Boom. I think we're live man. We're live. We are live. Hi everyone as you join us this Tuesday, this Thursday, this Wednesday One o'clock. Every Wednesday at one o'clock except last week. Sorry about that. We missed last week I was just lying on my couch feeling sorry for myself And then some of you actually phoned into our residence and said, where's Dave? Where's Dave? And I was like, really? Some people actually cared and that was nice. So here we are. Why were you on your couch? I was just sad and I just sort back and I said I'm just gonna lie on the couch. Well, we're glad you're back. I kind of served that up for you. Anyways, go on. Yes. So while we wait for everyone to come on and that when we get down to the good stuff when we resin I was gonna walk around because there's always interesting stuff that might spark some questions If you have any questions, just ask them. Jeff will try and show them up to me and to Jasmine over there Say hi to Jazz. Hi everybody. Hello. Jasmine. We call her jazmataz. And everyone needs Jasmine because if you don't know where something is you just ask Jasmine And she just finds it. She just comes like it's in the drawer. So, hi Fabiola. Hi Fabiola. So over the past couple of weeks we've been filling up cracks in the wood grounds and it looks like we're totally full. Wow. So the next stage is just sanding and we're not gonna do that in this live video because it's messy and lonely. But you can see this one was sanded and perfectly flat. Julie Misty from White Rock BC. Oh, thanks for missing me, Julie. That makes me so happy. I couldn't believe that anyone was wondering, was ready at Wednesday at one o'clock. And then what's this, Jeff? Alexis from Detroit's here. Oh yeah, and then we've got a candy skittle dish. The skittle dish. And the final step was just to cut it with a table saw. We've got this tape cut up with a table saw. I don't know if we get to that today. But that's something interesting. Something else interesting is how do you put bug, butterflies and beetles in bed dung in clear resin? Hi Mary. And we're gonna be experimenting for more of that. Maybe we'll do a bit of prep work on it to show you. But again, if you have any questions, that's just some of the stuff we're working on here. Well, we've got Dominican Republic, Lady Lake Florida and Israel watching. That's awesome. The whole world. Well, we're here in Southern Ontario, Canada. An hour west of Toronto. And it seems like the coronavirus is over or something. Let's not say that. No, no, no. Well, just all of a sudden, like grandparents started hugging their grandkids just like last week and like just everyone just kind of like came back to life. And it seems like we're okay. We're getting there. Hi, Seanberg. Oh, and Debbie from Toronto and Debbie from United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Mellie from Toronto, Atlanta, Georgia. Cairo. Oh, amazing. Colorado. Neat. Wow. Thanks for watching everyone. Hamilton. So neat that people come watch. Cool. So what we're doing is until everyone gets on and we start the good stuff, we're just walking around showing some stuff that might prompt some questions. This is a reusable mold. They come in really big sizes too for doing coffee tables and river tables and we were just going to fill it. We're not going to do this today, but just doing some prep work. So this is all going to be clear resin over top of this beautiful piece of wood. So that's been worked on. Actually, a good question just came up. How did the balloons turn out? Oh, I hope no one asked. It's terrible. Well, you know what? I didn't come back the next day to resin the ganache and come back for like four or five days. They're kids and I can't be thinking about balloons. And so all the air came out of it. So you got to be faster than you were. But it feels neat. So that's what happened. I just didn't come back and do another coat fast enough. That's for it to keep its shape. So I thought maybe like three or four coats would be thick enough that when the air left it would hold its shape. Anyway, at least we know that the resin sticks to the balloon. That's interesting. We'll try that again when we get an idea. But right now. Unfortunately, it's on to the next project. Yeah, we lost 40 hours of childcare basically a week. Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you want us to throw it in there or is this something else? This is very cool. We got a video coming up that is it's like three different art. You know, if you have artwork that you get from the store like prefab art, we've got different ways of accentuating it. Basically, you can add some glitter to different aspects of the piece. We have another piece where we've embellished the waterline of a, it was a very big sneak peek because I wasn't going to release this, but I will let you see so you can have a nice piece here. So rather than just leaving it as, you know, just a matte finish, you have a nice art resin finish there. It will shine with the water. Hey, Liverpool, the water will shine where the turtles are underneath. And so Cal, how's it going? And then this piece is also amazing because that used to be red flowers. And many of you know Dave's wife Rebecca. Well, here we go. Boom. So that's what it used to be. And because maybe the decor or the color of your house has a different palette. So you just have to paint it over a little bit, add a little resin and about a boom, you got yourself a whole new piece. It's beautiful. She did a great job. So look for that video that come out probably within the next month or so. Thank you, Jeff. No problem. Back to the listener questions. Cheryl Reynolds had one question and one comment. And her, your comments, Cheryl, if you're here was, we've been just filling in cracks in wood and then losing all the resin and wasting so much resin in these deep crevices. So Cheryl said, why don't you fill it with sand first? And then the sand will just get saturated with the resin and hopefully just hold it in there. So we've got some sand and that's what we're going to do today. Great idea. So you don't waste your resin. Is that sand? Like sugar. So we'll do that in a bit. Taste it. Taste it. Look at that.  So good idea, Cheryl. Why not use wood filler from Jill? Well, oh, like cutting or wood. Ooh, we have plastic wood actually. That's a good idea. Yeah, if we can get in, that's a good idea. These are all great ideas. Oh, Ottawa. Hey, Ottawa. So we just finished putting some sand in there. Just go like that. See? That's how you do it. Well, I don't want to be able to see it. That's awesome, Debbie. We're a hot glue gun from already lad. Hot glue gun. All great ideas. Yeah, there's a lot. Obviously, there's tons of different ways you can do it. And this is great because doing it this way is we're trying to open it up to you guys to offer some suggestions. We love it. Plasticine. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And Cheryl Reynolds was talking about aging wood. Well, you just wanted to be, I think that I have this wood meter. Next week, I'm going to bring in this wood moisture meter. You can buy them on Amazon. And I think you want the wood to be either 4% or 6%, that's 4% or 6% moisture. You don't want it to be completely, completely brittle and dry. But you don't want it to have enough moisture that it will expand and contract. So, and how long do you age the wood? I once read that it should be, for every inch you have, it should be a whole year. That seems crazy. But like if you have a whole stump, like they're saying you need to age it for many, many years. But Jess, do you know what happened to your advice for how long to age wood? Yeah. Well, if you have a stump like that, it could take that long if you were just leaving it. But you can find, if you have like a local lumber mill or a lumber yard, they usually have wood kilns. They put it in for, they'll put it in, they'll charge you and put it in there for like a day or two. Like maybe a week if it's a big piece and you come back out and it's all dried for you. Nice. So kiln, kiln wood is actually, seems to be a secret there. Yeah, and I didn't know you can go and pay someone to do it. Yeah, yeah. Wood shops, do you just look in your local area after cracks people or lumber people will do that for you? Nice. But the importance of having the wood dry is... Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you'll just have cracks. Your resin will crack over time. Okay. There's only... Is resin mixed up? Yeah. Sweet. Thanks, Jazz. Jazz, already mixed up some resin. Nice. So this will be really easy to show you. So we're just going to fill out these clear containers with resin and then we can watch from the side how to make sure that it sinks. And I'll show you some things that don't sink. I'm sorry if I missed, a couple of people have written something and I was trying to film so I missed a couple questions, sorry about that. Okay. So this is alcohol ink. That's one important feature. What do we have here? Inksinker. Okay. So. And this is... thank you. So this is just... This is resin tint which is different from alcohol ink. So I'll show you what doesn't work. So resin tint is oil based. But it's safer, I guess. Alcohol is a solvent. So that creates a lot of issues. So this is oil based. And I'll just float on top. And I'll show you with an alcohol ink. This is an alcohol ink. Was that last week, Julie? Every Wednesday at one o'clock, Joe. Alcohol ink. So that's alcohol ink. Yeah. And they're both floating on the top. What the heck? Well, here's the secret. Alcohol ink that is white. Sinks. Here we go. Go on. There we go. So there's the inksinker at work, driving the color down through the resin. Yeah. Or you're not going to watch all mixed. Some of the white is the color. That's right. Wow, that's so cool. Look at that. That's actually really cool. And just to show you that this is, again, oil based. This is oil based resin tint with white. And you're not going to see the same stuff. See, it pops back up. So that's the resin tint on the left. And it won't drop down, whereas in the inksinker, when it hits the alcohol ink drives it down. So you get those awesome tendrils. And that's why people do this beautiful Petri dish art. And it creates all that. And if you wait a little bit with the resin, if you let it cure just a little bit, maybe before the 45 minute mark, you can really get well defined tendrils in there. Okay. So what I'm doing here is I took some of the white alcohol ink, which is the thing that makes it sink. And I'm just mixing it with some yellow. And we'll watch how it sinks that way. So this is white alcohol ink mixed with yellow alcohol ink? Yep. Cool. Julia, I haven't missed you. Well, you had a question about the rocks. Please just send it to me maybe after we're done this ink portion here. Boom. Look at that.  And you're going to spin it a bit to heavens. But you can just play and play and play. We're going to have a bit of pink in here.  But again, I want to add the white to make it sink. Yeah. There we go. Now you see the pink ink coming down mixed with the white. Put a bit more pink in there too. Oh, and then we have our, so Jazz, this is our texture. Hello, Maria. Hi, Tanya. Oh, that's my mom.  