Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft, thank you for watching today. So I've had a lot of people ask me over the months throughout the year, you know, things that I use in my tutorials, the scissors I use, where's my scoreboard from, what do I recommend in terms of tape and all those kind of things. So what I thought I'd do to kind of round up the year is I would show you my kind of go-to pieces, the things that I will always use, things that you'll see regularly feature in my videos and I'm going to link them all below but also I'll keep them linked in all my videos so I'll put it under something like my favorite things for example. So I'm going to get straight into it, I'm going to try not to keep it too long but like I said everything would be linked below so you can if you want to find out sizes of things or more specifics of that item then click on the link. I'm just going to talk you through quickly why I've got them and why I enjoy them. So first of all I'm going to start off with the scissors that I use. So you will regularly see these ones, I've also got these and then I have some snips. I also have lots of other scissors, I've got my fabric scissors here which I have very badly used on paper but that's fine, it won't you sharpen them, you then don't want to you know do that again. I've also got things like this as well so you will see me kind of chop and change. These are more I guess heavy duty and you might have seen me cut plastic wire, things like that with them but in terms of my paper crafting these are my favorite ones. Now these here I actually got when I was living in Shanghai so they're by a company called Hei, they're made in Italy and they need a clean but they are just wonderful scissors. Now I know a few of you have these exact ones because you've asked me for the links to these. Now unfortunately the actual Hei ones or that was sold within the shop Hei I can't get a link for those but they're these are you can buy these exact ones and I think people just put their own branding but they're just really nice because they're so long so you can get you know you can do like one nice cut you know if it's like just a short card or so it's just nice they just feel really nice I know the ones of you know those of you that have got them just really like them they've got a nice weight to them they're just a really nice quality scissor and I'm really glad I've got them so that's those but then I've also got these ones here which are the Tim Holtz tonic ones and these are like a large pair of snips really you could use these to fussy cut but they do have a slight perforation here which can be a little bit frustrating but if you're just wanting to cut stuff quickly and to get a real nice cut then they are really nice scissors and again yeah apart from that perforation which is not a bad thing if you're just doing a normal cut if you're fussy cutting then I don't like it so I wouldn't use them for that anyway but otherwise they're just a really nice scissor and they're Tim Holtz you know they are good quality and then moving on to the snips I've got these these are my favorite ones these are the tonic snips you just get a really nice again they need a good clean but you get a lovely when you cut right to the edge it doesn't kind of break the card stock it just cuts it you know so it's it's perfect for fussy cutting they feel really comfortable in the hand the lightweight again just very good quality but then also with these ones here which are even lighter I mean there's nothing to them it's just they are very very light these are crafters companion and again they are a nice little pair of snips very similar to the tonic sorry not tonic the x-cut ones that I've had which let me have a look I have got quite a few here they are they're very similar to these ones which I've had for a while and I do sharpen these but I'm finding they're just they're not keep it they still cut nice but they're not just kind of crisp anymore so these I guess are quite similar and then these are tonic these are the older tonic ones but again these had a perforation on them and I didn't like it for fussy cutting so I changed it for these tonic ones which are just you know that nice straight cut so those are the two that I'm currently using and I would recommend but I would still recommend these ones and these are a nice scissor but if you don't like a perforation look then don't get them because that does irritate me a little bit so that's the scissors so that's what I enjoy using there then I've got my cropper dial which you'll see me use a lot now I guess this is a considered purchase it is a bit more of an expense to this but you can also go for something like this one which is a lot cheaper so and it will still cut through grayboards you will sometimes see me go for this one if this one's I just can't reach it or it's I've put it down somewhere I will also get this one so it will also do your eyelets okay that will do that part there on the front but here is your hole punch so that you can cut through a more heavy duty you know cardstock or grayboard things like that this will work through that because I've done it before the only difference really between this and this one is this is just a lot stronger but you also have two hole punches here so you've got your normal standard hole there which is your three eighths of an inch I think and this is one eighth of an inch here this one just has the three eighths of an inch on the top and you also with this one you would have to buy it comes I don't know you probably could take these out I never have but you just get your standard kind of eyelet punches there whereas with these here you can rotate and you have the option of four different settings there that you slide in and again with this one here you've got the two settings depending on what you're using you can also adjust all of these pieces as well they've got the rubber you know if you're doing a lot of things they are comfortable to use so you know you get what you pay for really but this is still a nice one especially if you're starting off these are very inexpensive you can pick these up on amazon so again I'll share both the links and you know see what you know suits you best but if you do like using the greyboard you like making mini albums and things like that then definitely you'll need more of an industrial style hole punch so that's that one then I've got my poke tool to be honest I pick up lots of different ones in my videos I'm just looking at some other ones I've got this here which came in no actually this one I brought out the craft show this was just from every craft's pound but you also get them in some of your like little toolkits and stuff exactly the same this is very sharp this is like dangerous it's actually lethal but these here are your Tim Holtz ones now this one is blunt it but it will still work with things that's why I've not thrown it away I can still kind of you know pick bits up and kind of scratch with it and stuff but this one here's the newer one and that's nice and you know sharp still