Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Graph, thank you for watching my tutorial today. I've got this shaker card that I'm going to show you how I made. I've had a lot of requests, I had quite a few comments and messages to do a tutorial for this card after I showed it on my Facebook page at the beginning of the week. So I have actually been you know planning to do a shaker card tutorial so with this one being as popular as it's been this seemed the perfect one to show you. So this is using at the moment my stamps of the moment I just adore these unicorn stamps so I'll talk you through that in a minute but if I just bring it up close so you can see this gorgeous shaker card full of sequins which all move really freely around the card. I've maybe possibly put too many in there but wow you can never have too many sequins really can you? So you can see that all moves around and inside here heat embossed underneath I've got this lovely sentiment which is from the same stamp set and then I've just fussy cut and coloured and put glitter on the unicorns and on the horn and on the cloud and then I've just stuck some more little sequins along here as well and one has just literally come off I probably brought that too hard I'll stick that one back down but there you go so that's what I'm going to show you how to make today. So I'm just going to pop that one up there so I'm going to use pink tones today because that's more purpley but this is the stamp set that I've been using and it's a new stamp range called Crafty Panda by Hobby Base UK and as a lot of you know I'm part of the design team for Hobby Base so I was really really pleased to get these stamps and start creating with them and I've got some really really fun projects to come and tomorrow is one that I'm really pleased with so hopefully you'll like that one but yeah you've got Have a Magical Day you've got your magical rainbow the star with the rainbow unicorn head the full unicorn and another little cloud down here I have used them to death and already they are they need a good clean I do clean my stamps but these need a proper deep clean I would say so that's the stamp I'll share all the links in the description box below so let's grab all of our base pieces first so the card map that I'm using is an a6 size so four and a half by six and a half then the mat on top is four and a quarter by six and a quarter so it sits on top and it gives you a nice little frame around the edge there okay and then we will be cutting that and I will show you how to cut that so that's the the kind of just the two the the card base and the mat that you need then I went ahead and I've already prepared some of my stamps because you don't need to watch me color all of them I'm going to do one on camera now so on the top here I've got the head and the cloud so what I've done is I've used my um my favorite watercolor pencils which I'll show in a moment um and then I've added the glitter I've only put the glitter on one cloud because the other side is going to be sat behind the head of the unicorn there um but you can see I've just put the glitter there and on the horn as well so that's going to go in the top left of the card and then I'm going to do stamp this one now and just show you quickly how I um color so I've got some watercolor card here um you do need a good a very thick GSM a heavy weight card or watercolor card when you use watercolor pencils or any watercolor pens because it needs to be able to absorb that water and not um obviously warp and um and wrinkle and roll um which a thin card would do so just make sure that you do have something of quality um card when you're using watercolors um so I'm using stays on again make sure you use a um water friendly ink because you don't want your images to bleed so stays on is perfect for any watercolor um water based um pens and things like that so I'm going to use the the big unicorn here because I need to do this um one as I mentioned so just grab that one first just get this one inked up with the stays on you always want to because it's a material um ink pad so you just want to rub your your stamp over it first and kind of get it all covered and then dab it and you'll get the full coverage on your stamp again if you want to use a stamp positioner um if you're worried that you may not get a good first impression I've been using this a lot with this card so I know that it will take okay I'm going to go down in the corner here just so I can save the rest of my card there make sure I don't get any more on there I'm just holding it in place just so that the um pad absorbs as much of that of that ink as possible just realize I'm not in view there there we go it's a bit better and then we can just take that off and I get a really nice impression just bring that up there just so you can see how it looks without anything colored in so again these are really clean images perfect for coloring um you know blending and doing all that kind of thing um I've mentioned before that I'm not um I'm like obsessed with how people use the Copic markers and the alcohol markers and I is amazing you know some of the the images that I produced but I'm just no good with alcohol um well I like a drink but I mean alcohol markers um so I find watercolor is perfect for me because it kind of covers a lot of errors it's very easy to kind of you know get rid of your mistakes so that's why I love it so I'm just going to cut this out just so I haven't got this massive piece of card there we go and then the pencils I'm using are I'll just grab here I haven't got the box anymore because I've had these quite a while um but they are by Reeves I'll share the links and they are inexpensive these are not really expensive ones I get these from the range for a pack of 12 it's $2.99 and I think $4.99 or $5.99 for a pack of 24 um but again I'll share all those links you can get them on ebay amazon stuff like that but it just says at the bottom there it says Reeves and they are beautiful they're really creamy and they blend perfectly so I've just picked out the colorways that I'm using there and very easily very quickly all I'm doing is imagining that the sunlight or the light is coming from this kind of top right hand side so it's hitting this side of the unicorn which then means that all of this side would be in a shadow it would have a darker color so that's why all I'm doing is going around the line of the unicorn the outline here just a little bit on the legs the end of the ear do a little bit under the belly and then again down on these bits here okay so that's all I'm doing there then I'm going to do the same with pink so again I'm going to do the outer part of the hair there and again there come down like so and then I'm doing the inside line of the tail all the way around there just really kind of go quite heavy there with that pencil and then I've got a little bit of yellow on the horn yellow on the star missed his ear there as well do a little bit of blue there on do a little bit of blue under the face miss that bit like so and then with the gray just doing the left hand side of the hooves there his little feet like so so I mean that was really really quick that is literally what I do now the good thing with watercolors you can build up once it's dried you can build up again and you know go you know intensify the colors even more now also what I recommend is you use one of these water brushes you can use a normal paintbrush and a little you know well of water that will work just as well and also make sure you have some tissue at hand because you will need that to blot off any excess and the one thing I will say is when you use these don't ever squeeze them so the water comes out over your image always do it on some tissue so when I push this you won't be able to see it in the camera but it's got a little push on the sides there and it just one you can clean obviously the brush but also just make sure you can get all the water there absorbed into the brush as well but just dab off any excess less is more you don't want to go in with tons of water you really don't need it especially when you're doing a little image like this and then basically all I'm doing is just starting to rub over that blue that I done just kind of get it nice and wet and already I can see it starting to move and then all I'm doing then is starting to pull out that blue into the image so as you can see there and again on the legs I'm just pulling it out and if I just blot it off I can pick up any more water on there so if there's too much water blot it off in your tissue and then go back into your image and pick up that water