I never told you about this

Hello my dears. This is a little weekend video that I thought maybe if you're doing something in your studio, you're working on a piece of art, you're doing some drawing or coloring or I don't know, maybe you're crocheting or doing some crossstitch or something, we could just sit and have a chat because there's a bunch of different things that I want to talk about and this is going to get a little bit random. So, before I forget, tell you an important thing, which is a bunch of the images that I'm fussy cutting are ones that I used in my nature journaling booklet that I put out a while ago. It's on the website. I'll put a link to it if you want to go get that. But a bunch of these I said I was going to put those on the website as black and white so that you could download them and color them. And I did not do that, but I'm going to be doing that very soon. I do have the scans. I just need to process everything and get it together. And the way you will find out when that is done is to go to the link in the doobly-doo to the news page. It's if you're looking in the menu on art-classes.com, it's under subscribe. But the news page is the newsletter just for classes and digital things. and some of it's classes that I do, you know, just on my site and sometimes it's if I'm doing a class elsewhere, then I will um let you know about that. Uh so go subscribe to that and you'll find out when everything uh is live there. I'll put them in different groups so you can get a couple images together. You can do um one, you know, some of the ones I think might be interesting to have just separately. Um, just be careful that you're not buying it separately and in a group. Just let me know if you end up doing that. Anyway, so that's coming. Um, let's see. So, that was the technical announcement I needed to make. Now, we can get into why I'm coming to you today with a subject line like I have today. when I end up trying to make a big decision on something, going to make a big change on something, you know, big life decisions of one kind or another. And, you know, I I sort of feel like I I know what I should do, but I want to make sure that it's what God wants me to do. And don't worry, I'm not going to get, you know, super religious for any of you who are not people of faith. But I don't want to be just assuming that just because I feel like I'm supposed to do something, I want to get some confirmation. So I always ask God for three confirmations and at least two of them being from a source that I can't control. So, I can't just ask somebody for advice and to them what I think the advice should be and then say that that's a confirmation. So, I just ask him to throw something at me from somewhere else entirely. And I got that recently. Um, part of it was a patron who uh she's been with me for a long time and she just had some deep questions and we've had a wonderful conversation. And I did tell her that I'd be talking about this but not naming her. We had a lovely conversation about it. She just wanted to know why did I ever stop making cards. And of course I told her I didn't stop making cards. As you can see, I'm sitting here making uh doing fussy cutting to make cards out of these. and um kind of got into a discussion since she was not paying as much attention to some of the announcements I had made over time. She had just missed the fact that I had some issues going on in card making and she didn't understand all of that. And I thought, well, if somebody who's a patron and like knows me as well as my patrons do has missed things, then there's going to be other people who have missed things. So, um, she also wondered, you know, was was asking why I have abandoned this YouTube channel. And I haven't abandoned it necessarily. I've been posting a few things on here in 2026, but I started a couple of new channels, Sandy Draws and Sandy Paints. You can subscribe to those. One is for watercolor and water media. The other is for all the drawing stuff. And those channels are doing very well. By the way, the drawing channel just hit 5,000 and watercolor is just about to hit 10,000. So, it it's going it was a good decision. It's going well. But she didn't understand it because she hadn't been paying attention during that time period. And I get that. Nobody's going to follow my life the way I do. But we had a lovely conversation and I thought, I wonder how many more people are out there. But then I dismissed it. I said, I don't need to think about that. I'm not going to bring that up, you know, all this time later. Why I stopped, you know, posting stuff about card making. And I think one of the things that got her asking the question too was a new card making class, the sparkling seashells. and she was just really excited and hoping that I was getting back to card making by posting that. And I do have people when I post something that looks card making related that get very excited about that. But there's a reason why I ended up not doing card making anymore. And um I had talked about it a little bit, but I hadn't gotten very far into it. But as I said, I got some confirmations that I kind of feel like I need to get out of me. So, this is my OG channel, my original gangster channel, my old friends. So, I thought I'd share that here since a lot of the people on my new channels don't know my history. They they might not care about this nearly as much as some of you might. Um, so the second confirmation that I got was a conversation I had with a friend of mine. We just had lunch and sat in the restaurant and talked for the longest time. I think they wanted their table back, but too busy talking. Uh, talked for the longest time about kind of end of life stuff, you know, kind of weirdly. And I mean, she's 10 years ahead of me, but we're both kind of thinking about our art careers and, you know, how many more actual painting years do we have left in our lives? How