they're saying that doesn't look it does look like it's kind of gone but it is sharp so the reason I like these ones is they're safe and they're great for traveling because it's got the retractable pin or pokey part whatever you're going to call that the point so you can obviously put it away and protect it and I just put that in my pen pot you can also hang it as well if you want to things like this that's how they are I mean you can put a little kind of piece of foam on the end which I have done before but I end up losing them so that's yeah my poke tools I do like the Tim Holtz ones again just for a bit of safety and just convenience really but you can pick these kind of things up you know in a lot of kind of craft shops and places like that then I've got my bone folder so you always get a bone folder on your or a scoring tool on your scoreboards so for example I've got this one here because I'll be showing it in a moment but that's one of the ones there sometimes I pick that up in videos I've also got one of my hunky dory scoreboard but I brought this one first and this is lovely but it is quite soft you can see I can actually bend it there but it will also then go back again but I still will pick it up it's great for using on your cardstock now the reason why these ones now they call them Teflon however Teflon is a brand so I don't really know how they get away with calling this Teflon when it isn't the Teflon brand but I'll share the links this one I got it from the paper the vintage paper company I believe it is I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure Teflon is a brand and not a material so this the the name of this material is something quite long I can't pronounce it it's a form of very hard plastic and yeah anyway that's I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure I'm right so the reason I like these is because they don't leave a shine on your cardstock so when I use this it's this one solid as well this one doesn't bend um but whenever I use it you just won't get a shine on your folds it's a very minor thing if things like that don't bother you then you don't need to go out and pay out this was about 15 pound I think maybe even 16 this one was a little bit less I think this was about 8.99 it still does the job but otherwise you know a normal let me see if I've got another one I can't see where the other ones are I've put stuff in my drawer but anyway you know this is just I'm doing this video to show you the things that I use and why I like them plus I've been crafting for a long long time so these are things that for me it's like an investment this is my bread and butter it's I use this every day so to me that was worth the money and also the great thing about this is nothing sticks to it so you notice how clean that is I've never cleaned that that's just how it is whereas this one here does have a little bit more of a I guess a bit of a dirty finish to it um and that's why they give these things sure it's got a like a lifetime guarantee so glue everything ink color the lot it will not stick to this it will just come straight off I've just got mine with my washi tape on just so that when I go to classes and any crafting kind of retreats and stuff they you know I know it's my one so but I do I love it I really recommend it and again I've recommended it to quite a few of you and shared you the links to those so that will be linked below and I will try and find this one I've got a feeling I got this one off of amazon or ebay but that is obviously from a company itself so that's those then the scoreboard so you saw that I love this little one it's ek tools I can't find many small scoreboards it's not something that's quite I don't think very easy to get hold of this is an american brand I found this on amazon I've had it for quite a while now you also have on the back um information there on your envelopes so to you know make your own envelopes there so if you don't have the envelope punch board I'll share with that in a moment then you have this on the back and they also do it in the 12x12 as well so if you do like things matching um you know you can get it in the large size but I love this little one it sits perfectly in my little storage that I made and shared it on my channel not too long ago and again you would see this feature regularly on my channel but also I have this is the hunky dory adorable scoreboard and I love it I really do and it's great because on the other side it has centimeters and on this side it has inches and you do have your little bit there as well but the other ones that I've had and I've you would have seen in my older tutorials is the score power and this one's really nice but I did find that sometimes if you do have a card slot because everybody kind of cuts them differently some 12x12s wouldn't fit within this section um and it's just little things don't they they just kind of get you and yeah it was just nice to have a kind of a change really however the nice thing about this one is you can clearly see all of the measurements so you know you have to kind of look at those things and see what works for you I didn't like the score piece that's gone I've lost that and I found that it kind of got all um marked on the ends and kind of buckled and stuff and I was going off the tracks a little bit and you just I think it's been probably quite worn it would probably still work quite well now if I started using a metal one within there but um I always keep it spare you know if anybody comes around if I do go to classes it does still work um it will certainly work perfect for just doing simple scoring on cards and stuff like that so I don't get rid of these things and it's a very very good brand and like I said it it's apart from me not having that piece everything else does work fine so this is the other one sorry these are dusty because they've been underneath the um they're underneath my units because I don't really use them anymore this is the stamping up one now I did really enjoy this one and the reason being is you don't have a wall along the side or the bottom so you do you know if you have got that larger cardstock you can overhang and it's brilliant but the thing that started to irritate me a bit with this and it what I I wasn't the only one is that my stylus so this is the stylus that you get with it this goes in the bottom there I was just kind of falling like coming off the track I'd be like mid-scoring and I just start going over onto other tracks and I have I have no idea why because I wow they don't look like I guess when I look closer you can see they look like they are wearing a little bit but it is a really nice scoreboard so um it was it just used to really annoy me and the amount of cardstock sorry that is really embarrassing that's so dusty um the amount of cardstock that I'd sometimes just end up ruining because it you know jumped the track so that's why I stopped using it and then I started looking around at other companies and I saw this one and this was again highly recommended you've got the handle there to carry it and I like that you