because it will grab on to the end of that brush and again go around the bottom of this face and just bring that color into the image so you're getting a really really light color blue and you're just keeping that shadow and that shade where you originally drew it all in so again just bringing it up there around the star again on his back leg and on that inside leg like so and then again do the same so I'm just going to now squeeze the water back through the brush just kind of clean it off a bit and then go into the pink and again working from the inside out I'm just pulling that pink color there and then you can kind of just brush over it and just keep working with it because it's obviously water it's moving all the time so you've got time to and even if it dries oh gosh my lights really dipped then even if it dries out just add more water again you can see there and then again just go to the top of the head like so and just all the time I'm working from the outside in just pulling that color inside like so I'm quite pleased with that now while that's drying then if I decide I want to go back again and you know make it even darker I can do just going to put a little bit there as well just blend out that gray that I put onto the feet like so I just bring that up now to the camera you can see how quickly that was to do so I might go back over and do the blue there just to give it a bit more of a deeper shadow quite happy with the tail and the hair but that's how I do it really easy so like I said I'm going to let that dry and then go back to it in a minute and then we can add the glitter on there as well so whilst that's drying and before I'm going to fussy cut it and everything let's sort out our frame and do some heating bottom with our sentiments so here's the frame and then what I've done is I've used my trimmer to cut out the inside so I've done a three quarters of an inch frame this is all three quarters of an inch so basically grab my trimmer and with this particular trimmer here it's got the measurements down the side here although this is my mum's one and it's in centimeters and I obviously work in inches so I've got inches and centimeters along the top but then they only give you centimeters along the side which is a little bit annoying why can't they put inches on this bit here anyway what you want to do is pop your card in and on this side here it's got one inch so I just need to bring that down to one and a quarter and then I know that that'd be a three quarter inch frame what you can also do which might be a bit easier to explain is let me just grab a pencil I'm just going to show you with a pen and with a pencil and a ruler but also if you've got a die a rectangle die which will give you a nice frame here then use that that's obviously the really easiest way of doing it but I haven't got one that was the right shape that I wanted so all I'm going to do is come in at three quarters of an inch from one side just lightly with a pencil and then three quarters of an inch from the top here put a little cross so I know now that's three quarters of an inch so I can just come all the way along and do the same I come in here we are at six so I can come in at five and a quarter like so my card might be slightly smaller to what I said it was because I think I did cut it wrong at the beginning but you need to follow the measurements I said which was six and a half by four and a half card base and then six and a quarter by four and a quarter mat which is what this will be for you guys and then again I'll just come down here so I'm just constantly just bringing it in constantly doesn't make sense is it just bringing it in at three quarters okay so I've just pointed I've just done a little markers there it's about there actually and then what you can do is poke a hole in the middle and then cut out if you want if you're using your scissors if you don't have your trimmer like I said use a die if that's even easier but all I'm going to do now is with this particular trim it's got this metal piece of wire that runs down the middle so you just make sure that you've got that lined up over your two pointers so I can see it's right over there and then with this one here it's got a marker in the middle here so if I just hold this up towards me I can just place that down right over the top and then cut down to where I need it to be like so if I remove that you can see now I've just cut from that point down to that point so I'm just going to pop it back in again here and start from again I need to hold it out this way so I can see without putting my head in the camera push that down and then come down like so again and then rotate and just repeat that on the other two sides now just fallen out and that's given me the frame that I need but like so if you've got a die nice rectangle die that you're happy with for that then you can just use that now I'm just going to rub out those little marks now got my frame so that is going to sit nicely over the top like so then you need a piece of acetate which I did up here make sure I don't lose it so your piece of acetate needs to come in at about six by four okay you want to make sure that it sits over your back of your frame here but not over over that again okay so it needs to sit on the back there within that frame so then what we can do is grab some of this red tape this is just really good for acetate is it you know it sticks to it really well but any other good double sided tapes will work as well this is just what I prefer to use and you just want to go around that piece of acetate and make sure you stick it right up to the edge of the acetate so this is the edge here you can see where I've stuck it and again just go around the other side okay so I've just covered my acetate there with that tape and then you just want to take all your backing off and then you're just going to stick that onto the back of your frame so just make sure that it covers it evenly like so just make sure that's all stuck down really nicely that comes the sun again out really dark just then okay so now that is my window of my shaker card already okay so the next bit we need to do now is the foam backing I think this is where a lot of people get you know kind of get scared with shaker cards and maybe this is where they get put off by doing them but I hope I've got a way to show you that will make it easier so what I use is you can buy the very very thin strips of foam tape for shaker cards and I'm all for it it's brilliant but I do think it's quite pricey so I like to find a um a frugal way to um to do my crafting where I can so I find that if you use some grease proof paper this is the one that I've got here this is grease proof and baking paper I'm not sure what it's called around other parts of the world but basically you want the paper to have that greasy texture to it so that when you stick any kind of tape to it it peels off easily just as if it was a backing on salad um double-sided tape okay so that's what you want it's got to have that grease that's shiny um finish to it and basically what I've got here is a roll of this is just the normal very very cheap I picked this up for a pound um just the double foam and double-sided foam roll and then what you want to do is just stick it down on your grease proof paper when you cut it make sure you cut over the top when it's down on the grease proof paper and it will then mean that you don't get any sticky residue on your scissors they're still perfect okay now depending on the how thick your foam is this is quite a thick foam and it's perfect to just have one layer if the sequins you're using are flat completely flat um but the sequins I'm using are these kind of standard really popular ones that most of us crafters use and they're they're slightly raised you know they're not completely flat now for that reason what I want to do is make a double layer of my foam so I'm just going to remove the backing on this here and just take off the backing there and then with your roll of tape again sit it directly on top and just stick it down and that will give you a double layer and again I'm cutting it over the top okay so put that to one side so now I've got double layers of foam so I've got a really deep almost like a quarter of an inch kind of well that that's going to create with the height now that I've got on that foam then what you want to do just to make it a bit thinner because I don't need it as thick as this because I'm going to just cut this excess off just so I haven't got so much in my way cut down here as well like so and then what I'm going to do is cut it in half again so again this will