much more art can we actually do? And I'm embarking on a huge project that's going to take me decades. And I'm like kind of like in a mini panic, like am I committing to something I'm never going to fulfill? I don't know. Going to do it anyway. But we had this long conversation about, you know, getting older as an artist and what do you do with your stuff and what do you do with all those paintings that haven't sold yet and all that. Anyway, so there was that. And the third one was another artist who posted a very heartfelt I mean I cried through most of it uh video about what he's been through and he's been through way more than I am. So or than I have. So, please don't take this that I'm equating anything. But he was just so brutally honest about what he'd been through and said he thought maybe that would help somebody else. So, I figured, you know, I think that's my number three. So, here I am. And I wanted to talk about the decision to not make cards anymore, which happened years ago. And I had made it more slowly than I think people thought that I had because at the time that I I hit my wall, I knew I had to change something and I I just had to figure out how to do it. So what I started doing at that time was just changing my content slowly on this channel and putting in more fine art and less card making. And then at one point I just kind of made the switch and just went almost entirely fine art. And that's when I lost a ton of people on this channel because they were here for card making. I get that. Totally understand that. Part of the problem with when that happens to somebody who changes their content on their channel is that all of those people who just stopped watching because they weren't interested anymore unsubscribed. So then you have what I think of as zombie followers. [laughter] So there are people who are on your channel and if I were the algorithm and I had, you know, 160,000 people on my channel and I couldn't get a,000 people out of 160,000 to watch, then obviously I was not making things people wanted to see. So why would they show it to anybody else? So I was getting less and less views after making that change. and I was getting valuable views because I was getting really great people who are really interested in what I was doing and learning a lot together. But um things were just kind of slipping backwards and at the beginning of this year I decided to start those new channels and I think it was the right decision because of that uh the fact that they're doing well. But the original I guess the original story, the backstory to that in the change from card making is one that I haven't really talked about. I I did I think I had one video when I talked about the stress of the card making industry because there were just so many new releases. Every time you blinked, there was a new release and you had to get something out quickly. And if you didn't get it out quickly, then everybody would, you know, like I was making most of my money off of affiliate income. And if I did that, then I wouldn't get any affiliate income because people would buy from the first person um from the link that the first person who posted about it had provided. So, it was a race every single time to get something out there. And I I just was not enjoying the race. It was not fun. And I also had kind of had some some issues when I was making cards because um and those of you who were around back then, you know that I consider card making to be an art. So, when I was making art, making cards, I had just weird feelings coming up that I hadn't ever had before. And I recognized it as stress. I recognized that this was not good and had to pull out of it. the um person who I was talking about who made a video, he didn't recognize it when it happened until he hit his wall and he kept trying to power through it just like I'm going to work harder and harder and harder because I know I can make this work. And he had staff and everything. He had like, you know, a whole different life than I do. But he got to the point where he like sat down with his staff and he couldn't remember their names that things had gotten that bad for him that he could not remember people's names and he knew knew them knew them for years and I mean he lost everything. It it was really horrendous. He's on his way back thankful for that. He's an amazing artist, but he just pushed and pushed past the point where he should have and he ended up moving into a studio because he couldn't afford to live in his home anymore. He lost his longtime partner. I mean, just everything went bad. I didn't get that bad. So, just want to say I'm not comparing my story to his, but it was similar in in my world. I was finding myself unable to sleep. I was forgetting everything. I would commit to doing a live stream for some company and I would just totally blow past it. I would forget what time of day it was and not show up for a live stream and one of them turned into a a challenging situation. I got fired from from working for that company and doing anything further for them because I blew it. And I was seeing those signs in myself. I was, you know, throwing things in the studio. I was very angry and I had to really, really, really suck it up to put on a happy face and a happy voice for making a video because I was just I'd had it I'd had it with the rat race. I'd had it with trying to figure out how to make things work. And even though I was terrified of what would happen if I let go of the thing that I had known, which was making cards, um, and if I stepped into making art that made my heart happy, what would happen? I I didn't know. And I didn't know where it was going to take me. I did have my teaching website, so I focused on that. I I put a lot of effort in it. Um I think I'm over 200 classes now on the site. So if you haven't looked lately, I've been posting new classes um every couple weeks. So go look at your