have the two options of either inches or centimeters this one you can buy the top plate for and I have got the top plate so it will convert it into centimeters for you so you know you can do that and uh yeah this is just really nice but my only downside with this one is the numbers are the same color everything's the same color as this it takes some getting used to I'm completely used to it now but I do sometimes still find myself saying a wrong measurement even though I am scoring it correctly I'm saying the measurement wrong so I guess for me when I'm teaching a tutorial and I'm filming it that can be not the best thing but it it doesn't happen a great deal you know enough I think it's still an amazing scoreboard I do really enjoy it and when I'm not filming it's fine so you know take it for what it is but um yeah it's the hunky dory adorable scoreboard and that's the ek tools a couple of other things so I was talking about the hole punches before and that's the other one is this one here now this one will go through grayboard but you do have to punch it kind of screw it a few times so it will twist down so I can do it on this itself healing mat but you basically just do that that will slowly disappear and it will punch your holes and then all the pieces will go inside there and eventually you can just push them out you get four other mine of a snapped off it should just sit in the lid like so when it comes up but it just sits in there you get three sorry extras you get a very small one then you've got the medium and then that's the larger hole so this is another really good one if you want to well you'll see I use this a lot when I'm making my gift bags because when you want to make a hole punch you know further down maybe for a decorative handle this allows you to do that you can be restricted with the hand ones by it's probably just as I think about an inch so it's nice to have something like this where you can just punch holes wherever you want so again highly recommend this one and this is the x cut screw punch so again that one will be linked below deal with the tools I also have this one which is the x cut circle cutter this I use loads and loads and loads I went through a a few months actually of using it pretty much on anything and there's quite a few companies now that have done this as well and I think they even sell it in Lidl I'm sure somebody shared one it's the Aussie Aldi the so crafty range I'm sure it was Lidl actually maybe they both do so it's not just x cut and I think even craft stash have their own branded one there's a green one by another company I think Hunky Dory have one so there's all kinds of one so I'll share it below but it's called a circle cutter and you basically adjust your little dial here so you have centimeters on one side and inches on the other and you just screw that move it wherever you need it so say let's do eight and then under here is a little blade this is the center you put it down and you basically twist that around and it will cut that eight inch circle for you is brilliant it really is I think this one cost me $8.99 best $8.99 you know and it's the same one that I've had from the beginning and I love it really really good so there's another highly recommended tool to have in your craft stash also is I'm just literally looking at what I've got so this one here this is your T-square ruler and this is brilliant when I'm doing a lot of my maybe like my mini album making or I'm making 3d storage and projects like that the way I'm using like a larger area and I need to cut and make sure everything's lined up T-square ruler perfect because this will catch on the side of whatever it is so let me just grab got a piece of cardstock here I can put that along here and I can mark five there come down five again come down five I can then go along here get a nice perfect line cut it do whatever but it just means that you're getting a perfect nice straight line each time so when I'm doing things like the triple wiper card or the sliding card I use the T-square ruler to do that because you're cutting within a section so again if I needed to come in two inches put a little marker here and then from that two inch mark I needed to come down five put another marker you know that that line is dead straight it's really good another ruler that's good for that as well but I find that I use this still more but it's the Tim Holtz because with this one here all of your measurements are all within the ruler so you can lie this one down and you can line up say that 11 inch line here with the top of the cardstock and then you know that that is going that ruler is now dead straight all the way down because it's straight with that marker there but also then you can mark half an inch you know three quarters you could then come in you can just it's a handy piece also it's good to use with your cutting knife because along this side you have a metal side mine is broke see there it's coming away which is a bit frustrating I also melted it a bit on my glue gun so I can't even use that straight edge because it's all gone funny there so I do actually need to just buy a new one and yeah get rid of this one really but it is it's a it's a nice ruler so but I find that I go to this more I just I don't know I like that you can just slide that along the top quite freely and this was very inexpensive this was from Amazon I think for about $3.99 this one here I think comes in I'm gonna say around $8.99.99 so again you know you know find what works for you that was the other bone folder I was looking for this is the bamboo one and I really like this is a lovely um folder bone folder it was from eBay it was $2.99 and again this has been recommended the thing that I like about this is over time it's gone so shiny and really kind of smooth on the edges there because it for a while it went a bit almost a bit kind of rough and you started to seal the grain in the bamboo but now it's gone so smooth and it's really lightweight it's just a nice a nice one so again I would recommend that one as well then I've got my blending brushes I know when I shared these a while back on one of my what did I get it just went crazy so many of you purchased them and you're enjoying them and they are they're great so mine are you know quite stained now I've got one like you can see there that's got a red kind of tinge to it so that's the one I use when I'm doing any reds I've got one that's a bit more yellowy I think it's this one here this one's browns I do want to get some more and I keep meaning to just put a little sticker on the back more and more companies have come out with their own branded ones I think there's one called something impressions or personal impressions an American company I think it is and they're like colorful like rainbow they're white with all different colored bristles they are gorgeous and they come with a lovely little display stand again it's a you know if you if you want to have something like that I possibly would go for it maybe I don't know but these were makeup brushes and they do exactly the same job also