not ruin my scissors it makes it so easy to cut this foam like so now when I made a shaker card on my facebook live hobby base page on last the monday just gone I made a circle shaker card and I showed how to use this and wrap this foam around a circular shape so it's perfect for any shape when you cut it thin like this so there you go so now I've got four thin strips of foam so it's going to make now putting my shaker card together very easy so now I'm going to grab one of these and just remove the backing so the grease proof paper I'm going to use the other end actually because that's got an extra piece from when I cut it earlier and then what you want to do is don't bring it right down to the edge of the inside of the frame because you see it basically and it doesn't make it necessarily that pleasing on the eye so you can't really see here but I've actually stuck it you know more in the middle I guess so like so I'm probably going to go on let me just peel that off a bit there start out here there we go and I'm just going to stick it so and again keeping that grease proof backing always behind when you cut so I'm just going to cut that off like so okay so I've put the top piece on and then again along here just keeping it in the middle kind of get it to the same length as the one above again keeping that grease proof always behind my scissors never cut it without it because otherwise you will then get your scissors ruined and covered in all this sticky goo and then just do the side pieces and this is what is key with shaking cards is make sure you get a perfect seal you don't want any of those sequins falling out so again I'm just popping that right in there so it meets up with both of them again lie that grease proof paper back down behind it like so I've got a little gap there but the sequins won't fit through that so that's okay but if you had some of those sequins come with those little tiny tiny um almost like beads inside as well then you'll want to make sure you get it completely closed off again just sit that inside like so okay so now you can see that's my backing already so now when that sits over my card if I just bring that up you can see how much it's lifted off but it's also nice and clean and neat and if anybody was to inspect your card and start looking in everywhere they would see that that's really done nicely okay so that's the foam dump then we want to do some heating botting first on this now if you want to do your sentiment on the outside you can just stamp your image die cut it or fussy cut it and stick it on the outside that's fine but I wanted to put mine inside so I've got this here I know I've got these are going to be up here and then this one's going to be down here so the sentiment I'm using is going to be the same well again have a magical day so it's a nice birthday card and if I just haven't fussy cut this yet I'm just going to roughly just go a bit closer on that side there just so I can see where that's going to be so I'm going to have my stamp possibly let's do a little bit what's that looking there yeah I think that's going to be fine because that's going to be up there and then you can see that nicely okay so just play around and start I always like to position everything and before I stick it down and you know check I'm happy with how it's all going to look so I'm okay with that and then what I can do is lift oh it's stuck to my uh that's quite good I did that it's just stuck a little bit to the acetate but I'm just going to lift up and just put a little pencil mark yeah just roughly just a light pencil mark there and I can rub that out afterwards now I'm going to heat emboss this one again you don't have to heat emboss it but I do like doing my heat embossing so I'm just going to grab my block I'm going to grab my anti-static powder and just rub it over because you don't want anything sticking to any other part of the card just get that all done and then just using again I'm at my mom's crafting so crafting on tour so you'll see a lot of the bits I'm using are very different to what I usually use but still all work so I'm just going to ink this up with some VersaMark which is your watermark ink so it's just clear all nice and absorbed okay and then just sit that down like so again just make sure it absorbs I always like to keep my stamp stumped down just for a few seconds just to make sure that it does get absorbed by the card and then lift it up and you can see there it just you can see there how it just um water marks so you can see now where you need to sprinkle your powder so I'm using the Nouveau um grey no silver sorry embossing powder so I've got that one there just use that bit of card just to catch any of the excess and then I'm just going to sprinkle this over tap off any excess I'm going to do a little bit more I can rub out that cross afterwards don't want to do it before otherwise you'll ruin your image I'm happy probably get a little bit more on there go over it again if you just kind of hold it up like that and move it and it will really stick there we go much better and then what you can do is if you've got any extra little bits just grab a paintbrush and just kind of brush them off there's hardly anything there but and the sequins are going to cover most of this anyway but there we go right let's just pop this over now just need a heat set so I've got the um heat gun here just get it nice and hot first that's the key to heat embossing so I'm just holding my hand here until it's unbearable which it is and then I can just go over and circular motions and just get that one nice and you'll see it take like it is now it's such a pretty sentiment this one I really like it there you can see it have a magical day okay now obviously my card is slightly warped a bit there you can heat it from this side if you want but while it's still warm I just tend to roll mine like so and it will put it back into shape and what you can also do is sandwich it between some copy paper and then run it through your dye machine and that will flatten it as well the reason I say put it through the copy paper on top is because if you've got any kind of um impressions on your plates they can show the patterns up on your paper and you don't want that to happen so that's kind of flat again now now let's just rub out that cross like so okay so what we need to do now is that's going to stick on top like so okay so we can see that that's all where we need it to be so now we want to put our sequins inside of it so I'm just using these ones here which I picked up from the local craft shop and I want to have these real pinky almost like dust dusty kind of pink color um now these are great little tubs however then they don't make it easy for you to actually take like kind of tip the sequins out so I'm just going to put this scrap card here I'm going to put it over the two sides when I'm at home in my craft room I have them all in drawers but this is obviously again I'm in my mums but if I hold it like that then I can just tip them out and what I'm doing is I'm tipping them onto the card not into the acetate window like so and I know that if I tip it in the middle there it's not going to um affect me sticking this on top in a minute so just keep it all nicely centered there okay and then with this before we stick it down just another little tip to stop the sequins sticking to the side you're kind of they always kind of will but to stop loads is I'm just using the powder residue from my anti-static buddy here at the bottom just on my toothbrush just on my brush and just go along the side of this foam and just rub it over and it will just remove well it will stick to the stickiness there but it will stop or prevent some of the sequins sticking there even more so just go around the inside there and it's just doing all these little extra kind of tips that just make your shaker card a little bit easier to put together and get a nicer final result you can also wrap your finger around there just to you know feel if there's anything sticky and then just only where the acetate's showing just with a bit of tissue just rub back over just so you remove any of that powder just so it doesn't again kind of interfere with this so now we can take the backing off of this here so I've removed all that backing and then very carefully with your card with the sequins on top you're going to sit this over the top here making sure that you've got a nice even frame and then stick that down like so and then you can move oh look oh no look I've got one random there's one that's made its way in there and it's not the same color oh my gosh what the odds about happening