Hi. Nice. This is part of my mom too. Well, we're doing that. All right. Do you remember watching? Nope, probably not. I'll have to get her to do it. Any cheap website for items? For what? Itens. I don't know if that's items. I'm not sure. Oh, man, look. My wife bought me this shirt today. I opened it. And she said it's 25 bucks. And I said, why did you pay 25 bucks for a t-shirt? I'm going to ruin it. Look at that. One day. Half a day. Don't say, okay, I can't say it. So that was an interesting text. Sonya, a lot to learn. Yeah, yeah. Lots to learn. There's always, we're still like discovering all these different things that we love all different. If we could just sit and play all day, that's what we would do. We could do this. I'm sorry. Can that get, I don't think so. Hey, Carol. Hey, Carol. Can you put resin on Styrofoam or the resin gets too warm? Warm. But it depends on the density of the Styrofoam. That's true. If it's like really light Styrofoam, it'll get too warm. And then as it, like, it melts when it gets hot. But if it's like really heavy Styrofoam, it'll be fine. Yeah. You can make sculptures of the Styrofoam, carve it away up. It's a dense, it's a really dense piece of Styrofoam, carve it. And then you can resin it. No problem if people do that.  Okay. Quick question because it's all caps. How long before you can resin on acrylic painting? Good question. Especially if it's a light color. It's white. How long? So you'll see the cure time is on the bottle of paint that you use. Okay. Yeah, usually. Okay. So. Oh, this one's perfectly wrong. If I'm using white, if I'm not using white in my painting, then I set for a week or two. Yeah. If I'm not using white, sometimes I even do it the same day. Yeah. Painting. There isn't like a day or two. So I'm just waiting. Okay. So just wait a day or two, or if it's white, let it be a longer. Yeah. All right. Great. I added that instinctive to this one just as you've not had it. Just saying it's hard to hear. So I'm going to try and go right up to everybody's face. I just, although I have, I'm sorry, Julie's trying to get at me here. I'm so sorry, Julie. It goes so fast. She had a problem with some bubbles, I think on her rocks or whatnot, but Julie, let's hang off on that. And let's towards the end, I'm going to come back to you. If you can hang with me, I'll prompt you when Dave says there's a break. Okay. Okay. Sorry, Julie. So another thing we're doing today, we're going to, we went over that, we went over all the questions. We're going to fill this wood crack, hopefully for the last time I let you sand in it. We're going to, these wood faces are almost completely saturated. I just keep adding wood to them until they're just solid. Then jazz is going to show us some of the Petri dish stuff and then some jewelry flakes. So real cool jazz. I actually prepared this painting. Okay. So what are you doing to prepare it? Actually, so I'm just as quietly as I can taking the bottle and putting it up on stands. Oh, nice. Yeah. All right. Let's go to Jasmine. We'll be back with Dave. All right. So remember your mom is watching. So no pressure. No pressure. Mommy's watching. All right. So what do we got? It's like a regular Petri dish. We have our kits. So that's just what we did in that. Dave showed that example way over there. This is a finished product in a normal kind of dish size. Yeah. So it comes out of the mold like this. But one problem that people have is that there's this little ridge along the edge here. So I don't know if you can see it, but it's this little kind of sharp ridge that just happens because of the like capillary kind of bonding that comes up the sides of each of the molds. So capillary bonding. No, don't even, that was brilliant. I just let it, let it sit. That's good stuff. That's what we should have titled this thing. Everybody's searching for capillary bonding. Really cool. Okay.  So then it'll be completely smooth. So you don't have to stand out or do anything like that. But the other thing you can do is you can use black resin. So this originally looked like this, but I just used paint on this one. I painted the back of his black and now it looks like fireworks or it's got that back. And you can do it with any color. I think the pink turned out good. Oh, nice. Oh, that's what he did. So it went from clear to the, oh, it looks so good. That looks cool. So the easiest way I think, I painted this just so I could show you what it looks like. But I think the easiest way is to just take some clear resin. You don't need very much.  You could use alcohol ink as well. Could be either one. And then mix it up.  How many drops do you put in there? I don't know. Maybe I put three or four would be good. I probably did a little bit more than that, but three or four is probably fine. Cool. Let's say you want to have this one. It'll be black on the back. Let's see. Yeah, the pink on black looks amazing. This will look cool. So the result here is twofold.  So you're making that smooth as well. Yeah. If it was clear, you'd have a double sided. You'd be able to see this, this is the back of the coaster, but it looks beautiful. Right. So if you pour just the clear resin in that. Yes. You'll just have. You'll hold on to that color. Yeah, you'll just have a double sided, smooth coaster. Super. This is so good. I should have put that in the Petrie video. Jasmine. Well, these live videos, they're like discovering. Yeah, this is so cool. Forces us to do stuff every week. Yeah. And kind of spread this out here. It's very gently up to the lip. They won't kind of hold it in, right? If you get a bit over the edges, not a big deal. You can take it off tomorrow. It's self-levels too, right? Exactly. So now you can see it's smooth over the top, kind of like almost like a dome. It's almost like you've domed it. Wow. It's with a more sharp edge on the back. And you can Jill, that is a good point.  You can do that. And if it's a little rough, you just rub a little art resin along that to smooth it out, make it nice and shiny. That is the usual way. But this is just something that Jasmine's proposed here. And I think we'll take a look at the finished results next week because that is really cool. No, we're not going to put a Liverpool football flag out there. I don't know if anybody's a Liverpool fan here. TFC. Yeah, that's soccer. Well, soccer football, yeah, exactly. I think there, I think it is coming back. Sports are coming back around the world. I think soccer is happening. Yeah, I think there's a tournament happening for the North American League. And then I think I believe, yeah, out there with in Europe, they're doing some coming back as well. So anyway, sports are starting to come back. I'm just going to read this one out and see what we got. I filled a big vase. I was making into a fairy garden with styrofoam peanuts and then covered with plastic from packaging residency. I missed the rest of it. Sorry about that. It was a long one. So Stephanie from Texas does customer service. Hi, Stephanie. She mentioned a lot of people have been asking about finishing the edges of pieces. So there's lots of different ways to do that. There's easy ways and there's hard ways. I'll just tell you how I'm doing this one is I'm going to let the resin go over the edge, just rub it in. And then I'm actually going to sand the edges and then paint it black. That's going to be my process. Oh, nice. I just feel like that. Because you will get some drip lines.  What are some other ways to finish the edges? You can just leave it bare and try and dome your resin.  Or you can actually cut them on a table saw, just trim off the edge of the blade. I've done that too. They get really messy. But there's lots of different ways to finish the edges. Those are some of them. Thanks, Deanne. Okay. So there's some left over resin here. Why don't I just start filling up the... Let's do it. Okay, we have the painting and the woodcraft. Yeah. Let's see how this sand works. Here it goes. Someone got... I guess their piece was stuck in a mold. Is there a way to release it from the mold? Is there a...  Oh, yeah. And usually that has to do with the quality of the silicone. And you know the quality of the silicone by the amount of time you can reuse the mold. So if your mold's ripping and getting stuck, it's the silicone is either used too much or just a cheap silicone. And unfortunately, you're just going to pick at it and pick at it and maybe eventually, like, sand it getting exactly right. There's no really easy way to get it off of there that I know of. Jasmine? No, that's about it. But make sure you're not torching the mold. So once the mold is in the mold, don't torch it exactly. That can break down the mold and cause it to stick. So, lose the torch. Lose the torch. There you go. Sorry to hear about your mold not working.  I hate it. You put so much, like, work into it and then it doesn't come out the mold. And you can't wait for Kristin's worrying to open the mold and see what you got and... Boo. Yeah. That's life. That's life lessons. Life lessons. With our resonance. Yeah. Very cool. What you got going on here? So you're poking it through there? I'm just trying to hide some of the sand that's kind of high up. Hmm. Could you put some, like, black ink in it? Black ink? I think you have it over there. Do you have any? Do you have the alcohol? No, I threw it all back in there. Oh, here it is. Jasmine with the black ink. Hello, dude. My vase was round, so I had to piece the plastic together to make it fit. I'm not sure what else there is. Sorry. I'm trying to... I get messages sometimes and I don't catch up. So what is the status of soccer coming back then? I actually don't know. I kind of read something quickly. It was either this morning. Was it Liverpool? Oh, yeah. Hey, whoever sent out the message about Liverpool, let us know what's going on with soccer. Yeah. In Canada, they care about hockey. Mm-hmm. Which is coming back. Basketball. Here in North America, probably basketball is going to be the first sport to come back, unless baseball can get their act together. Hold on, Sonya is saying, I don't use a torch, but after using mold for two months, successfully, now I have this problem. Yeah. You just use the mold too many times. Yeah. It's how it's timed. So it's time to move on to a new mold, essentially. Yeah. Bury it. Have a little ceremony. Light a candle. Glass of wine, maybe. Watch your favorite show. It'll be okay. This resin just keeps going in here, even with the sand. Jill is offering a tip that a heat gun works great to take the tape off the sides. The what? A heat gun is good to take the tape off the sides if it's stuck on there a bit more. Yes, I remember hearing about that. I forgot about that. Boom. Okay. So I'll use the resin on these two forest gentlemen. Oh, yes. The woodman. The woodman. And clean this up.  