picket fence they done them as well but they're exactly the same some people have said they're slightly softer but it makes no difference these are just really really good so these cost me 6.99 I think it was for I've got two packs so I think I might have been 12 in a pack or eight in a pack something like that again I have the original link no actually sorry I tell a lie I had the original link and then I found the seller put his prices up so clearly he saw that there was a lot of traffic going to him because I can see how many of you I don't know who buys what but I can see how many people buy different things from the Amazon links I share and he had you know I sent a lot of traffic to his way and it just really frustrates me when companies then go and hike the prices up and I'm glad I caught it you know sooner rather than later and I just I deleted his link so you don't go to him anymore and I found again the same exactly the same ones much cheaper again and actually after this video I'm going to go and check that one to make sure they've not increased it you don't really want to be paying anymore than I don't know eight nine ten pound max don't pay any more than that I paid 5.99 6.99 something like that and you can buy just like two of them for 99p or something and I know some of you pick them up in like pound shops dollar stores things like that just don't pay a lot for them especially if you're starting off you really don't need to so but these I love them you know I grab them a lot when I'm making my cards and stuff so that's your blending brushes also when I'm making tassels I like to use these vegetable cut scissors so they're basically to be used in the kitchen to make your veg look pretty but I use them for making tassels I have got a blue pair as well and I need to sharpen these or I probably will just buy another pair they're really really good and you get lovely effects it's great for making grass like I said tassels and again I know quite a few of you have gone and got these ones so yeah again another little recommendation then I'll quickly talk about glues I've done a whole glue kind of review comparison video I've done a couple now so I'm not going to talk about them in depth I'm just going to really show you the ones that you see me use this is the 1000 mil calau that I buy it's much cheaper to buy the 1000 mil than to buy the smaller bottles I've got this the cheapest I've seen it was 15.99 which is this one that I got so and I think it's the most I've seen it's maybe 19.99 you certainly don't want to be paying any more than that I then decant mine into this small tonic this was a tonic studios glue it was just like a pva tacky glue so I cleaned it out with warm water made sure everything was you know completely out of the inside from like the original glue left it upside down peeled it all out and it works brilliant now because this one doesn't you don't get air bubbles so much with this so it doesn't like sometimes it can be a bit like a volcano and it just keeps oozing out glue whereas I don't get that with this one and I've got the lid there as well so I just decant this into this and yeah it works really well for me but also the other one that you can get is this one here which is the beacon three in one and this will work I think just the same as this but I believe the three in one is easier for people to get that are outside of the UK especially in the States and Canada a lot of you have messaged me to say that you can get this one and I've used this and it works just as well these are solvent based glue so they don't create any warping because there's no water in them so they won't leave any moisture in your paper crafting so you won't get any warping at all whereas even you're out glitter glue your dorm bibby all those kind of glues they are still a water based glue so although they're precision so you only a small amount comes out so you you won't notice any warping but if you were to take the precision off and to use a larger amount you will see a warping appear so for me I just don't like it I love this stuff and it's just yeah it's totally changed the way I craft now because it's it's like a cement on your projects so your card bases your boxes the lids the bases you put a layer of this in between and it really does strengthen everything so again can't recommend this stuff enough absolutely love it but also saying about you know a white glue a pva based or water based glue I do like the cosmic shimmer this is the acrylic glue again it's got a precision nib so a small amount will come out but this has an extremely fast grab I guess like the arglitter glue and the dorm bibby this one as well has a very very fast grab and they're great for small areas I would say so like your tabs when you're connecting lids you know all that kind of stuff then these are very good the calow is I guess very it's very like slimy maybe slimy is not the best word but it's well yeah I guess it can be hard to get a very very small amount because even that will go a long way but it does rub off really well so on little tabs I wouldn't go for the calow or the beacon you'll see me go for this one so that's why I kind of chop and change sometimes between glues but they're my go tos they're the ones I really love but you may also sometimes see me use the tombo as well this is extremely tacky and it doesn't dry fully it will always stay tacky so if it oozes out the side of your car stock it's going to stay sticky and that's when you'll want to have one of these and this is a glue eraser and it's brilliant it is so good you need to make sure the glues completely dry it has to be completely dry and then just buff over it with this and it will totally remove it and it does work very well with tombo but it has to be completely dry I know I said it doesn't dry it doesn't but it has to be at that that kind of tacky stage for this to work and they're great again very inexpensive I think this might have been a creative expressions I'm just picking off some of the glue there because that's all I do as I just go around the edges there and just pick off any of that kind of just the black stuff really because that's just your dried glue that you would have rubbed off and you can also cut some of it I've used a cutting knife and just kind of trimmed it as well but again it's inexpensive and they're good little things to save your projects really from you know being ruined so yeah that's that's all I'm really going to talk about in terms of glue if it is something you want to look at in more detail check out my glue review I think I reviewed 16 different glues and I talk in more detail about them so yeah go and check that one out if you want and they touch on a few dies and stamps not a lot but ones that I have really fallen in love with and ones that I've used for a year or maybe a bit longer there's a couple that have come in really kind of within the last few weeks but I think they're going to be big hits as well first of all is this one here and I know loads of you will have recognized this one lots of you will have it it's just been one