maybe you can't pick it up there can you see it it's like trying to find it now it's disappeared but if you move them around there you can see and there's not that many of them sticking there's a clump there but I think that's because they've all kind of built up on top of each other but none of them are staying they go see they've all moved but they all move really freely there it is oh just spotted it again damn it anyway so that's the shake of it done so now obviously you can decorate it however you want so I've got these two pieces ready here and they are going to go up in the top like so and then this one here is going to go down the bottom so now I need to fussy cut it now you need good scissors to fussy cut you want a small easy to hold these are by x cuts these are precision ones they've got a really fine tip on the end and they're a carbon carbon one I think yeah um the the key the kind of tips for me is first of all is remove all the excess card as much as possible now I do want a little white border around this so I can get you know as close as I can just remove the excess you don't want all that in the way and then with fussy cutting is I never move this hand with my scissors in so if you watch all I'm moving is the paper this hand doesn't move this one does and that is kind of key it's just staying in control and making sure obviously I move it when I've got to move the scissors up but it's my left hand that's always moving and that's again I guess the main two tips cut away all the excess and then just just concentrate on your left hand and that will make fussy cutting that a little bit more easier this is not a bad image to cut so obviously that helps as well I don't tend to do really intricate ones because it's very hard to get them all exact especially if you're doing multiple images you know come lots of them out so I'm just trying to make sure I keep that white border simple as I can and then when you come to anything like this where there's like points go from the outside in so I'm coming from the outside down and then here I'm coming from the outside down and then again and I'm always moving my left hand the actual one with the scissors is not the one that's doing the work but again when you're doing detailed bits like this always start from the outside in like so and then I can just remove that bit there and then go back into it and start carrying around so I'm just going to finish this one off okay so there you go that's all cut out just as good as any die-cutting machine just a little bit longer so I'm happy with that now I need to stick these down so that one is going to go here and that one there oh also with the sequins that's what I forgot not sequins the glitter that's what else I wanted to show where does what I'm going to do is I don't need the whole card on there just that bit so I want to run some glitter along the tail here what I use is this stamping up fine tip glue pen and it's a perfect glue for precision gluing because it's got this fine metal tip so it just means that I can go right in here and just do really detailed um you know work so I'm just going to run some glue just on the inside of the tail where that kind of dark shaving is and then this is just normal glitter just kind of kids craft glitter you can pick this up very cheap you to get like a pack of five or something and then I'm just going to sprinkle that over the top like so sit it like so and then kind of roll it over and then just tap off any excess like so again grab a brush just to get rid of all the other little bits you could use um a um what you call it a watermark pen and then use embossing powder you don't have to use glitter but I just this is just really nice and again it's just another inexpensive way you don't always have to have really expensive materials but now you can see the glitter there on the tail which looks really cute so bearing in mind that's still a little bit wet we can stick this all down so I'm just using some tacky glue here and you could put it on phone but obviously this is already quite raised and this if you're posting it that may not be the best thing to keep making it more um thick so it doesn't fit in your envelope so I'm just sticking this one underneath like so and then that's going to go up in the top like that so I'm just going to stick a little bit more over the rest okay and then I can just stick this one down on this corner okay so now you can see that's all stuck down there and then I'm just going to finish it off with some little sequins just down in the left hand side here so just the same ones and there you go so that one is now all finished I've got a few little sequins there so they all move around we've got some we've got a stray purple one in there but that's okay um I think they're really really fun cards so there you have it I'm really quite easy it's just that prep it's just getting the foam and all that kind of you know underneath bit all in place and if you do those little tips with the anti-static powder and stuff you get your sequins really you know kind of move in freely there as well so yeah really really love these cards so there you have it so I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial I might need to stick that sequin on that was the one that fell off before um yeah hope you enjoyed today's tutorial please hit the like button if you did and subscribe to my channel to see more thanks for watching bye


Hi Abbey, this is Dr. D. I'm looking at your third problem in M3A1 and I notice that you're a little off up here in your counts for the gender and brand problem and I think I know why. I'm just going to click in that table to open up the pivot tables over here and you've got brand preference as the column which is okay, you've got gender as a row which is okay and then you've got sum of respondents and that's the problem, I'm going to click on that, open up value field settings and instead of the sum we're going to use the count because we want counts. I'm going to click okay and it updated the data, now you've got the correct values and that updated all of your probabilities over here which you have correct except you should always format to make things more understandable. I'm going to set these all to the three decimal places that the problem asked for and now you've got the answers for the conditional probabilities and all the probabilities you need, you did the test for independence correctly, it's not independent because these two values the probability of female times are probably a fast is not equal to the probability of female and fast, you did it correct. Just be careful to make sure when you're doing these sorts of things you're using either count or sums or averages when you set up your pivot table, hope this helps.


I'm Doug Wells, your National Membership Director for DAV. Thank you so much for coming out to the Membership Seminar today. I just want to start off by saying how awesome it is to be back in front of everybody and being able to give some actual high fives instead of the COVID high fives. So good stuff. I've missed you all truly. A couple of housekeeping things just to get through before I kick off the presentation. Just wanted to make sure and maybe you all can help spread the word. We put out a couple of push notifications on the convention app and we're sharing some of that information in the sessions. But I just don't want to get to Tuesday morning and there would be an issue with folks thinking that they should be able to vote and they can't. So as you're talking to our comrades running around the convention, if they're, and it's fine that it can say member, if their credentials say member on their badge, that's totally fine. Unless they think that they're supposed to be voting. So if we got to Tuesday and had to go to a roll call vote and they think that they're supposed to be voting, that their badge should reflect either delegate or alternate delegate. So certainly we don't want people that should be voting, you know, closed out from doing so just because of a clerical error or something like that. So the remedy is just to bring their chapter commander or adjutant to registration or their department commander or adjutant and we can get that squared away with the, you know, when we check the delegate forms if we don't have the appropriate form, we can get that at that time, okay? So there's still plenty of time to do that, but just share that information for me if you would. Also want to take a quick moment to introduce the interim membership committee. So to my left Steve Presswich and Eric Huckabee and to my right Helen Parr. Tank Mizzio was