asked my why Kathy and Lorraine bailed on me this week but it is me, not them. I am been to busy to pull the girls together for this. We film 5 episodes at a time so before they arrive I spend about 3 hours sifting though blog posts and videos for the questions and we spend a day filming and I just have not had the spare time to make it happen. I am excited about all of the off-YouTube projects I have going on right now but there are only so many hours in the day. 😦 So I apologies to you and them for not managing my time as well as a woman of my age should be able too. If only I had the time to take a time management class LOL! But I could not completely let you down so here is a solo AAC with me still picking away at the questions in the jar. BTW, my kid with the cough is all better and according to the school it is going around, shouldn’t cold season be over by now?!?

Video: Ask a Crafter S3:E29

Annnnnnddddddd I got my silver play button from YouTube in the mail today! In case you don’t know once you hit the 100,000 subscriber milestone YouTube honors you with a silver play button. I hear you get a gold one when you hit a million, goals and stuff:) I shot this video this afternoon seconds after I opened the box:

Video: Giddy Linny

Thanks for stopping by tonight! My apologies that video previews are not showing correctly to email subscribers, I wish I could fix that, my posts must look so dull to you in email so be sire to visit my blog for the videos and fun! Have a great night and as always happy crafting!

Ask a Crafter & a bit of a rant!

Hi friends! I am trying to get into my happy space after opening a bill from my hospital after my “procedure” last month. Wouldn’t you think if an insurance company will only agree to pay half that the hospital is grossly overcharging you? I think so because the level of care I received and the bill did not jive. For that price I should have got a boob-job and not a mammogram! I’m ticked off. I am trying to shake of the negative vibes I am feeling. Grrrrrr. But on a positive note it’s ask a crafter time, I’m solo this week but hopefully I can get together with Kathy and Lorraine next week.

Video! (Sorry that the video is not showing up for email subs, I still do not know how to fix it, please click over to my blog to see the AAC video)

And more of my American healthcare rant, you can stop reading if you like, I don’t mind, really:)

I’m sorry to so cranky, I actually thought of deleting this rant, but nothing makes my blood boil more than the cost of healthcare in this country. Insurance is insanely expensive and they do not cover everything, not even close. We all pay 5x or more for insurance that what other countries pay to provide healthcare per person. Hats off to the UK, I wish they would teach our leaders how it’s done. Let’s get rid of insurance companies and only spend healthcare dollars on people providing healthcare. Get rid of billing departments and insurance companies, think of the money we’d save. Have drug companies compete for business. Prices would drop because the winners would be the sole provider of the drug, implant etc. We can even retrain the people who used to work for insurance companies to be doctors and nurses, we can find them jobs. Best of all everyone will have healthcare and since we are not paying crazy insurance premiums we can afford a little extra taxes. It’s not socialist…OK maybe it is but then so is public school and I’m all for that! Don’t get me started on the price of a college degree that is not worth the paper it is printed on! Sorry to get political on you, actually I do not care for either of the political parties but I always vote! Feel free to leave an AAC question in the comments or a healthcare rant, I am sure I am not the only one frustrated by this. I apologize for going off topic there but I do feel better venting, thanks for listing guys 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Ask A crafter S3:E27 Dealing with “thumbs down” and the frugal tip that wasn’t…

Hi friends! Tonight the gals and I are tackling the thought-provoking issue of the “thumbs down/dislike” button. OK, not that thought-provoking, we are kinda laughing at how ridiculous it is, you can’t please everyone right? I’m not sure what we will do for next weeks show, we have all been so busy and Lorraine will be out-of-town on crafty business…ohhh, we can say she is away on assignment (I want that assignment!) so you will likely have Kathy and I or just me, or maybe we will take the week off.  We will have to see how the week plays out. Anyway we are here in full force for ya tonight!

Video! (email subscribers can imagine the 3 adorable awesome hosts looking surprisingly like we did last week)

OK, I need to print a retraction (that sound official huh?) I want to take back some advice we gave last week, I think it was last week, everything just runs together when we pretape episodes, but we had a question about using long dies on standard cutting pads. I don’t have any long dies but the gals had cut long dies with their standard pads by cutting the die halfway, flipping it around and cutting the other way with no problem. I did not think to ask if they were thick or thin dies, it did not occur to me but a viewer very politely informed me that she tried this with a long, thin Tim Holtz die and it cracked so I want to urge you not to try this at home AND urge you to use caution when trying any of my frugal (not what the tools were intended for) stunts. This kind viewer did not want the same fate for anyone else and she said it is actually more frugal to get the long platform and plates because you can cut many dies at once and save time. And you will not risk ruining your dies. So, I ask you viewers for advice. If you are cutting long dies with short pads how are you doing it? What kind of dies are you using? Let me know in the comments!

To recap:

1. The haters gonna hate.
2. Don’t cut long dies on short pads.
3. Video thumbnails are still not showing up for email subscribers, boo.

I hope you are having a fabulous evening! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!