of those stamp sets that I have just found myself going to time and time again I love the three different fonts and the sizes these make not only do they make lovely toppers but they're great for inside of the cards they're great on gift tags and they're just really lovely they're photopolymer they're very good quality as are all of the woodware stamps and I love them and they also then done the Christmas versions which you would have seen me use they got their Merry Christmas Happy Christmas and Season's Greetings and I used a lot of them when I made the silhouette cards along with loads of other cards as well they're just lovely stamps so these ones here are called big birthday words I will link them below I highly recommend them I just think they're a great one these are like your forever stamps I can't see myself ever getting rid of this unless it just I don't know dissolves or it just starts to you know just wear which I can't see it will because I do look after my stamps mine are stained just because I don't use a stamp cleaner I just use warm soapy water or just rinse them with my my lint-free cloth that's how I maintain my stamps I don't like to use too many chemicals on them I'd rather just use water so that's those ones there also sticking with the stamps because I'll talk about the dies in a moment because I'm not going to show too many dies because I think we've all got a different taste but I think when it comes to like sentiment stamps we probably will all use quite similar ones at times these ones here I've not had for too long but I really really like them and these are by card making magic which is by Christina Griffiths and they're just lovely sentiments to put inside your cards again you can have them on the front if you want this one I've used a lot so it's happy birthday to you on this special day may the warmest of wishes all come your way then also this one here for two very special people a wish for you today for a forever kind of love that will never fade away you've got a baby greeting you've got this one here which I've used this craft this crafted card handmade would love created just for you is sent to wish you happiness in everything you do this one to a lovely friend on your special day wishing you happiness in every way and then you've got some other ones there as well and I just like it it's just a nice one that can kind of cover quite a few you know different occasions and then this one here this is a little bit another big hit I got this from trim craft probably back in the summer and I can honestly say I've apart from Christmas cards I've used it on so many cards like just absolutely tons whether it's been on the front of the card or inside again it's got something to cover most of your occasions and it's really really good value for money this one here is either $2.99 or $3.99 I know it did sell out very quickly on Amazon with the link that I had and then I was linking to craft stash and again I'll check below and see but there's probably some eBay sellers and Etsy sellers that may well have it you have to have a little look if my links you know don't obviously have it available anymore but it's by Dovecraft and it's just again a great one this one is a silicone or acrylic stamps and but they still work really really nicely those are photopolymer and those are photopolymer I do have lots of other ones but I don't like I said I don't want to go into too much this was more about for me showing you the staples the things that I think will work really well within your craft stash if you really like this video and you want me to start sharing some other things that may be Christmas related or just birthday specific or my favorite kind of critter stumps things like that then just pop the comments below and if I get quite a few people saying that you'd like to see more of this kind of video then I'm quite happy to do so so that's just those stamps there and then just a few dyes that I've pulled out so the first one is this one here I haven't actually labeled this this was by creative expressions and it's the happy birthday and I've not had this long they sent me this one so I've started I'm an influencer now for creative expressions and they send me very kindly some really really lovely stuff which I have some nice tutorials to come using some of their product this is one of the Sue I believe it's the Sue Wilson die the happy birthday was something in die form that I really struggled with I just the ones I had were too small they were just a little bit fancy I just wanted a simple font and a nice size and this is large and I've already been using it a lot you would have noticed my tower fold I think it was the center panel tower fold card that I done it looks really nice on that one and again very inexpensive but I just think it's a good staple to have in your within your dyes when it comes to a sentiment and you can also use them separately so you could have birthday and then you could stamp wishes underneath you could have the happy as the die cut and you could stamp birthday or you could put happy days or you know just you know what I mean you could do it with all kinds of things so I really do like that one so I'm going to pop that in there also I like this thanks actually I didn't get it out to show you that one but that is a I think it's my favorite things and again I've used it on a lot of cards and I've done it on my thank you cards for last year Christmas so maybe I'll use it again I don't know it's just really nice anyway then I've pulled these ones out so these are all the bright Rosa ones apart from that one there and I love them and I think they're so versatile you don't obviously have to have all of these but these are the ones that I've got and this one here they come with it as well and then they're on the back of that one there and you basically just mix and match them so this one here is the birthday words this is sentiment words this is sweet words and this is friend words so again it kind of works in how I kind of said that happy birthday once you can kind of mix and match so you have happy but the way these work if you haven't seen me use these before is you can just have this die and it will just cut the word happy into the cardstock so you could have a beautiful image you could have happy through the middle of it or the image coming you know over the word is there's just many effects that you can create with this but also you can die cut it and and with this frame and it will be a natural die cut piece and you could then back it you could put it you know gift tags or gift bags you can do all sorts with them and then you have the birthday in this lovely font here with the shadow die so again you can have it just like that but you can also have it then with its shadow or its bubble so you can see there how that sits and you get a really nice effect with it so you would have there's your happy and then you'd have your birthday underneath that's just one way or you've got birthday and you could have best so best birthday you've got happy there so you could have happy birthday