not able to join us at National Convention this year, but if you could please give the interim membership committee a round of applause for all the work they do all year long. Also want to take a moment to recognize a couple of very special folks to me. First of all, my membership manager from our headquarters in Cold Spring does a fantastic job of running registration for us every year, Robin Higgins, Colonel Robin Higgins. So, US Army retired. I'll give her you an U-Raw. And then of course Heather Kolmeier, our membership portal expert who's just in there to the left. If you have questions about the membership portal, she is your person to talk to. So give Heather a round of applause. She loves it when I point her out to people. I'm telling you like. But again, I am Doug Wells, your National Membership Director. The information that you see on the screen here is my direct info. So if you email me at dwells dwells at DAV.org, that'll come right to me. And that number 442-2060, that is my direct line. Happy to have you reach out to my membership specialists, Robin Blocks and Tackles for me all day too. Best staff in the DAV in the membership department at headquarters. And I just, we couldn't get it done every single day without them. So some of them might watch this seminar. So can we give them a round of applause as well. So just really wanted to, you know, take a moment to again thank all of you for being here, being present and getting us back to the good work of the DAV. It was awful not being able to have convention last year in Dallas like we'd wanted to for Centennial. So this isn't how we all imagined it, but I think it's turning out pretty terrifically. So all right, let's get into it.  I just wanted to talk briefly about March Madness so that you can all start going back and strategizing within your departments and chapters. So this is really kind of driven from the department level. So it's something that all the chapters can take pride in with respect to their department. So when you start hearing about the basketball tournaments, the NCAA Tournament, Sweet 16, all that stuff, I want that to be kind of a psychological trigger to say, okay, it's time to start thinking about making goal for the membership year, right? So the membership year remembers runs from July 1st to June 30th. So all of the awards that we do, all that good stuff, all the reporting we have to do for this event, all revolves on that sort of fiscal year that we call the membership year. So a lot of times, chapters and or departments, you know, they just historically really didn't start to ramp up the recruitment effort to make goal until May, sometimes June. And of course, then they would struggle at the end to make goals. So I want folks to start thinking, come out of the holidays, get those holiday bills paid off, whatever we got to do before we start tackling folks. But I think when the tournaments start, that's a good time to really start ramping up that recruitment effort. So just wanted that to be something we could psychologically key off of. And it's been terrific. So the key about this, though, is it only counts digital memberships. That's the other thing we want to promote, right? Is getting people signed up online. You'll probably hear me say this two or three times during the presentation. All the numbers tell me when I look at the metrics, two things happen when people sign up with a credit card online. One, there's a greater proclivity for them just to pay for the full life membership up front. And two, it's fire and forget, right? So we get those installment payments. We don't have to worry about folks sending a paper check into us and we don't have to worry about sending them something in the snail mail to remind them to pay their dues. So there's a much greater propensity for them to convert to full life membership if they do choose to pay for installment. So that's really what this is kind of designed to do. So there's a couple of different awards that a department can get. The tournament champion, so if they go through the brackets and I'll show you what that looks like here in a moment. You know, week to week to week without being knocked out. They would be the tournament champion, but if you happen to be in a department that has an off couple of few days and are bounced out of the tournament, that's okay. You can still get back in it. The department that has the greatest total amount of recruits online is eligible for the department MVP, the obelisk there that you see. And also for individual recruiters, anybody that recruits 25 or more members is eligible for one of these great iPads. And there's been a couple of years where I've only given one or none. So during that couple of few week period that we have the tournament go and we announce that, make sure you're sharing that with your folks when it comes out to you. You know, the memberships that come in electronically during that timeframe are incentivized in this fashion. There's also a couple of gift cards that we give to the departments to help offset any type of administrative cost.  We want to get back to that, right? You know, I'm going to talk a little bit about some other recruiting metrics in a minute, but we cannot do this without your help. We can do a lot of it, but we can't do it all and we can't meet our goals without grassroots recruiting, right? So higher conversion rates, organic recruiting, any online platform can be used. Make sure you run back and share this with your folks. So this year's tournament champions were Virginia, was the actual tournament champion. Great job, Virginia. And North Dakota was the MVP, I believe, right? So, yeah, great job, North Dakota.  We presented those trophies at our Commander's and Adjutants meeting here in June. So it's always excited to have them come up. But again, this will start again next March and I just want you guys to be prepared for that. We've had many, many different people who will be very close to winning, come close to winning. You don't have to be a big guy with all sorts of muscle as a department in order to win this job or win this contest. So we're trying to give you all the tools as recruiters to introduce DAV to folks who may not be aware what our members are, who they are, what they look like. So we've had member highlight videos on volunteers, on small business owners. We've had one now on a service officer that I'm going to premiere for all of you here today. But these are tools that are out there on DAV's YouTube channel that I want you to really go out there and explore in addition to the stuff that's in the members only section, the webinars and things that we have posted there, not only for membership, but for voluntary services. Our Inspector General has some there. Take advantage of all that stuff. Use that stuff in your chapter meetings to break up the monotony of those meetings, right? To change it up from the Roberts Rules of Order and old business, new business. Share some of that stuff. And it's a lot of it's quick hitting. It's all designed for social media, right? For the most part.  This is great tools to have in your recruiting quiver here. So without further ado, let me premiere this member, new member highlight video for you. Retired Marine and a DAV member before 1981. And shortly after, as a reserve, the Beirut Bomb in 1983 occurred. That front end as a reservist was a colleague to take action against terrorism. Since then, I went into Alpha Company 17, First Marine Division, and became my career in infantry. Shoot, move, communicate was my colleague. So the only thing that I knew from the Gulf War, 1990 to the Iraq War, that I spent my time just leading Marines. That's the one thing that I always wanted to do to ensure that they were safe. I know now that being retired is a sense of accomplishment. And I'm accomplishing things that one did not know that they were able to do that. After I was discharged, it was challenging. It was challenging as for what I was going to do next. I was going to be retired, disgruntled, Master Sergeant, helped me think otherwise, instead of checking out. DAV helped me out by giving me a sense of purpose in serving others. And I'm very, very grateful for the same way I learned in Veterans Organization. And that's what I'm here to do to serve each and every one of them. As a chapter service officer of the DAV, I'm able to help veterans with their planes. Once they're assured, and given a decision for Veterans Affairs, they come back with excitement and a relief of thanks of what we have provided for them. And I'm grateful that I'm part of them, and that's what I want you to continue to give them as a chapter service officer of the DAV. It's important for veterans to join an organization like DAV because they have so many other sites or activities, information that you can seek out and provide and obtain. So I was going to introduce Mario, but he introduced himself. So why don't you stand up and let us give you a round of applause, Mario. Thank you so much for all your continued service to your fellow veterans and the DAV, Mario. Thank you. So these types of videos are, again, designed to introduce us to the general public out there who may not understand who we are and what we're about and the folks that make up our ranks. So please, if you know somebody that you think is representative of DAV, what we're about, you know, and the whole eclectic mix that we have, we've had a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, volunteer service officer, small business owner, please point those folks out to me so we can consider them for this type of endeavor.  