Stick with it. Stick with it. Sorry. Okay. I love jewel and nice name. If your piece is stuck in the mold, put it in the freezer for a few hours and you should be able to get it to release. Yeah. I remember that. Really? Yeah. I think I thought we talked about that before too. That's cool. I'm going to write that down. That's a good one. So if your mold is mold stuck in freezer. Okay. We'll try that. Yeah. I need to know that. All right, you gentlemen. So again, I'm just trying to soak these guys so they're a solid chunk of plastic. Do you have plans for them? They just kept crumbling and crumbling. Pieces break off and they're so old. Who knows how long they've been in the woods for? Hmm. Like the beginning of time. Yeah. I imagine. Yes. It was when Gog was designing man. They also made your man. Well, he was. Yeah, he was. And then you gave him boogers. Boogers? Gross. They used to do little jokes. People are asking or maybe one person about workshops. Have we ever thought about doing workshops? We thought about it. There's lots of good workshops out there. And I don't think we're the ones to do it. We've never really thought about doing workshops. I don't know. I know we have a video up on how to run your own workshop. If you're interested. Yeah. So we do have. We have algorithm workshops. We did a video on how to run an algorithm workshop. Because lots and lots of archers do that. Because people can just try using resin and get past it. You know, then usually they get hooked on it. They're like, oh, I can resin everything. So yes, we have a great, a whole page on that actually. With a video. We should create something like documents to run an algorithm workshop. Do a blog? Probably. They might have a blog. We probably have a blog on that too. We're going to look at that. But yes, we do have some info. Um, workshop. What should we do next time? We'll have a laptop. And so any other sometimes topics come up. We can show people where to go and search for answers. We need someone sitting in the corner with a laptop on the computer. That's right. Okay. Okay. So what have we done today? We did the bottom of the peter with jazz. We did our wooden faces. We did the wood crack. We're going to talk about jewelry blanks and resin this piece. And that's the whole day today. What's that? Okay. Debbie had a major exothermic reaction where things started to smoke. It was way too thick. Probably way too thick. Yeah. I'm scared that's what's going to happen with these samples that we made here. Most likely because this is art resin, this is going to get really, really hot. And I don't know if it'll smoke, but it'll probably discolor a little bit. We'll see. I'm kind of curious to see what happens. It looks like mid-June. We're going to get some soccer and I love Julen. Sorry if I'm saying that incorrectly, but is asking about respiratory masks. Do we need to wear them? For COVID or for? No, for here, for resin I'm guessing. Well, there's no VOCs, which means there's no fumes coming up. And we're in a big enough area that there's lots of regulations. So we're safe by all the information that we have and knowing what the ingredients are. It is safe to use. Absolutely. So we can tell in the education so that it's being used in classroom settings by students and stuff. When we created our resin that was one of the main, main focuses is safe. It's not worth it. Otherwise, I don't want to use anything. That's right. And I remember that Dave and Rebecca, it was kind of cool in your story. You guys had a checklist as to what your resin that you guys were creating had to the checklist, right? Yeah, the checklist. It was a great checklist. And once it got ticked off, you guys released our resin. Here we are. So I got tons of resin on my hands.  So rub it on. It's got some like pumice, is that what it's called in it? Pumice. Pumice. It's got like an exfoliant in it to rub the right off. Yeah, and somehow it just gets it off of there. And then just do this. That's the best way that I can get resin off of my hands. And then soak in water to get the residue of it. Oh, Joe, this is our secret weapon. This thing is like the greatest thing in the entire world. It's just a baker's rack, guys. Yeah. And with trays. So that every project that we do, we put it onto a tray, put it in the rack. Dave loves everything on wheels. And put your projects, put it in there, and then seal it up. You can zip it up, zip up the plastic cover, protect it, and bada-booms. Because we often, many times, do multiple projects and whatnot. Jasmine does tons usually. And you just put it in the racks, let them cure. Come back the next day. It's dust-free. Dust-free. Okay, guys, you want to talk about those? Yep. And then if you get the bugs ready, then I'll do this. Yep. Okay, cool. Bed bugs? No, Julie. No, no. Ew. Although we could embed them. Okay, so. Okay. What we got here? All right. So this, right here, is more or less a jewelry block. So what this is, is this a little tiny piece of wood, kind of set in resin. So that's what people kind of like to do to make little jewelry pieces out of. So the process, you can see here, is you start with these little pieces of scrap just whatever doesn't have to be fancy or it could be quite fancy. Anyway, you put them in and then you pour resin on, let it cure. So then the next day you pop it out and you'll have something that looks like this. So you see the wood is suspended in there.  So I wouldn't probably call this one finished, but you kind of grind a shape out of it, whatever shape you want. So you want it to be like a little circular pendant. So you want it to be a little teardrop. You're just going to shape that with your, with either just sandpaper or a little Dremel or whatever you want. It's a lathe as well. I've seen people put it on a lathe. Sometimes people have like those jewelry grinders, like a jewelry polisher. You can put it right up to it. This is off. Anyway, exactly. So once you have this little piece, there's kind of two options that you can go from there. Good job, Debbie. You can either polish it. You can, so starting with like a rough sandpaper, working your way up to like a very fine sandpaper with some car wax and stuff and make it all shiny. Or you can just take a little bit of red and then rub it over the top to make it shiny again.  However you want it to look. But I'm going to show you how I do it from the beginning. Gloves. Keep your hands protected. So this is just like scrap wood we had laying around. You can see here, there's some big pieces, there's some lower pieces. I kind of just smashed it up with a chisel and a hammer, whatever they had around. So I put little scraps in here. Just like this. It doesn't super matter how they look because it's more about how you shape the thing in the end and where the cross section comes from. And of course you can get your own molds as well, different shapes. Oh yeah, use any kind of shapes you want. Just, I mean look at our molds where I could have put in the little square one, could have done a bigger one like this. Could have done anything, really. So you just stick it in there and then here's a bit of resin that I mixed up. I'm just going to do clear for this one. Okay. I'm just going to pour it in until it covers the wood. And the wood pieces might float up, but that's okay. Either like shove them down as they keep going or see this one floating up, but it's not going to really matter.  Where do we get these molds? I think most things are on Amazon. These are from Amazon, they're like little candy molds I think they hold. Yeah, and then we have our own molds as well that are this shape here. We have available on our website. You can make your own as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, with silicone? Yeah, you can make your own silicone molds. See, and it does have to be like one piece of wood perfectly shaped. It can be all these little ones here. It'll be interesting once you kind of sand it down the rest of the way. So, a bit more later for that one. Anyway, so there you go, and then when you pop these out the next day, they'll look like this. You sand it down like this, and then you can take some of our mixed up resin here. And you can see that it's going to become very clear and shiny just by adding a new layer of resin.  See, then you can see all the way down into it. So that's kind of neat. Obviously, there's more crafty ways to do this, and you can get all different kinds of effects by the different ways you put the wood in and how much you want to polish it and shape it and just really, you can go wild, but that's how you do it. There you go. Go wild, everybody. And there is a video someone asked about how to make molds. We do have a video up online. I think there's a short one. I'm just using silicone and acetate, but yeah, there's many different ways. Good question. Oh, I love this. So what do we have clear resin? So this one is, if you guys have been here for the past few weeks, we're building this pyramid. Started with what do we have, David? The gold leaf and then flour just dried in silica sand. And now we just got a clear thing of resin. Cool. Are you going to stop there? Is there going to be another one after that? No, we're going to keep going. Going all the way to the top? Oh, man, this is going to be so cool. Yeah, stay tuned. Stay tuned week by week. Okay, thanks, Jazz. Jazz, that was awesome. Boom. That was Jasmine with Jasmine. And now we're back to the doing it with Dave. Doing it with Dave. So one interesting thing about this piece, this where it's pink used to be white, but it was oil paint that I didn't let dry long enough and then resin. And it turned pink. And it's normally this piece that I did it on. Some other pieces. The white turned pink if you don't let all the oil dry. But I kind of think it looks nice. At first I was angry, then I was sad. And what's the next stage? Betrayed. Betrayed. He bargained. He bargained. Yes. Okay. So I'm just going to resin this one and then I'm actually sending it to my brother in Victoria because it reminds me of him or something like that. Alright. He's in Victoria just going to go to business. I guess restaurants are going. Hello, St. Helen's UK. Nice. UK. Hello, welcome. The UK. Welcome to Canada. A beautiful day. It's supposed to be like 41 today. What? Really? Yeah. Ugh. I know my chickens are just sitting in the forest. Oh yeah, for those who don't know, Dave has chickens. Oh, I love my chicken. I have six chickens. Nice. Six nice chickens. Six eggs a day. Companionship. What else do you get out of chickens? Um... Milk? No. No. Besides nuggets? I don't know. No, I'm just kidding. We love the chickens. What are you going to do with chickens in the winter? I don't know. Oh, I don't know. Hey, Maria's got 10 chickens. Maria, what are you going to do with your chickens in the winter? Or do you live somewhere that's not like cool? Maria, help me. I don't want to kill them. But I can keep them all winter. I'm just going to coat this thing quickly too. Oh, more residence night for Carol in Quebec City. Yeah, baby. Or Montreal. Sorry, Montreal, Quebec. So this is just something from the dollar store actually. And I'm just going to do this. Make it waterproof. Oh. I don't care if it's super pretty and super smooth. She's in Schoenberg, Maria, with the 10 chickens. Where's Schoenberg? Schoenberg, they're fine. Schoenberg? Is that in Germany? Schoenberg, Germany, I think. By the boom. Caledon. Oh, Caledon. Nice. She says just they'll be fine. Just feed them and water them. Winter long? Really? Don't have to put them in summer warm? No. Okay. King City. Yeah. So I'm just going to, on my edges, I'm just going to rub the resin into the sides. Okay. And then torch it. Get rid of the bubbles. We'll get that money, that beautiful torching shot. Yes. The bubble popping is usually the favorite spot. Yeah. Favorite part. We got a torch right here. Yeah. I'm going to clip on this flame spreader. I'd like to say that I invented this, but I didn't. We copied someone. I couldn't find it for sale anywhere, but I bought it like 10 years ago and I couldn't find it anywhere. So we got them made. I hope it's not like a patent or something. Do you think a torch or a heat gun works best? Torch, hand down. Yeah, there is no debate here. Torch is the best way. It's direct. It doesn't move the resin around. It is awesome. Yeah. I mean, you can get cordless heat guns, I'm sure, but when I was using them, I'd have to hold the core around and just doesn't get as hot. It literally doesn't get as hot. Is that true? Thank you. Oh, sorry. There's more sustained heat. So a lot of people who call me on the phone, tell me they have like a spider web pattern happening over there. Resident, I asked them, like, did you use a torch gun? And usually I'm not a torch gun. A heat gun. So if it's a heat gun, you'll get this crack and spider web pattern a lot