with that one then you've got wishes so again birthday wishes best wishes loads just mix and match them they're really really good to use and I have gone to these a lot so when I've had to do any quick cards when friends have asked me to do cards even though I have lots of cards there's always someone that will go oh but I love that one but is there any way you could change that word for that or something these just always kind of the other ones that I go to so that's the birthday words the sentiment words you get hello thinking of you and thank you and then you get you special lovely and friend I think that one is well family is it friend family anyway again the links will tell you exactly what they are and then this is the friend words which is beautiful family friend and lovely and then here you have hello for special a friend but I love the a the way that you've got that effect with it so really nice these are the newer ones these two here so I've got you know some more tutorials that I want to use those with and then this one here is the sweet words and it says memories dream sweet and home and then here it says lovely a wish was that make let's make create new and sweet you can see you can have home sweet home new home so she's covered all occasions you know there's something there for everything and I just love them I think they're really good so if you like something a bit more modern more contemporary then these are really good for that because you know you they're just they're very different there's something I haven't seen before until you know the collection came out and I've really enjoyed using them and it's something again I can't see me ever getting rid of I think there's something I'm going to keep but also I wanted to pull out this one here um I absolutely adore it and it doesn't have to just be for Christmas it's the Ponsettia die set by Simply Make Crafts but you change the color that you use this on so white silver pink you can make some beautiful bouquets you could have lovely bouquets in your house all year around yellow this will look absolutely stunning in and they're just huge so you can see how big they are there I made a beautiful basket of Ponsettias which I gave to my nan and I made one as a um sample and um I loved it and I want to make one for myself so in the new year I'm going to think up some really kind of bold and wacky um project to use these and have it as kind of a feature in my craft room I think it would look really nice um you get the sprigs there as well but I just love these great big leaves and depending on how you distress them depending on what you cut them in you use this with your flower foaming flower forming foam sorry you get again a different look altogether so I just think it's really nice I think it's a nice sized die and I think it's something that you have to look past when sometimes these dies come out for Christmas and they really push them as a Christmas die think of them you know in a different kind of cast a different color a different fabric and it will just totally transform it and make it something that doesn't have to just be used for Christmas so I'm going to prove that to you when I show you what I will do with that in the new year so that is another one that I love then kind of back to tools a little bit so I missed these out but these are the stamping platforms that I have so I have the Tim Holtz one which I really like and um yeah it's a nice piece it's heavy there is a weight to it but I like that you take the perspect lid and you just change it over depending on whether you're using your rubber stamps or your clear stamps your photopolymer your acrylics things like that so here it will say rubber so you know you've got it now ready for to put your red rubber on this side and then stamp it this needs a good clean as do a lot of things in my room I am doing like a winter kind of clean instead of a spring clean I'm doing a winter clean just after Christmas and stuff just to get everything nice again and then if you flip it that way it will then say clear but it's all easy to clean off I need to put some new wash sheet on my magnets as well but I do really like it and I again you'll see me use it a lot but also a few months back now on Hachanda they the Hampton Arts were on there and they were had a promotion on for these ones here for $9.99 now I don't think it's just me I think it's pretty obvious why these are on Hachanda because of the whole misty kind of copyright thing I think this was caught up in amongst all of that because this is very similar if not the same as the misty stamping platform and the the reason I really like these ones actually is they're much much more lightweight and there's a lot more bounce and spring within the plastic the Tim Holtz one this this is a very very strong perspex and you can't bend that that is a solid piece so when you push it down you have to sometimes have to stand up and really really put some pressure on there to get a good impression so you know if you're using red rubber it's perfect I don't ever get an issue but if I'm using clear on this one I can find sometimes I'm really pushing it but that's the great thing with the stamping platform is that's the whole point is that if you miss the stamp because everything's lined up and it's on this hinge you just ink it lay it back down again and push down so you know it's not a problem but I do find that it can be a little bit harder to use whereas with this because you have that flexible here look you can see it just bends you don't find that you have to put as much pressure down on you know your stamps as you do with that one so the deal was like I said 999 for the 557 was this one it's got the measurements there no six by then that one's what's that like that one hang on was it one two three four five six seven eight nine maybe but um so this is the smaller one so this is great when you're just doing little sentiments and stuff but I do use this one a lot to put the whole card in and um you all you do with this one is you just take out the foam when you're using your red rubber so when you've got your stamps that already have the foam attached attached remove this and just put your card your paper whatever in here the other thing that this one doesn't have which is a good perk that the tim holts one has is that this doesn't have a wall around here so you can put larger stock card stock in here whereas with these ones you are you're restricted because you have this wall around here so you have to have a card stock that will fit within that section saying that if you're using a clear stump and you've put the foam in you could you know go over the edge um I have done before and you can still kind of get away with it the magnets are very strong I do I've got new magnets and I do need to put washi tape around these um but just keep them you know spread apart because they could snap and um yeah again really recommend these they are lovely there's lots of different brands out there there's lots of companies that have them but these were a bargain um I don't know what the