These are great tools for you to use. So we talked a little bit earlier about digital tools, and I want to remind you all of Recruited Warrior. Now, for those of you that may not know, DAV is in the midst of a generational technological transformation. So we put the final nail in the coffin of the old legacy membership system to roll out our customer relations management tool, which will combine all of DAV's legacy functions into one system that, you know, lets us talk to one another a little better, right? So we've had to take Recruited Warrior offline for just a moment. I will shoot out an email letting everybody know when that's available again. But this just does an amazing job. You can just go to DAV.org slash warrior. And again, I think I was remiss in not saying that this presentation will be available on DAV.org after convention. You'll be able to find it and review this stuff so you don't need to take pictures of slides necessarily, unless you want to. But you go to DAV.org slash warrior. You put in your email address that you signed up with. It kicks you out a personalized recruitment link that you can share via Facebook, Twitter, email, text, however you want to share it. People click on that link. You go to a form, the membership application, and it automatically gives you as the recruiter credit for that recruitment. So not only do we do extra special types of activities in the fall, we usually try to do like a $1,000 Recruited Warrior Challenge, that sort of thing, right? So, you know, in addition to that, you still earn your regular DAV points to use to buy the awesome swag over at the store, okay? So, Cha-ching, right? It's doubly awesome that way. So, if for some reason you did not sign up with an email address, if you signed up old school with the paper application, that's fine. Just give us a call in the email that you'll get, we'll direct you to do this, to give us a call at National Headquarters and we'll ultimately be able to set you up at your profile and get you squared away. And that's the number, the 888 number there. It's the number to the membership department at Headquarters. So, again, this is down right now, but we're going to work hard to get it up as soon as we possibly can and I'll shoot out an email blast letting everybody know when that happens. In the meantime, you can go to DAV.org slash join from your phone, from your pad. You just have to be conscious of putting in your own, your sponsor data so you get credit for that recruitment, okay? It doesn't automatically attribute credit like Recruited Warrior does. But it is totally good. Another question that our recruiters often get is why do, and I've shared this before, but since it's been so long since we met, I thought it was important to share some of this stuff again. Why does DAV have membership dues? Why don't you give free memberships like some other organizations? Well, that's a complex answer to that, but there's also a simple answer to that. It's because I've never seen another organization that takes in membership dues and then pushes them out, again, every year into the communities where those members live to serve members in those communities, to close the gap between the veterans' benefits that they've earned and what the reality on the ground is, right? That's what DAV does. That's our sweet spot. So membership dues go a long way towards assisting with that. So here's just a quick, like, 45-second video. If you get that question, don't try to come up with your own answer. Boom. You just shoot this link to them and let them watch it, and they'll have it. Military service remains in all of us that we're stronger together, and membership in DAV builds upon that preset by leveraging our strength in numbers to empower us through camaraderie and legislative action. But did you know that you're also helping fellow veterans with your DAV membership dues? Well, part of your dues helps produce DAV Magazine, which keeps you informed about topics important to you and your family. A portion of these funds are also redistributed to your departments and chapters to directly support DAV programs and services offered in your community. Membership dues can help purchase vehicles that transport veterans to and from via medical appointments. They can provide supplies for service officers and support initiatives to assist homeless veterans. And they can be used to support our incredible network of volunteers as they help take care of those who serve our nation. But most importantly, your local DAV leaders help decide how these funds are used as they identify the greatest needs of the veterans in your area. DAV's programs and services are free to those who use them. And membership dues are one way we all help ensure DAV continues to be there in your community, fulfilling our promises to the men and women who served. Thanks for making a direct impact in the lives of fellow veterans. For more information, check out our annual report here. By the way, I just want to give a quick round of applause to our communications department that does such a fantastic job in helping us produce all this stuff. So just real quick wanted to remind everyone too about recruitment points. You know, so another reason I talk about signing folks up online, if you can get them signed up online, get that full life membership, you know, you get three recruitment points right away, right? Instead of the one and then the other two come in later on after they pay off. So it's just an easier route to go if you're getting the three points off the top. Remember a couple years ago, we made the decision to expire points. We had points sitting on the books to the amount of, you know, two or three points per member that could not be used to buy anything. There wasn't anything that cheap in the store to buy. And they just, you know, for whatever reason, those folks didn't recruit anymore or whatever, but essentially a point is a buck. And when you start accruing a bunch of those on your bottom line, now all of a sudden you got read in your ledger and that's never a good thing. So we don't want to, we don't want to do that. So like most rewards program, this is, you know, pretty common. We're on a three-year rolling basis. These points will expire. So make sure that you're using your points as you get them. I mean, if you want to save up, you know, a decent amount, just make sure after a couple of years you're spending them, okay? Or we might lose them. And also remember, you can go to DAV.TrophyAwards.com and, you know, browse the catalog there. Work with our procurement department at headquarters and they can help you expend points that way as well. Okay? So I wanted to talk a little bit about the recruiting picture and this circles back to what I said about not being able to do it on our own. And I know this slide might be a little busy and a little hard to see from here, so you can see it if you look at it online a little better. But, you know, it's been a tough couple of years for recruitment for DAV because of COVID and whatnot. I just came from the membership awards luncheon, you know, in a room with a bunch of folks that, you know, found a way to overcome that adversity and still excelled in the recruitment efforts. So network with those people, bend their ear about what they're doing to be successful. I always try to share as much of that as I can in the very compressed and limited amount of time that I have with you all. But certainly you've got a ton of members in this audience right now that are premier recruiters that would love to talk to you about what they do every single day for recruitment. But it has been a tough