favorite medium and see if there's something there that you've missed out on. But as I was just, you know, trying to figure out how to make that transition, it was as though I could see the clouds parting. There was just something about getting up in the morning that got easier once I'd made the decision that I was eventually going to get out of the card making rat race and just get back to making the art that that I needed to get out of me because I also had gone through a bit of a I guess existential crisis in my my own thinking because I was trying to figure out how I was ever going to get enough art made. Like, was I going to run out of time? I just had this feeling. I don't if you've seen the play Hamilton. Um, and I I just had the song running in my head about, you know, Hamilton writing like he's running out of time. And I felt like I was making art like I was running out of time. Obviously, I was not running out of time, but I took that as a, you know, I was wondering at the time, and I think I was just in that mental burnout stage. Um, I think I had just talked myself into thinking, well, maybe I have some dreaded disease and I'm dying and this is just, you know, my way of of freaking out before I find out that I'm sick and dying. And I have not done that. So, knock on wood. But it was like the clouds started parting very slowly at first when I started just cutting back on the card making content. And then once I finally was able to just tell a lot of the companies that were sending me stamps every time they had a new release, I was able to tell them, you know, you could you could save that for someone else. Save it for somebody who's going to use it. And a couple of the companies would send me pictures of their release and say, "Is there anything in here you'd like?" and they would send me just one thing that I thought I could use because I wasn't going to use all of a full release anymore. And then that just kind of slowly trickled down to not really being involved in the card making world anymore. And it it's been a journey. It's been different than I thought it would be. in some ways better, in some ways uh more reliant on me because with card making, I could rely on the companies to keep giving me stuff to do. So, I didn't have to think about, okay, what am I going to do today? You know, I I just know, okay, I have to do another another card with another bear. [laughter] And yeah, a lot of it became that for me. It felt like everything looked the same, but at least I had somebody giving me, "Here's the thing you work on today. Here's the thing you need to make something with today." And now I'm I'm faced with that feeling that every artist has, which is, okay, what am I going to do today? And I've, you know, worked out a rhythm in my life now where I get more excited thinking about what I'm going to share next. You know, I think about how to teach a lot of things differently than I used to. I spend more time just really thinking through what's going to communicate something to the audience and what's going to teach them more about how to draw or how to whatever whatever it is I was going to be doing. I think that's probably part of the reason for the success of the new channels is that now I'm freed from trying to figure out this channel, this original channel that I used to post on, and how can I do something that will engage the card makers who once followed? Can I can I woo them back in with a certain type of project that looks card makingish? And now I don't worry about that. I do pay attention to having content for beginners as well as for advanced people, but I don't have to worry necessarily anymore about, you know, trying to find content that will match, you know, 15 years of of whatever that I created over here in order to keep the audience engaged and watching. And so the people on those channels are pretty much used to what I'm doing over there. They got very excited about dip pens because I got excited about dip pens. And that's where the new subscribers have come from on the drawing channel. It's kind of wild. And on the watercolor channel, I've been doing color studies. And it's, you know, a thing I haven't done before, but it's part of that big project that I don't know if I've bitten off more than I can chew with that. And if you want to hear more about that project, I'll be talking about it tomorrow in a studio tour video. At the end of the studio tour, I kind of walk you through a new website for that project that I'm going to be working on in the coming years. And I think it's going to be kind of fun. I think that channel will love it because they've loved the videos in that series already. But I'm just turning it into a bigger thing. But this whole like different focus now is about the new audience on those channels as opposed to such a diverse audience on this channel. And it's not that I don't love all you guys. I totally do and I'm so grateful for all the years that you followed my videos and all that good stuff. It's, you know, it's been wonderful, but it just got to a point where for my own mental health, I couldn't keep going that way. And I had to lean into what I'm built for. And yes, I'm built for teaching art. And card making is an art, but not just that. And that's where I think I got off track because everything had become about making cards. And now everything is about the art. And I don't know, I just find that to be an interesting revelation to finally come to this many years later. [laughter] I'm a slow learner. I really am. But these seashells, by the way, are not in the seashells class, but they are drawings of the same seaells that are in the seashells class. There's two seaell classes. One is specifically more card maker oriented. The sparkly sea sparkling seashells class. Teach you how to dye paper and make it sparkly. It's really cool. But we also learn how to draw the seashells in I hope a simple