offer is once that deal had gone so again I will link these to Hachanda and you can check them out um and I'll see if craftstash have them as well because they may well have stocked them but for $9.99 you literally cannot go wrong and they are brilliant they're really really nice so I'm super pleased I got them and I would definitely recommend a stamping platform um for yeah if you love doing your stamping and stuff they're really really good and then lastly I'm just going to finish with the trimmers that I've got but also I just wanted to show you this one I just found it it's the we are memory keepers precision press so it's another form of the stamping platform but the only reason this one is it is nice but it doesn't have a magnetic base but it does have this slightly kind of I guess it's not sticky but it's meant to grip your cardstock um but as long as you push it into the corner each time you know this one can work and it has a little sponge corner there so you can obviously squeeze down onto it but it's again it's that thick perspex like the Tim Holtz um and this one doesn't flip over so it's I guess it's more limited with what it can do for you but it's a nice little one and it done done well for me I did put a magnetic sheet on the back thinking that maybe then I could put some magnets on here but it didn't really work let me just yeah it didn't work if I remember rightly no there's nothing there at all I think there's a little bit there actually but anyway maybe a stronger magnetic sheet might have worked but yeah there is that one as well so I'll link it because it was a nice little um one I did enjoy using it okay trimmers so I do have a few now I've just brought these two in just to talk through those in a moment but these are the ones that you will regularly see me use so here I've got the cropper die sorry cropper die this is the cutter pillar crop and I've had this now you can say about three three maybe four months so this is a consider purchase this was more I paid oh gosh it was between 15 60 I can't remember exactly um these have been going a long long time and I love it I have fallen in love with it it's brilliant you have a rotary cutter it's safe it will not cut you because it's all concealed there's a light there if you want it extends to 16 17 18 inches um and it's brilliant it has I've got nothing to complain about it so again the the the reason I've gone for this one again I've had other trimmers um but I wanted something that had a lifetime guarantee and the blade does on this so you know as long as I look after all this this will last me forever so I know I've paid that little bit more but now I will never have to buy another trimmer so it for me that's what I look for I want to make that one kind of investment buy and then not have to worry about having to do that you know buy it again so that's the cutter pillar crop and I adore it and then the other one I love is this and I think since buying a guillotine I I just I I haven't now seen myself go back to any kind of replacement blade trimmer so I've got my rotary one here which you know that's that that's the only blade I need now and it's self cutting as well or self sharpening so every time it runs along that blade it it does trim itself and I'm as long as you push that in each time you have your little grips here so you'll see there it kind of swings out you push it and it locks in and then you will always get a perfect cut I've not had any issues and I use this a lot I mean you see how much I craft how much I share I do commission work I do other private work this is always this gets battered and yeah I've not had any issues and if that was me using a trimmer that needed a replacement blade I can guarantee within the last four months I would have gone through quite a few blades with the amount of cutting I've done and blades can be quite costly so I think I've probably already made my money so I'm really pleased with that I do I love it but then the other one I love is this one and this is another self sharpening and this is the Tim Holtz guillotine and it is just brilliant and again I've dropped this I've I'm not I wouldn't say I'm like I look after my product but I'm very you know I just push things around and I shove it under there and things like that so it does get bashed about and it's brilliant I really do like it it's great for those smaller projects you do have the larger one as well my mum's got the large tonic I can't remember what the name of her one is she's got the orange it's gray with the orange handle another guillotine it's lovely so I guess you know if I had the larger guillotine in this would I have maybe gone for this one I'm not sure because they both say that they are self sharpening and that they have a very good guarantee with the blades and stuff so I don't know but this one was a deal and I just love it I really do so you just find what works for you but this one I just think it's it's just great it's a nice size you can easily see all of your markings you have all the scoring and the grids here you have your different card sizes here as well and it works for me also what I did do is I got some white acrylic paint and I rubbed it over the letters because I believe when I got these they may have changed it now because I do think it was it was some feedback that was given was that this was all black so it was a bit like this here you see that's all green you know you've got a look I can see it all when you're in person you can see it fine but I think the black on this people were struggling with so I think it was even Tim himself said get some white acrylic paint on your finger and rub it over and then just rub it over again with a cloth so that's what that is now all within the white there that's all white acrylic paint and all along there as well and it doesn't come off that's it it's in there so you know it's a quick way to to fix it so if any of you do still have this and it's black just get some white acrylic paint so um you know it might make a big difference so those are the ones that I will always use and hopefully we'll continue to keep using for a very long time because I love them both but one other ones that I have got so occasionally when I'm making mini albums I will need to cut my greyboard and I would never advise cutting greyboard greyboard greyboard with a guillotine because it will you won't get a straight cut it's very dangerous and you could end up slipping and cutting yourself so that's when I use this one here the fiskers or the we are memory keepers this was the first one that I had well I had others before that this is the first one I started using in my tutorials and it just clips underneath and then it will fold out to 12 by 12 but these here you need to replace the blades and I found these particular ones were getting blunt quite quickly so I'll get down the bottom there and you just have to have you remember you clip this one out maybe it just I'm sure it was down the bottom well there you go anyway um so there's your blade I'm sure it's in there and you just yeah you just clip it in