couple of years. We haven't made goal for a couple of years. We, year before last, unfortunately, we set a very aggressive goal for ourselves and I think we were trending towards making it. The first quarter was looking awesome. We dropped our February solicitation mailing at the exact same time the pandemic was hitting. So about the same time people were getting our solicitations, they were hearing on the news that toilet paper was gone. So certainly that created a little bit of a panic and I think it definitely impacted our return on our mailing. This most recent mailing this past February showed up again signs of life and was a lot better, still not where we'd like to see it. But at the end of the day, I need your help to get us over the hump. So right now we typically have about a 75-25% split of where our new members come from. You know, 75% through national resources and then 25% out in the field. So I'd like to turn those numbers on their head. I'd like it to be about 50-50 and it can be. You all know the prospects, the member prospects that are viable for recruitment and much more than I do. I'd give you the hot lists and you can talk to these folks and interview them and invite them to meetings and offer them services. I'll talk a little bit more about this in a minute. But you can add that personal touch and the reason, even beyond that, even beyond just the recruitment numbers and sustaining us as an organization, that it's ever more important that you all recruit folks is that all of our leaders, every single one of them, were not recruited on a digital ad. They were not recruited in a mailing, right? In a solicitation mailing. They were recruited by somebody like you, bringing them into the organization, taking them to meetings, taking them to events, making sure that their claim was squared away, making sure that they were getting to and from their medical appointments and mentoring them in the organization, introducing them to what it means to be a junior vice commander, a senior vice commander, a commander, an adjunct, a treasurer, right? All that good stuff. And what the important roles, how those important roles impact the lives of disabled veterans and their families every single day. So it's up to you to help continue to establish our future leaders. And I can't tell you how much from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you doing that. And we just, hopefully, we can get beyond, you know, beyond this pandemic and totally put it behind us so we can get back to pressing the flesh and making sure that we're doing what we got to do to get those quality folks into positions that are helpful to the organization and, you know, that veteran service veteran mentality. We, of course, you know, Recruited Warrior is a great digital tool. I want that in your quiver so you can expand your reach, right? Also, if we're locked down or something like we were last year, it's a way that you can continue to recruit without actually having to maybe expose yourself to something you don't want to. You know, so we want to make sure we're attacking it from all angles, but we cannot do it without you. We can only make our goals together. So, again, just a couple of reminders here. A couple of years ago, we changed the dynamic. It used to be that part-life conversions to full-life conversions meant something with respect to attaining goal. They don't anymore. I want you all to focus on new members. Of course, I would love and prefer that we sign up full-life members from, you know, the get, right? $300 up front, be done with it. They're a life member forever. That's beneficial to headquarters. That's beneficial to you all, because now we have additional distributions from the Life Membership Fund coming back to the chapter in perpetuity until that member passes. So, especially if you catch them young, that's huge, right, for the health of the chapter. But I want you to focus on new members, you know, and if somebody can't reach into their pocket and give you $300, that's okay. Get them signed up online for the $10 installment payment. If you were out there and you're one of these chapters and departments that do the, hey, you pay the first 20, I'll pay the second 20, or the chapter pays 20, the department pays 20, that's okay. Sign them up with an installment payment, $10 or $20 a month. There's a bunch of variables that you can use on the online application. And then just get those installment payments and payments going and let them know, hey, we're gonna send in $40 or $20 or whatever it is towards your membership. Give us a spreadsheet with a check for the correct amount and we'll apply those individual payments. It's, you know, we'll help you. We'll make it happen. I don't want you to lose that incentivization piece. And I don't want you to not recruit folks because, you know, you don't think that they can, that you can participate in that way. So one of the things that breaks my heart is, you know, we'll have folks apply something like that and pay the first 40 for a new member and then we never see that new member again. They have no skin in the game, right? So I would really prefer that we make sure these prospects have skin in the game. And again, again, I'm gonna be repetitive. That's why we wanna push the credit card angle, okay? You know what I get, some people just don't do it, you know, so we've made some accommodation on the new membership application for that as well. But remember your goal for your chapters and department is based on the hot list. So we get a membership prospect file that we generate every year, essentially. And these are folks that have not been solicited by DAV headquarters if they have, it's maybe been once. They haven't been drugged through the recruitment coals and been solicited 15 times and never for whatever reason decided to pull the trigger on membership. I wanna give you good, viable prospects, you know, that are ready to have the good word of DAV proselytized to them, okay? So unfortunately, we don't have a way to automate this list to you. Robin and the team do a great job of shooting this out once a year to the departments. But certainly, you know, we'll work with chapters if they call in and we wanna make sure we get them what they need for their jurisdiction, okay? But the goals are based on that hot list. So not all goals are gonna be created equal, right? So a goal in Waco, Texas where there's a ton of ex-military is gonna be bigger than a goal in Rhode Island, right? So goals in Florida, California, those goals are bigger where there's a lot more low-hanging fruit than in the middle of Wyoming, okay? So for our national goal, I really have to lean on those places who, you know, have those condensed populations to help drive a bigger portion of the goal. And they, you know, really work hard to do a great job for us. But if you're wondering why there's such a disparity in the goals, that's why. Now, there could be, and there have been, some chapters where there's nobody on the hot list. So in that event, their minimum goal is 10. That's how we do it, okay? So the lowest goal, regardless of how new, how old the chapter is, whatever, depending on the hot list, you're gonna have at least a goal of 10, okay? So you can also use the membership list request form that's in the elective, or in the members-only section of DAV.org. You can go in there, fill that out, and request any list that you want, a membership list or the hot list, whatever. Just email it into the membership department and we'll generate that and get it out to you. This is, all of this that we're doing is kind of an evolving process. You know, we did the same thing over and over and over again for 10, 20, 30 years, whatever it was. We really want to think outside the box. That's why I'm always eager to get ideas. Me and Robert Graves always have conversations about, you know, what's working, what's not working, where we can tweak stuff, and I always appreciate that feedback. So again, you got my phone number here, you got my email address. I don't think there's anybody in here that would say I'm not responsive. So I'd love having that interaction. Please don't hesitate to reach out. Did I have a question back here? If I did, we're going to wait until just the end of the presentation. I promise I want to get the questions, believe me. So it is an evolving process. So if you have recommendations, reach out and be patient with us as we kind of roll out some new programs and try to be innovative with what we're doing. You can also email us at membershippublic.davemail.org. So I didn't want to talk about the customer relations management tool today. We had a seminar. It was standing room only on Thursday where we talked about that. You know, the only reason I bring it up here is just to say if there's something that you got from the old legacy membership system that you're not getting right now, just give us a call or email us at headquarters and we will, to whatever extent we can, generate it and get it out to you in whatever format you need. I don't want you to feel like you're on an island or isolated or anything. We've got your back. There's still some reports we're tweaking and some other things. So if we tell you no, it's not because we don't want to give it to you. It's just, it's not right. It's not ready for prime time. But I think we've worked through the majority of those issues. But I want you all to be excited about CRM. The product that you see initially is not going to be the finished product.  