of times. And that's just because it's unevenly heated parts of the resin have had an exothermic reaction. So it's like kind of curving in like tectonic plates almost. So that's why we always use the torch instead of the heat gun. Boom. Because of the tectonic plates. Because of tectonic plates and the bubonic, whatever you were talking about earlier. I know. You used them really big words. Yeah. I'm sorry. No, no, it's good. It has a whole other level of this. It's great. Yeah. I don't know where it's like that. We're seeing intelligence here. It's good. Okay. Okay, Jeff, do you want to get a good angle of these holes? The boobles? Yes, I do. Are there million dollar shots? See here. Oh, yeah. I got some good ones. I'm on the black where the black starts right. So this line here, I got this. Turn on the gas. Go ahead. Right where the, yeah, all in that area. Hold on. Hold on. Okay, go ahead. Gone. Look at that. Crystal clear. Back here. Yeah. So now it comes to this area. Crystal clear. Scratchy to the shiny on this. Scratchy to the shiny. If you like it, you're very good. So what's that? So I've just wiped this down with water and alcohol to get the dust off of it. So it's sanded, yeah? So it's sanded. Now you can see the cloud coming back because it's all dusty. This is just drying off. Yeah. So that'll get all sandy again. Do you think we should do a bit more in there before we do the final coat? Hmm, maybe. I think it was good to sand it off anyway. Yeah. But you can see how it goes shiny before you do it. Yeah. All right. So this is all scratchy. I'm sanding. But don't fear. All right, resume's all okay. Get the color back. Scratches are gone. Clarity returns. Everything is okay. Hmm. Everything is okay. All right, guys. Every little thing. Oh, yeah. It's gonna be all right. I have some resin mixed up to do those bugs. I don't need to do it in short. We're not setting up the bugs. Okay. So that's all that we have to do today besides preparing bugs for embedding and resin, which we'll do in a moment. But thank you for coming out again. If you have any questions, put them in the comments and we'll address them next week, Wednesday at 1 o'clock. Nice. Julie was asking where to get a piece of wood like that. I mean, I guess you should just look for a wood store. Yeah. Where else? I mean, you can look online a lot of places. Jazz actually online and on Facebook. You can punch them to their market places. Yeah, I've never bought wood online before. No? You can find like flea markets near you. That's really good for wood. Sometimes there's mills in your town, like windows in your town and they'll have like off cuts because they want straight lumber. So they'll have funky looking wood that they'll sometimes sell you for cheap. Those are my two go-to places. Maria, contact Tracy here at our resin for any kind of potential discounts depending on volume purchase. And at the same time, someone was asking, repeat torching. Do you have to repeat torch? No, I never do. Sometimes with wood because the wood will breathe and we'll get bubbles, right? Like if you look at this piece, are there any bubbles? This is a wood piece. And wood off gases. You sometimes get bubbles and you'd say, do it again. But this piece of wood, I got just that. I live in a kind of small town and there's a local hardware store. Boom. And they have tons and tons of wood. Just like a local hardware store as opposed to a big box hardware store. I've seen them in a number of those. You're right. Probably like in more remote areas, right? Smaller towns, they have wood for sale and stuff. Oh, yeah. That's really your best bet. It's acting out hard to find because it's such a common thing that people are doing right now. It's big. River tables, tables, coffee tables, all that stuff. Yeah, jacuzzi bars. Where can you buy in the UK? By what? Cart resin. I don't know. You didn't get to say bye. Oh, are we back? Are we live? The counters, I don't know. We might have had internet problems there. Everybody's sorry about that. I did see one of the questions on there. That was a question about workshop discounts or something. I think there is a workshop pricing. Art resin.com slash application. There's just an application form for that. Is humidity really bad for our resin? Yeah, I mean, I think only if you're like, it's going to be so humid that it's like forming water on things. So like normal within ranges of normal humidity, you don't have to worry. But I don't think you ever have to worry about humidity in the jungle in Costa Rica. I'm like a hut doing it, maybe. Okay, guys. What you working on? So the first step to preparing. Oh, yeah. You too, Julie. Stay safe. The little bugs that you can kind of get or collect are not alive, but this one's like a swallowtail and this is an interesting stag beetle. So you can have them like this or you can preserve them in resin. So the first thing to do to prepare to do this is to clean your mold up. I just use alcohol or water or whatever. I'm going to have this little one be open. So the first thing I do, we're going to put the stag beetle in here. So you just pour a little bit of resin in. Oh, we cut off as to where we can buy that product in the UK. So yeah, online. Yeah, artrins.co.uk. Or just go to artrins.com. We'll direct you right to that site. On Amazon if you prefer. Boom. So just going to pour a little tiny layer in here like that. Oh, nice. We're creating a bed for the bugs. Yes, it's a... Oh, it is a bed bug. Oh, wow. Everything just went full circle. He's not very fragile, which is nice. Oh. So this guy doesn't need to be like... Nothing needs to happen to him because he's got this nice hard cell one. You don't need to seal it. You don't need to seal him. He's already kind of good to go. So I'm going to set him right. He or she. He or she. He or she. That's true. I actually think he has to be a male because I'm pretty sure the phenyl beetles don't have these things. Okay. Yeah, because these are for hanging on to the lady beetle. Really? Yeah. MJ is dying to know about the slow curing project. Oh, me too. Stay tuned. So there, he kind of... He's just sitting in there. Nothing's really going on. So I don't want to cover him because he might float. So I'm just going to leave him like this because the resin like gels up, maybe three or four hours. And then I'm going to kind of cover him the rest of the way or cover him like a third of the way and let that set depending on how thick he ends up having to be. Gotcha. I'm just going to let him sit there and then we can do prep the butterfly. So same thing. I cleaned this mold out just a second ago. So I'm going to put a little layer. And I think that mold you are searching for cake. Yeah, this is a cake mold.  Oh, yeah. So cake molds are fantastic for this stuff. Yeah. Hey, Melody. See, this looks like the top layer almost, right? Where you have the man and husband and wife on top there. No, I had like little vitamins. Really? Yeah, it's like maybe a little fist big and have a little lean one on top. So you can definitely get much bigger ones. Can you mix sand and resin? Yes. Oh, let's do it right now. We got extra resin. Yeah. And we have sand on the table. Boom. This is meant to be. So. How do you prepare a butterfly? I think. So this is kind of an experiment, but I believe. So I've had a butterfly and resin before and kind of soaked into the wings and made them like translucent. So I'm going to just go out into the garage with some clear spray paint. Or do you want to come? I can come? Yeah. Come on. All right, we're coming. Clear spray paint. Clear spray paint. And what are we doing that for again? Sorry? Oh, we're going to seal the butterfly so that it doesn't soak up water. What kind of spray paint you have? It's just anything clear. Sometimes I use Kryolan. Sometimes I use this. There's our warehouse. Oh. All the boxes lovingly stacked. This is like our small warehouse. We've got the giant one in, down in Texas. All right. So maybe I can move it. Yeah. I'll back it up. Here we go. Go from a good distance. Give it a little bit of a, probably a little bit of that. And it might do a few more layers. Do you have to do that backside as well, I guess, obviously? I don't know if we need to do the backside. I guess we could. Oh, look at that. Well, yeah. So when this guy was alive, when he was sitting upright, with his wings together, he would look brown. And when he flies away, he would look blue. Wow. Nature, right? Oh, we're going to be doing some cutting too. We're going to cut off the candy dish. If anybody was hanging out with us at the beginning, we're going to cut off that Skittle dish. We're going to create some edging. It should be fun. Okay, so. Nice. I'm going to just let this guy dry for maybe an hour or two. And then I'm going to put it in just like how I did the steak, just kind of gently lay it down. The one thing to remember though is when you're going to put the butterfly in, air can get trapped under the wings. You're going to want to gently push down on the wings to make sure you don't get any air stuck in the bottom. We are in water down, just outside Hamilton. Just in time. Boom. I have mixed resin. I have a bag of sand and cradle board canvas. So this is just the canvas that has a lip around the edge so that the resin stays right inside of it. I'm going to take this stick, tiny bit of pink on it. That's okay. I'm going to mix the sand and resin. It's not uncommon to mix sand, pebbles, any type of aggregate, even crushed up glass. Mix that into resin and use it for floors or surfaces, especially if you want them to be non-slippery surfaces. So this is quite common mixing in your resin. Some people have even taken like the popular, like say, what's that vodka that's in a clear bottle with some blue on it, polar bear. It's a very distinctive color bottle and they broke that up and like said the whole camera top out of it and we just knew it was that brand of vodka. Is it polar ice? Yes. Maybe polar ice. Is it gray goose? No. No, that's got a goose on it. The point is that you can mix any type of aggregate into the resin and then it does also have some surfaces besides just giving cool textures. There we go. So I'm not going to be able to save this for mixing. Maybe kind of cool to see what happens. There. And I'm just going to spread this out by a typical. Patron. Patron is... Patron. Isn't that tequila? Maybe it's a very distinctive bottle. Nice. There's some unmixed resin here but I think that's kind of cool. Like this might end up being like the base of a painting, you know? Sometimes people mix in sand like that to do the bottom of their ocean painting. Yes, ocean art. Like the one on the wall up there. Very good point. Yeah, so sometimes people, if they're doing ocean art, obviously a lot will put a base of sand at the bottom to create this. The beach area. Sky vodka. Sky vodka? I think, but I still think polar is... I think polar or polar ice. I think polar ice is the vodka that you're talking about with the polar bear on it. Maybe. Anyways, can you write in the sand like you would on the beach, if not when it's cured? Well, you would be able to, if you waited long enough, if you waited maybe 30 or 40 minutes, it would be at a stage where if you were to move it around, it's not, it's a lot thicker so it won't go back into place, but I'll put on another glove and we'll see what happens. I don't see why not. So I'm just going to draw a big heart in the sand. No problem. I'm pushing the sand to the side. I think, I don't think it's going to stay. Yeah, it hasn't, not enough time has happened. You need to get it to more of a gel state, which could be anywhere from 45 to probably two hours even, right Dave? Yeah, but we might still be able to see something. I don't know. See what happens, that'll be cool. That is cool. That's a cool effect. What a good keepsake that would be or something after a trip or a... The actual sand? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that I used the pink. I know. This is actually really nice. See, okay, I will say this to blow sunshine a little bit for towards Dave is Dave will just kind of go with things, right? Where a lot of times people, I will overthink things. Dave will just do things and see happy accidents or just happy things happen when you just go with it, right? Happy things happen. Because you got now a pink, sandy kind of thing. There is a heart for me. This is really cool. Yeah, let's not touch this. See what happens. All right, that's fine. Unless there's any other questions, thanks for watching everyone. Oh, Julie, are you still there, Julie? Give her... Give me one minute for Julie was asking a question about bubbles. Yeah, bubbles and rocks. Julie, if you are not there right now and you do end up watching the end of this, send us a message. Write it on the YouTube once this video is posted and Dave and I will get back to you. Oh, there she is. Julie, do you want to write it in the message? We can try and do this live if you go for it. Let's show these rocks here. Yeah, we did kindness rocks. Did you just want to know? We were just showing how you know if you keep a painted rock outside, it'll fade like that or it'll pick off like that. So what we were just showing is different methods. They got a perfectly resin rock so that it just lasts a heck of a lot longer when you put it out in the sun. Exactly. And this guy here just did it. So Dave would just do the one side and then just resin another thing on the other side and you're all good. Looks beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, Dave. Yeah, so all these different things. It's cute. But yeah. Okay. I resin my rock for sale followed today's tutorial. All right. This is Julie. Julie is talking to us. So we'll see what's coming. So she has a set rock for sale and she followed a tutorial, I guess. So we'll see what the question is. I think it's to do with bubbles though. Bubbles off the rock. But I still got dimples even after torching so she has to redo it. Oh, I wonder if there's some oil on your rock. Maybe you have to clean the rock with soap and water first. If you're getting dimples, it means there's something on the surface that's pushing the resin away, right? She's asking if she has to redo it if she's got dimples. I mean, that's... You want to redo it? I mean, it's up to you if it looks really bad or not. If you want to redo it, maybe take some sandpaper, sand the whole thing and do it again. That's the best thing is you want to... Yeah, why do we sand then, Dave? Yeah, if you were to put another coat of resin on top of this and not sand, there is a chance that it could separate over time. I had that happen to a couple paintings of mine. So now, if I do a second coat, always just do a light sanding to give the next coat something to grab onto. And then you're good for all of eternity. Yeah, and don't worry about it looking scuffed up and everything because the resin will make it clear and perfect. It'll stick to it and it levels out. It's self-level, so any of those dimples should be filled in and you'll be good to go. That's right. So just, yeah, make sure it's wiped down. Don't have any moisturizer on your hands or anything like that and you should be good, right? That's right. Cool. Hopefully that answers your question, Julie. Oh, a specific sandpaper grit.  It just seems like to be kind of like not too mild, not too coarse, and I can just use it for everything. Perfect. That 80 is just fine. Yeah. There you go. Okay, thanks everyone for watching again and your questions and participation. This is a lot of fun and we're learning everything as we go all together. So until next Wednesday at one o'clock, stay safe. Get together with your family and your friends now, I think. If you're... You're safely social distancing? Mm-hmm. God, it's hopefully over one day soon. 80 grit. 80 grit, Julie. 80 grit, yeah. Yeah. And yeah.  All right. No problem, Julie and everybody else. Yeah, have a great week, everyone. Jazz. Bye. Dave. See you later. Later, everybody.


The new academic school year officially commenced on Monday 13th September 2021, with students receiving instruction via the distributed learning approach. Minister for Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training Hon. Sean Edward explained that the initial plan was to have students return to face-to-face in classroom learning. However, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and increased cases in St. Lucia has made this impossible as such classes will be conducted virtually for students with smart devices and internet connectivity. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of students in our school system who do not possess a tablet or laptop computer or internet connectivity. This situation of students not having devices to take advantage of the virtual learning platform concerns me tremendously as Minister, and I have caused it to be the subject of very robust discussions amongst Education administrators and my Cabinet colleagues. Thankfully, upon uprising him of the situation, the Hon. Prime Minister without delay instructed that through the requisite channels and employing the most transparent government approved procurement guidelines, the Ministry of Education makes available at the soonest almost 4,000 laptop computers to students in need. The minister explained that upon arrival on island, the devices will be distributed amongst incoming from one and from two students in the secondary school system. He disclosed that there are other initiatives afoot to secure devices for primary school students, particularly those in grade six. Hon. Edward assuring that no students will be left behind also expressed concern for students' well-being. COVID-19 has taken a toll on us as a society and our children have not been spared or exempted. We will ensure that the necessary support mechanisms are in place to help students recover socially, emotionally, and academically. Principal teachers, I urge you to take the time, listen to your students as they express how they feel, how their lives have changed, and how they handle their situations and challenges. Let us be flexible and supportive more than ever before as we embrace new approaches to meet the needs of our students while providing them with the best educational experience in the circumstances. The Ministry of Education expressed gratitude to all stakeholders for their cooperation and will continue to regularly monitor the health situation, review processes towards improving academic recovery, and minimize an instruction loss.


Our first presenter is Bob Beringer, the director of the Schultz-Holmes Memorial Library in Michigan. He's going to present on I'm Gonna Make You Famous, Raising Awareness in Building Community on a 3-inch Screen. Bob, are you there? I'm here. All right, I am switching presentation control over to you. You should be able to share your screen. All right, we see your screen.  I'm playing some video, actually because I mean this presentation is about making videos.  So I'm sure someone, it's as loud as it can be. So someone will tell me if it needs to be quieter or there's feedback or something. Let me just start the slideshow. So what you should see obviously is my library's logo. This, I thought I would show you, I actually added this. I've done this live before and I always make a disclaimer that everything looks better on the 3-inch screen on Facebook when you start blowing it up on a PowerPoint presentation or something like that to a 5 foot, 6 foot high image in a conference room then it picks up a lot more of the errors and things that are inevitable with a cell phone camera. But it does look a lot better on Facebook and it might look better on just a regular computer screen too but I guess some of you are probably in conference rooms projecting this on a screen. Anyway, let me show you this field. That's the library. We're snowy right now so it doesn't look like this. This is obviously a summer picture but I thought it looked bright and better and it shows the library off pretty well. But you can see we're pretty small. It has 3400 people and we're actually one of the few communities in Michigan that's actually showed an increase from the last census to the most recent one. So we're small but as I like to say, we're not that small. This is Blissfield. This is beautiful downtown Blissfield. This is pretty much it. As with most places, there are other pockets of business development on the edges of town but this is downtown Blissfield right here. And if you could actually see about another half a block down, you would see the library because that is where we are. We're in a residential area just off the downtown square.  We'll talk about how I came up with that because that is actually key to, or at least it's part of what I do with this project. Obviously, we try to make the people famous who are in it. We make the library famous and we make Blissfield famous. So that's sort of always the idea. This is a promotional effort. We made the first movie which is Blissfield Reads the Raven in response to my colleague at the Adrian Public Library, Carol Susha. She was putting together a Linaway County as the county were in. She was putting together a Linaway Reads program for Halloween. She had a little bit of grant money to do it. And I said I'd be part of it. Well, given my nature, I put it off to about October 24th. And I said, well, we've got to do something. And I knew they were doing some readings of the Raven at the Crosswell Opera House, which is a big historic building in downtown Adrian. Adrian is a county seat. There are like 20,000 people there. So it's the big city here. And I knew we didn't have a Crosswell Opera House. I did not have time to get a lot of people together to read it in one room, even at the library anyway. So I said, well, I'll take it to them. I thought about those, sometimes they have readings of the Declaration of Independence that you see celebrities do line by line on the 4th of July. And that occurred to me. And so I went out and I got copies of the poem. And I went door to door. And I said, I'm going to make you think. I don't really know if that came because I got out of the car with my cell phone and the script. I actually made cue cards. And that becomes important too because I found another use for the cue cards. But I got out of my car and I thought, what the heck am I doing? I'm going to walk into people trying to do their jobs and I'm going to ask them to read a line of a poem. And I'm sort of naturally shy anyway. And I didn't know how I was going to approach them. And the line that occurred to me for some reason, just out of the blue, it's a line from a movie that is otherwise unremarkable. It's called Young Guns. And Emilio Estevez plays Billy the Kid. And just before he kills anyone, he says, I'm going to make you famous. And so that's what occurred to me. And so that's what I walked in. And the first person I looked at, I said, I'm going to make you famous. And she actually read the third line in the poem because I had library employees who I can make do things, write the first two lines. So that was easier. And then that third one is where it starts. So what we'll do now is I'm going to show you a list to read the Raven. And that's the first one. And then we'll talk later. This takes about 10 minutes. So it's not short, but this is the longest one by far. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I knotted nearly nothing, suddenly there came a tapping as if someone was simply wrapping, wrapping in my chamber door. It is some visitor, I mutter, tapping at my chamber door, only this and nothing more. I think distinctly each separate I am her pocket's ghost. Eagerly I wished the Marl, vainly I had sought to borrow from my books for seas of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore. For the rare ingrateate maiden, whom the angels named Lenore, nameless here, for evermore in the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, thoroughly filled me with fantastic terrors, never felt me hurt. Till that now, to spill the beating of my heart, I stood repeating to some visitor in treating entrance at my chamber door. Some late visitor in treating entrance at my chamber door. This is it and nothing more. Presently my soul grew stronger, hesitating, and no longer. Sir, said I, or Madam, truly, the forgiveness I implore. But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came wrapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door. I scarce was sure I heard you. Here I opened wide the door. Have to stare and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming, dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. But the silence wasn't broken, and the darkness gave no token, and the only word that's open was the whispered word, Lenore. This, I must say, and I know my word back to where it's Lenore. Nearly this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul was in me burning. Soon again I heard a tapping, somewhat harder than before. Surely, sir, I, surely there is something that my window lattice. Let me see then what there is in this mystery explore. At my heart be still a moment in this mystery explore, to the wind and nothing more. Open here I flow in the shutter, when with a flirt and flutter, in their step the stately raven of the stately days of yore. Not the least obeisance may he, not a minute stop or stay he, but with meat of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door. Perched upon a bust of holly, just above my chamber door, perched and sad and nothing more. And this ebony bird beguiling, my sad fancy things smiley, by the brave and stern decorum of the countenance. If though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou, I said, are sure no craven. Gasly grim an ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore. Tell me what thy lordly name is on the ninth plutonian shore, called the raven, nevermore. Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore. For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door. Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door, with such a name as nevermore. But the raven, sitting lonely on the plastic bust, spoke only that one word as if his soul in that one word he did outbore. Think further than he uttered, not a feather that he fluttered, till I fiercely more than muttered. Other friends have flown before him, as my hopes have flown before. And the bird said, startled at the stillness broken, by reply so aptly spoken. Doubtless said I, what it utters, is its only stock and store. Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster, followed fast and followed faster, till his sum's one burden bore. There is just under its hope that melancholy burden bore. But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling. Straight I wheeled to cushion seats in front of bird and bust and door. Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking, fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yours? What this grim ungainly, ghastly, gone and ominous bird of yours meant in croaking, nevermore. I shall engage in ghastly, but no syllable expressing to the foul, mysterious number into my bosom, this being more I'm sad, divine, with my head at ease reclaiming on the cushion's velvet lining, that the lamp-light loaded oar. The velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light loading oar, she shall press, ah, nevermore. Then he thought the air-free dentsen, perceived from an unseen censor, swum by seraphim, whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. Wretched I cried, thy God, Bethlehem, sent thee, by these angels he has sent thee. Respite, respite, in mea-pente, from thy memories of Lenore. Quoth, oh, quoth this time, pente, and forget this lost Lenore. Quoth the raven, nevermore. Prophet, that I think of evil, prophet still, if bird or devil, whether tempt or sense, or whether tempest toss be here ashore. Just let me get all my daunted, on this desert land enchanted, on this home by order of constant. Tell me truly, I implore. Is there a balm in Gilead? Tell me, tell me, I implore. Quoth the raven, nevermore. Prophet, that I think of evil, prophet still, if bird or devil, by that heaven that bends above us, by that God be both adored. Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant aden, it shall class a saint and maiden, whom the angels named Lenore. Quoth the raven, nevermore. Be that word, our sign of parting, bird or fiend, at a shriek of starting.  Leave no black plume as a token, of that life I so hath spoken. Leave my lonely list unbroken, with the bust of both my door.  And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, on the pallet bust of pallets, just above my chamber door. In his eyes, have all the seeming of the demons that is dreaming, and the lamp light for him streaming throws his shadow. In my soul, from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted. Nevermore. So that was Westfield Reads the Raven, and that's the first one that we did. And a lot of people have asked me who these people are. No, they're not professional actors. So I just put together a very quick slide show to show you what they do in their day jobs. So that's them, the guy I call the voice.  So, the first thing you have to do when you get started doing something like this is you have to find, decide what it is you're going to read. Poems seem to work well, although if we have time I'll show you Peter Rabbit. If we did that, you have to find it obvious. It's a short story, you don't want something too long. I would say that the Raven is probably the limit. That always seems a little long to me, and certainly it was longish making it, so it took quite a bit of time. I didn't know what I was doing, so that helped, that I had absolutely no preconceived notions. A holiday, obviously, I think that all the ones we've done so far have been for a holiday. We've done two on Halloween, two times a day, and one on Easter, or one for Easter. And it's what, you know, that can be seasonal, but I want to do is Casey at the back for the beginning of baseball season, because Blissfield is baseball town USA. We've won seven state titles in 25 years, and I think it's maybe 25, 30 straight division championships, so it's a baseball town, and so I think that's what I have to do next. You want to find out if it's in the public domain or not. Practically anything at Project Gutenberg is you can obviously take the chances that no one's going to sue a library. I mean, take the... If you're showing movies in your library without a site license, then maybe just take the chances. Google Books is another place to go. Portraitgot.com is, I think, is where actually I got the copy of the copy of The Raven to print out. And then you can just do a web search for stuff, but I think it's... I feel more comfortable if it's in the public domain anyway. Those cue cards, what I did was I took and I just blew the poem up so everyone could read. A lot of times you go into places like restaurants where the light's not very good anyway. You may have people who are reading. I mean, if I were reading, I would have trouble reading a book in the light of a restaurant. That's for sure. And so I just blew it up so people could read better. I think that helps to reduce the nervousness factor of the whole situation. Basically, you've got that to overcome. I mean, that's always what you've got to overcome. So I try to do preparation both to help my own shyness and innocence about approaching people to do this and then to help people who may be nervous about doing it. So I think preparation helps that. So I try to make it as easy on them as possible. So you can read line by line. You can read sentence by sentence. I think you get better flow and understanding if you have them read a complete sentence or thought. And then of course some writers work better for that than others but there are ways around it and we'll talk about that in just a second. Then I take the complete work in for context because sometimes people do want to know what's awesome. They want to know what comes before, what comes after. What exactly is the sentence I'm reading?  People will say, I have offered, I say, you don't need to read it for you so that you know how it's supposed to be read. I'm an English teacher by training really. I'd not trained to be a librarian. I have a PhD in English American Literature. I do not have a library. I've read a lot of poems. I've taught a lot of poems. So I kind of know how they're supposed to sound. Interestingly enough though, if people don't ask me to read it for them or they say, no, I got it, you can come up with some readings that you would have never thought about and as an English teacher an English scholar you actually, sometimes I think you find meanings in the poems that you wouldn't have seen before. It's someone else who had read it. The interpretation has some unexpected benefits. Let's see. I'm going to post or the conference organizers, you're going to post a handout that I would be giving you if this were a live conference and it contains some links on it for finding texts and some other suggestions and things. I'm actually getting suggestions for texts from people in Blissville, which tells me that they're engaged with the whole process to say, this is a poem you should do next or whatever. So I probably will try to do that. You can also you saw in that first one a lot of times people were just holding the cue cards and then there are others, again if you think about it, you saw people looking above my head, above the camera that's because someone was standing on a chair behind me with the card up over my head. So we found different ways of doing it. If you take one of those loose site literature stands that you probably have in your library and just take that with you everywhere, then you can set that on the table and everybody can read off that, but I didn't discover that to one of the later videos. At any rate, something like The Raven, we were just talking about some parts that works better, the line-by-line stuff will work better with some poets than with others. This is Ed Graham Poe. You can see you have nice, wonderful little breaks. We actually did two lines because I thought I looked at the length of the poem and it was 108 lines and I said I will never get 108 people to do this in two days. So I cut it half so it ended up being 54 lines, 54 people I got to do it in two days. But you can see the Ed Graham Poe breaks really well with either commas or periods at the end of every single line. So this is actually two lines obviously. It's converted for a larger cue card, but this is an actual cue card that I used. So that works out really easy. When we got to the Valentine's Day stuff, we used Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Shakespeare worked really well to Shakespeare. We had the men read the Shakespearean sonnet and we had them read Shalak and Pethy to a summer's day and we had the women read Sonnet's from Portuguese. How do I love Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Elizabeth Barrett Browning while not a modern poet is certainly much more modern than Shakespeare or even Ed Graham Poe in her style. Shakespeare is great because Shakespeare is short, choppy, pity line. Shalak and Pethy to a summer's day. Now more lovely and more temperate. So you don't have to worry about the end of the line is the end of the thought. So it's great. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is different. You can see that the sentences and the thoughts go across many lines. This is just the three lines and so you have to find a way to otherwise you're just going to have like six people read the poem which seems to defeat the purpose. So what we do there, what I do then is I have first of all cast it as prose because it's just easier to read. I'm going to say this is a sentence. Read this sentence and so then I had actually three people because it's three lines I had three people read the entire thing and then you cut it up when you're editing and I'm just going to show you that really quick and then you'll see the whole poem being read later. We'll try again. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being an ideal grace. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being an ideal grace. I love thee to the depths and the breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the end of being in ideal greats. This is the end. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. I'm feeling how to settle for the end of being in ideal greats. Whoops. I love thee to. So anyway, you have to decide whether you want to announce the recording or not. And there are two ways of looking at that. Listfield, even though we've done this several times now, is still not quite ready to just come in and volunteer to do it. So I have to ambush them. And ambush recording certainly has its place, because you go in and I think people, if I'm standing right in front of them, it's hard for them to say no, because I'll pout and stuff. And so that helps. If you announce the recording, it can be an event itself. And you can get a press release in the paper, which is always one of my big goals, is to get a press release in the paper. So if I'm bigger, I always say, if you can make the library unignorable, if you make it seem like lots of stuff is going on in the library, then that's just about as good as lots of stuff going on in the library. So if you've been announced, though, you have to rely on people wanting to do it and being willing to come and do it. So I ambushed the people who were in the library, except for the library board president who I had who I said, come in and do this. You have to do this for the library. What sort of library board president would you be if you didn't? And even I ambushed my son and my wife, although you can probably tell my son didn't have to be asked twice. The Rotarians didn't really have to be asked twice either. They were pretty good about it. They're always eager to help. But sometimes people, you have to talk them into it. And part of that is preparation. I always say it's like the play and movie, Glenn Berry, Glenn Ross, they always said, ABC, always be closing. And I think it's important not to appear rushed, but you're prepared, but you're always moving toward that one thing. And that's reading a line of a poem on the screen. It's just one line. It's just two lines, whatever. And you don't have to read the whole thing. I'll read it for you and tell you how to do it. I always say, we will do this until you're happy with it. And I can play it back to them on the phone. And that always helps. I have had people, especially with that first one, I had a couple of people who, because I didn't know what I was doing and I was having technical trouble with the phone or something like that, who backed out before I could get it done. So I always try to get it prepared. While we're talking about the phone, you have a couple of choices. You can use your phone, which is free. I've had some issues with where, if I go into a building with wireless, it's constantly trying to latch on to wireless. Obviously, you can turn that off. You have limited ability to adjust focus, lighting, sound. So that's trouble, obviously. You should turn the phone off because that would be embarrassing. It never actually happened. But I assumed it probably would eventually. The phone would go off while I was filming somebody. You can get a camcorder for a couple hundred dollars. And they're really good. And so if you have money in your library budget at all, you can get a pretty good camcorder that's intended to do the job. It's not going to be trying to latch onto your wireless. You have lots of ability to adjust focus, lighting, sound, and stuff like that. Obviously, it does cost money. And then you don't have the wireless capability to connect it, which is convenient when you're trying to connect it to your computer or to upload this to Facebook or whatever, which is ultimately the point. But that's just something to consider. When you go in, you turn off the phone or the wireless. You make sure you have batteries. You have memory cards for the phone or the camera. A tripod will help. And you'll see that when we get to Annabel Lee. Especially, it's like my phone had no problems adjusting for my hand shaking, which happens. Like I said, I'm not terribly comfortable with this myself. But the phone was much more sensitive. I'm sorry, the camera was much more sensitive. Once I changed the camera, it's much more sensitive. So next time I do it, I'm taking a tripod. And tripods are also like you can get all sorts of, you get a whole accessory pack for your camera for $25, which will include a tripod, both a tabletop tripod and a tripod that sits on the floor for $25, along with some other stuff, carrying cases and things, for like $25. Certainly a reasonable investment because you can use the camera to film all sorts of things. It's not just all sorts of library programs and stuff. And you may already have one in the library anyway. It's not just for these videos. But then I think it's a good promotional investment. You take the cue cards in a folder. I try to keep everything together. You take a book or a full copy of the work you're reading. You take pins for autographs. We're going to have everybody who reads autograph the cue card they read from. And we're going to use that later. If you want some sort of backdrop, I've tried using, we used a styrofoam tombstone in one time. But generally speaking, I'm filming too close for you to see much in the background anyway. But if you wanted to do it, I think for Peter Rabbit, we had a Easter basket with a bunny and an egg and everything. So you see that sometimes in some of the shots for Peter Rabbit. It does help if you're going from place to place. I always thought that would be cool. You have that same prop, no matter where you are. You have that same prop. Then I say, use your game face. I have to cite myself up to do this. So you just kind of, you know, so I always feel like I have to kind of be on. But that's what you take with you. You want to allow enough time. You want to allow enough time for settling in, for chit-chatting, for making the performers feel comfortable. Allow enough time for rehearsal. Let them read it without filming at all. Allow time to retake it because I'm sure you noticed when we did the Raven, there was lots of noise in the background. That's fine. I mean, if you're going to go into a working business, a restaurant, particularly, it's going to be noise in the background. And that's okay. That's part, that's one of the things that music will help you with.  You just assume you do that. Or the person who's reading might want to redo it. And so you just give them enough time to do all these things. Allow more time for kids. You have to get permission for kids to I use a list rather than individual forms. So I just have to child think, children are difficult because you have to, you have to have the parent there. What so in order to do the permission? So I just do this permission list rather than permission forms. It's easier to carry around since I already have all those cue cards and everything. I tend to lose stuff if I had too many permission forms. It's also good for in the library as well. I've been trying to film towards the night for Christmas for a couple of years now. But it's hard for me to get enough kids in, well, you know, I had to announce that because I needed them to come to the library with parents to give me permission. And I've had some difficulty getting that done. So we'll keep doing it, we'll eventually get it done. The kids may be 20 by the time we get it finished, but at least we'll get it done. Get everything in order, because I filmed a lot of this out of order because I wanted it to move around a little bit. I actually had a demo point. So you see all those shots in the dentist office. But I sped them out so that it wasn't just in the dentist office for six lines straight. You can fix some errors, you can't fix a lot of them, especially, you know, what goes on the cell phone, stays on the cell phone, so there's not much you can do. You create titles. And that makes everyone and every place a star, that whole idea is to kind of film down location, Blissville, Michigan is really part of it. You can give thanks to people and obviously you're promoting the library. Use the library logo, we try to blend everything around here. So that's part of it. Editing software. Windows Live Movie Maker is absolutely free. If it didn't come with your computer, you can download it from the Microsoft website. That's what I edited that first one. In fact, that's what I've edited all of it. It's Windows Live Movie Maker. Someone told me about Adobe production premium, which was very cheap at TechSoup. If you're all familiar with TechSoup, there's a steeper learning curve. It's much more complicated software and I simply have not had time to sit down and learn it. It looks like there'll be a lot, a lot more stuff you can do with it. And eventually I will do it. But as for now, Live Movie Maker has served my purposes and it's free, which is all here. You put in music. I think music helps create flow from disconnected images. You're moving from place to place. You're changing speakers. You need something that promotes continuity. It also helps to promote continuity because the background is just gonna change constantly. So you just, I think it feels just much more complete with the music there. It's fuller. Kevin McCloud at incompetent.com. I gotta send this man some money because I have used his music in everything I've done. It's on, it's completely royalty free music on his website. Suggest donations. It's always good. Another website for royalty free music is Partners in Rhyme. Links to both of those places are on this handout that will be available to you. And then this is what we did for Valentine's Day. This is the two, the competing sonics. Oops, that's not, we'll try again. Shall I compare thee to his summer's day? How art more lovely and more temperate? Brooklyn's do shake the garland clutch of May. And summers least have all too short a day. Sometimes too hot, the eye of heaven shines. And often is the gold combustion dim. And every fair from fair sometimes declines. By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade. Nor lose possessing of that fair, thou o'er the partial death-grade, thou wanderst in the shade, when an eternal mind's too tight, not gross. So long as men can breathe, their eyes can see. So long as this, this is life too late. How do I love thee? Let me count the waste. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height of my soul and grief, and the feeling out of sight for the end of being an ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day since most quiet me, my son who can't find me. I love thee freely as men strive for right. I love thee purely as they turn from grace. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs and with my childhood state. I love thee with the love I seem to lose with my lost sins. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life. And it's got to my soul, but love thee better after death. So, anyway, once you get it edited, you wanna post it on Facebook. And that's actually fairly easy. If you're familiar with Facebook at all, you post it just like you post a photo or anything, it's pretty simple. I promote the video then. I like to tell people, because one of the purposes of this was to put content on our Facebook page, is it a content-based marketing? To put content on a Facebook page, it would draw people to it. So they weren't just, they would come, then they would like the Facebook page, then they would get updates on library programs and services, but you had to actually have something to get them there in the first place, especially people who didn't normally come to the library or who weren't already on the library, weren't already friending the library's Facebook page. So I send out a mass email. This is one word of caution, but it's of course, someone who did not follow this word of caution is the reason I have so many email addresses to send it to. When you send mass emails, you should always use blind carbon copy because if you don't, you stick everybody's email address in the two line and I'm going to seal all those addresses. And that's what I did. I didn't have a lot of addresses in my address book when I got started. Fortunately, I was on the mass within the address book of someone who did, and someone who had a practically everybody in town, practically everybody in the county, once I got a few more in that address book. So I'm sending out something like 1,500 mass emails. And anyway, you just post those addresses and put them in your own address book and you send them out. And I'm of course not condoning this probably immoral and maybe illegal act. You want to get it in the paper, say tell them, our paper's very good about just running simple notices from the library. We have a weekly, actually a weekly at the library column which has library programs and a sample of new materials and things in the library every week. It's just a weekly paper anyway. But so every issue we have, we have that in there anyway. So you want to get that in the paper because it's like as if it is an event, because it is. We increased our, we had something like 24 people because we had just started the Facebook page. A few months before we had like 24 people if we liked our Facebook page. And by the end of that weekend, it went up on, I think Friday, I think how many was on Friday that year, it went up on Friday and by Monday, we had like 103. So it did really well that first time now. Of course it slowed down, but it did really well. Then we put up images, still images. I had my student worker put up still images, screenshots from the people reading the poem and their autographs, those autographed cue cards in the library. And that's what it looked like. We actually have these doors to the auditorium where I'm sitting now that we don't use.  So we just use that space to stick it up there. This is actually for Annabelle. And you can see that's where it is in the library. And then up close, you can see how everybody signed it and you're just the screenshots from the thing. And this is Annabelle, but I'm thinking that maybe we don't have time to do this. And we will just, perhaps I should take questions at this point. Or I should answer questions, because I have to go back to you. Yeah, Bob, you still got about 10 minutes. How long is this last video? Oh, it's not as long as the others. It's about as long. It's a little longer than the last one, but not as long as the first one. Yeah, I think we got enough time. I got, here we go. Let me close this. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. That a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabelle. And this maiden, she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea. But we loved through the love that was more than love. I and my Annabelle. With the love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and her. And this was the reason that long ago in this kingdom by the sea, the wind blew out of the cloud chilling my beautiful Annabelle. So that her highborn kinsman came and wore her away from me. To shut her up in a cell booker in this kingdom by the sea. The angels not half so happy in heaven went envy in her and me. Yes, that was the reason as all men know in this kingdom by the sea. That the wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my Annabelle. But our love was stronger by far than the love of those who are older than me. Of many far wiser than we. And neither the angels in heaven above nor the demons down under the sea can ever discover my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabelle. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabelle. And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabelle. And so all the night tight I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride. In the sepulchre there by the sea, intertuned by the sounding sea. And you see in that one, particularly, it becomes a way to promote blessful businesses too. People often, or I'll direct them to stand in front of a logo or something that identifies the business in the background. And then when I post it on Facebook, I provide links to the businesses of all the people who performed. So it becomes sort of a promotional effort, an economic development effort too, which in Michigan we can use. So it's just one of the things we try to do there. One of the services we provide at the life. That's all, that's what I have. That's if anybody has questions, I'd be happy to take them. Yeah, I think we got a few questions coming in from the audience. So Krista, you wanna pass those along? Yes, we do have some comments and questions that came in. One comment just about, I guess, equipment that someone, this says that they recently got a flip video camera, one of those nice little ones, via techsoup.org. Techsoup is a great website for libraries and non-profits to get discounted in equipment and Microsoft products and things. $60 for six cameras. Wow. Wow, yeah. Yeah, I think because I've stopped making them. Yeah. So they're starting to sell them off. So just looking. You're looking to get them fixed or whatever. I mean, of course, if they're $10 a piece. But I used to put video for one of the ones you didn't see and I was not too happy with the sound that's actually why I upgraded to the other camera, but they're great. I mean, they're certainly great for inside the library stuff. And at $6, you could give them to patrons and let them go out and film stuff and then bring it back and edit it together. So I mean, that's certainly worth it for that much. Check them out. Okay, a couple of permission form questions. One is, will the example of the form be in the handouts that you were talking about? Yes. Okay, great, we'll get that. And are the only people that you have signed the permission form, the parents, or do you have everyone sign it?  Although once it gets onto the web, I have very little control over it at that point. I suspect adults understand that, but I would never put someone's child on the internet without asking. So that's basically the thing there. We don't generally ask for parents' permission for library programs or to use their pictures in the library and stuff like that. We never have. Now, if you feel the need to get permission for everybody, I would encourage you to do so. Do what you're comfortable with. Okay, another question about dealing with your actors. How did you handle any mispronunciations? Or did you handle that? Well, I loved it pretty much. There were a couple there in that first one. And I essentially said, this is folk art. It's not supposed to be perfect. So I had to kind of, I had to put my own tendency to be anal at bay and just let it go. Nice. How long did the editing take for these kind of things? It takes, and actually the handouts that I'm going to put up are actually broken down to time and money. And so what I, the edit takes, as I say, that the filming takes more time than you think and the editing takes less time than you think. I would say that the editing took me an average of three to four hours. And that includes, well, that doesn't include putting the music in, so maybe if you talk about putting the music in, then maybe five or six hours. But the music takes a long time for me to choose just because there's so much of it and I want the right thing, you know? And so that takes me a while to choose. But I will say this too, it takes me that much time I know absolutely nothing about this.  So it takes that much time to learn it and stretch and get it done. Time for one more. Looking to see what we have here. Now, I know you got, someone asked a question which can kind of answer in the context of the other questions. I wanted to know, like, someone came in late to ours to our conference this morning, wanted to know who did you ask to participate? I was to that staff. And yes, if you go back and watch on the video and we'll have the PowerPoint presentation available, it was actually a whole bunch of people from the town, business owners and whatnot. And someone has a question related to that actually. Did you have to worry about featuring one business over another in your community? Politically? It's a pretty small town. I didn't and maybe because I didn't think to worry about it. And I'll try to get him next time. I mean, I think that's what I try to do in the library too.  So you get a big poster for that, sponsor up in the library and then, you know, the other insurance agent comes in and sees that poster and I say, wow, you know, I've got another program coming up, you've got an opportunity to do it too. So I just try, I just spread it around. If it was just a one shot thing, then I guess it might be a bigger deal, but we plan to do this for a while. So I'll cover everybody eventually. Okay, great. All right, yeah, that's almost all our questions. If we didn't get here, sorry. You know, we do have a limited time here. Just a couple of responses to some of the just comments on here. On one person, one just lasts like kudos for you says, I love someone says, I love this. It's like a living read poster. Oh, yeah. Nice description. Yeah. And so we did ask the PowerPoints in this presentations will all be available afterwards for everyone to get a hold of. So it'll be on the website, along with our recordings, all of our speakers presentations will be available. So you'll be able to have them after that. My email address will be on the handout that I, that I, that you post, I mean, post the PowerPoint. So if you have questions that weren't answered, I'd be happy to think of questions along the way. Be happy to respond. All right. Thank you, Bob, for kicking off the show this morning. That was wonderful. Video is something we'd like to promote around here. And this was sort of a project I hadn't thought of. So another way of looking at creating video for the library. So thank you very much.