way. There's a level two and a level three. Some of these are from the the shells in the level three class. Uh, but I also have some black and white drawings of some of these seashells that I did really big and I am going to turn those into digital printables as well. I just haven't done that yet. I've got the scan done, but that's coming. As I said, subscribe to that news tab and you'll hear about it when those things happen. And I'm going to be working on some colored pencil soon on the drawing channel. I'm going to do another getting started series like I did here on this channel because people like to kind of watch all these beginner tips and now I know even more than when I did the getting started serieses serieses. How do you pluralize mini serieses? Anyway, when I did those on this channel, they were popular here, too. So, I'm going to do that for the different mediums that I'm covering over on that channel. But I also wanted to mention that this channel is still growing. It's very, very slow. As I said, I've got 5,000 new people on the drawing channel and 10,000 almost on the watercolor channel in the same time that I got like 1,200 on this channel. uh there's more content to draw people in here, which is that's part of it, but also there's uh just more growth happening elsewhere. But I am thinking about doing something here just to keep this channel quote unquote alive because YouTube likes it when you post things as opposed to when you don't. And I think what I might do is start posting stuff here. It's not going to be like it used to be, but I want to like maybe I'm just going to sit and make backgrounds for stuff and I might not talk about it. Maybe I'll do just some music and um a couple little tips on screen or something, some text things. I just don't have time to make and produce and voice over a whole another set of videos. I'm, you know, drowning in trying to keep up with all the other stuff that I've got myself into, especially with the new big watercolor project. But some of that might end up here, a video or two a month with just making backgrounds that you can use for various projects. So, what would you think of that? that'd be something that would be good um because it would speak to your card makeriness if you are a card maker. And I picture them kind of as chill sessions like this one except without me yammering. Just you know whatever I'm working on at the time and you know just put on some music and call it good. That's kind of the the rough plan. But the other part of my plan for for me is just to keep remembering what I've learned in the midst of all this that when the stress gets too big and things get too much, I need to be willing to just step back and and take a deep breath. I did get myself in the last like month and a half or two. Um I I got a little bit over my skis by trying to launch too many things at once and started losing sleep again. But I am as of the last week or so back on track there and trying to trying to remember the balance that I found and not to lose it again. And I hope that everybody will hold me accountable to that if I start acting weird and forgetting your names or anything. [laughter] Somebody smack me. But um I am going to be doing some more teaching in person. Uh it's not going to be cards, of course. It's going to be some watercolor workshops. If you're in the Seattle area and you want to come to something that's going to be like every Tuesday morning for six weeks or every Tuesday afternoon for six weeks, I'll be doing the same class morning and afternoon um coming up soon and you can send me a note and I'll let you know once I have sign up information. Even I don't know how one would sign up for that yet. And I'm also in negotiations for a two-day workshop, but there's not really any information I can share on that other than we're thinking about beginning of 2027. And uh yeah, so that's about that. Um, other thing that's going on, and you'll see part of that here on this channel in maybe another two weeks or so, I I'm doing a series on um my my art studio, like doing the art studio tour tomorrow morning, Saturday the 5th. I'll be doing the one on the watercolor channel, and that's going to focus on watercolor stuff, and I'm also going to talk about the watercolor project at the end. The next one is going to be Tuesday of next week. What is that? The 7th 8th something. I don't know. I don't know what date that is. But anyway, Tuesday of next week, I'll be doing one on drawing. And that'll be pencils, markers, that kind of stuff. And then I'll be working on one on this channel with everything else, like whatever doesn't fit in that. So, some of it will be mixed media things. Um, which again brings me to making background types of stuff, you know, art journaling, that kind of thing. And I also want to talk a little bit somewhere, and I don't know which channel makes the most sense about video equipment and what I am using right now. If you want to see what I make from all of these fussy cut images, then join me at art-classes.com/news. And when that big project is done, I will let you know there in that email list. And in the meantime, I would love your comments on what is it that is your sign that you're under stress? Like we all have stress. We all feel it in different ways. What is it that makes you wake up and realize, "Oh lordy, I'm in trouble." Maybe we can all read each other's comments and learn that there are things that have happened in our lives that were actually signs of stress that we didn't even recognize. So, thanks for watching. When I post one of those, you know, background videos that I talked about, be sure to leave me comments about whether or not you think that's a valuable thing for this channel, just to keep [music] a little life in it. And, uh, that'll happen maybe once a [music] month, twice a month or something, perhaps. That's it. I'll see you later. Love you guys. Bye.