Incrementally, we'll roll out more and more access, more and more capabilities. Once we end user test everything and make sure we're quality-assuring everything. But it'll be some time before the finished product is actually out here. This is what happens when you replace a 30-year-old system as well as other systems from, you know, five or six systems from four or five different departments, right? So we're all talking together now. I know when I look at a constituent in the system that they're a member and they're a donor and they're a volunteer, right? We didn't used to know that stuff. So it lets us talk to people differently, especially to the prospects. So it's going to be great stuff and I want you all to be excited about it. So the hot list, I want you to keep that in your mind. Hot list, hot list, you need to have your hot list, right? As a recruiter. So as a chapter commander or adjunct from the department, you get those hot lists and you give them out, okay? For the most part, all you're going to have on the hot list, and we're working on enhancing this, but for the most part right now, all you're going to have is a name and address. Occasionally you might have an email address or a phone number if we develop the prospect through another mechanism, other than what we get from the VA, right? But we are having chapters that are really leveraging their hot list or having a lot of success recruiting. You can look folks up online or in the phone book and try to get their number. Mail, send them a postcard. You don't have to send some big, huge, expensive station area or something. Just mail them a postcard and invite them out to a meeting. Give them a call if you can figure out what their phone number is. Maybe have an afternoon where you guys have a lunch and do some work to that end. People are going to really think that this is odd, but visit prospects at their home. You have their address. Take an afternoon, make it a group event, go to lunch or something, and then go visit two or three homes of prospective members. It's been my experience that member prospects are much more amenable to turning over 300 bucks when they understand the value of what DAV offers, right? So, inquire about their claims. Are they getting to and from the hospital? Look for those LVAP opportunities. If you ask John Kleinings right now about volunteer for veterans, what's the main thing that concerns you about volunteer veterans? He will tell you without a doubt, and I've got a challenge corn for you if he tells you something else, that the number one problem with volunteer for veterans is he's got too many volunteers and not enough opportunities. He will tell that to you over and over again. Veterans are proud folks, right? We don't want to be perceived as needing help or being weak or whatever, but veterans need to serve veterans. We need that opportunity to serve. So, if you know of somebody out there that, you know, could use a hand, let's get them into volunteer for veterans. Look, this is a great opportunity. If you walk up to some prospect's house and their gutter is hanging off the house and you know somebody can repair that, you got somebody who does that for a living even, there you go, there's a volunteer for veterans opportunity and invite them to help you identify those types of opportunities. So again, you know, they're much more likely to become a member, you know, if we establish the value of DAD first. I talked a little bit about the new membership application, so I want to be very clear on this so there's no mistake in order for somebody to take advantage of installment payments which we never used to offer on the membership applications until in the last year or two, they need a credit card so they can do the $10 a month and only the $10 a month with a credit card. Okay, so if you can get somebody signed up that way, I'll take it, all right, that's good stuff. Just don't send in a membership application with the $10 bill, that doesn't work. You'll be getting a call from Robin, okay? So, but we did redesign a couple years ago and the membership application, I think a lot of people still aren't used to seeing that there, so there is an option for credit card installments at $10 a month. So I wanted to just kind of point this out, the Ford X plan is offering additional $1,000 through the end of September for DAV members and so we got a quick little video to share with you here that you can share in social media to make your friends aware of it as well. So the donation program that's mentioned there at the end, I think I heard reported, and if I'm wrong, I beg for forgiveness upfront, but I think it's over $3 million that that's garnered for DAV's programs and services. So that's another great deal, just when you get your new Ford on the Edge plan, turn the keys over to the Jalopy over to the card donation program and it's a win-win, right? So I do have a bunch of news on the member advantages program. So we've decided to shift gears on this and it's going to be hugely beneficial to all of you, the members. So we were really kind of tackling individual partners who were aligned with DAV's mission and appreciated the service and sacrifice of our members. And at the end of the day, we just realized that maintaining those relationships all of the contractual obligations that go along with it, as well as the limited bandwidth that we have to advertise on their behalf and still maintain our nonprofit status really kind of had us boxed in a little bit here. So we looked for a way that we could enhance and expand the number of benefits that we offer to our members. And so what we came up with was access. They're at the bottom. So I'm going to talk about that in just a second. These other known name brands that we currently have relationships with, a lot of those we're going to let expire because they're already in access. We will still maintain probably a couple of few exclusive relationships. But for the most part, your member advantages are now going to be through your MyDeals app that you'll download from your phone. So essentially, if you go to the member advantages page at DAV.org, you have your membership number. You can click on that, sign up for it. Once you get all signed up for it on DAV.org, you can install the app on your phone, your Apple or a Android device. The first time you sign in, you sign in with your username and password. Usually your username is your email address. And you'll have access to literally thousands of vendors. And this is really the cool part that I like. So not only are you going to have discounts with retailers, with restaurants, and travel, all sorts of good stuff. And still, a lot of that will send resources back to DAV to further fund our programs and services through the Affinity Agreement that we have. But it's going to not only give you access to the big nationwide brands, but access does the footwork in getting discounts with your favorite local brands. So if you visit Schmuckatelli's Pizza in your hometown, check the app. Access might have a discount with them.  So a bunch of this stuff will not be exclusive to DAV, but it's going to give you a wider breadth of access to deals, not only in your community, but beyond as well. 1-800-FLOWERS is the perfect example of what I'm talking about here. We're going to let that deal expire because they're already in access. And it's essentially the same discount that you were getting if you just went through the DAV membership advantages program. So good stuff there. So please don't hesitate to install the app on your phone after you've signed up online with your membership number and take advantage of it. My wife and I have already used it a couple of times here since it just was launched a couple of days ago.