and you just you know cut away but you also have a scoreboard attached so the bottom here you have your stylus and you can just you know score so again if you're starting off and you want something that can do more than just cut and more than just score then get the ones that are combined so this is your scoreboard and your cutting tool in one and I enjoyed using it when I had it it was good but then I found you know I was replacing the blades so that's when I then moved on to the fiskers so that's this one here so again this one has your extension and again lift it up there and then you can take your blades out on that little larger opening pop them in and you can cut along it and I do like this one and this is the one you'll see me use when I'm cutting any grayboard and things like that and um yeah it's just really nice but again you do have to get the replacements I think these ones I think you can get three pack of three maybe four and they're 5.99 up to 7.99 you can get them in hobby craft but again I did find I again my level of crafting I guess might be quite different to most because I do a lot I craft every single day and I can make maybe three four projects a day and if I'm making a mini album you know it's a lot of cutting so I am using them like sometimes maybe a lot more than others so you know if you're someone that maybe just crafts one or once or twice a week maybe then you'll find that maybe having something with a replaceable blade isn't going to be too much of a problem because you won't be replacing it as much so you just need to see what works for you but because of the level of crafting that I was doing or the amount should I say um this one now is perfect for when I cut my greyboard because all of what I did is when my blades go blunt for paper cutting I put a black mark on them because they're still sharp enough to cut through your greyboard or your um chipboard so now I've got loads of blades all my blunt blades from before actually now cut my greyboard perfectly so this is my greyboard cutter that's all I use it for and if you ever wonder when do you know when a blade is going blunt you you can probably you would you should be able to tell because when you pull it down on your cardstock it will buckle it might actually just pull the cardstock along the blade or you'll get a fluffy cut so when you take the cardstock out you might have lots of fluffy edges on it it's just not getting a sharp blade um a sharp cut and that's when you would need to replace it so um yeah so that was just a little bit on the trimmers and then finally I think I'm going to keep this short I'm just looking on my monitor and I'm coming up to an hour hopefully I'll be able to edit a little bit just some of the gaps in between the envelope punch board this is the older one I believe there's one now with the extension so when I share the link it will take you to the newer one um I just haven't got around to it I keep saying I should but it's it's a great little tool as it is anyway um but if you do like to make bigger cards and you follow my channel and you make a lot of the display cards and again the larger styles then you will need to be able to make your own envelopes and an envelope punch board is perfect for that you can also make other things with it as well it's not just envelopes there are lots of tutorials I've also got some myself where you can make gift back um yeah gift bags gift boxes Christmas crackers and uh lots more so they're a really nice kind of it's a really nice tool to have because there's so much more that you can get out of it and again we all know we are memory keepers they're a great brand their products are really good and they last so I've had this for quite a few years now and I do really enjoy using that one and also very quickly I'm just going to show a few punches whilst I've got my drawer here and these are ones again I would say are again I would recommend they're useful ones to have within your craft stash so here I've got my corner punch so if you like to round off your corners whether it be on your card mini album pages on the top of a gift bag they're really highly to have this is the x-cut one again I'll link it below and it's great it does just that it will just give you that nice curved corner rather than a square corner the other thing I love and again it's relatively new I've had it within the the later part of the year I'd say the last five months of the year and that is this tag punch so this is by Hunky Dory but again there's lots of companies that do this I know that Dress My Craft have one and there's a few other brands as well I think even Hobbycraft have their own out now as well so I will share as many links as I can but it's lovely you can get these three style gift tags you can have them as long as you want but the wits are one and a half two and two and a half brilliant and the other ones I love are any kind of like shaped punches so I have here the two inch I have a two and a half scalloped one I have a one and a half scallop and then I also have a one and a quarter and a one so I could now punch from here all the way down and they would layer up on top of each other really nicely just any of these are really handy when you have a sentiment and you want to just quickly you know cut it out if you want to make little finger pull like thumb what's the word you know when you've got like a gift card or something you want to pull it out you want that little kind of half moon things like this will work great for that and just punches in general are just really quick and just that ease of you know to just speed up any crafting you might think oh I just really need to quickly make a quick sentiment topper if you've got a punch you don't have to worry about getting your dye machine out looking for the dye it just does it straight away for you and the other one I've got is this one here as well which is Dress My Craft which does the corners but you have two sides two sizes so you know have a little look around for corner punches I'll share the links to these ones below but there are others as well so I'm just really telling you the things that I think would benefit you in your craft stash and then you can go and see you know what ones are available and around there so there is a ton more stuff I could talk for probably another three hours and still not cover everything you know there's Nouveau Drops sequins pens pencils everything so like I said if it's something that you do like and you would like me to maybe share some other videos focusing on other materials products different brands things like that just leave the comment leave a message in the comments and yeah I'll have a look and see if it's something that more people say so I hope you found it useful I do get these questions asked a lot so that's why I just thought I'd just quickly throw it all together in a video I'll try and make sure it is with under the hour and just yeah make sure you had a cup of tea or something I'll put a thing up to say grab a coffee and a little something to eat and then sit back and watch the video so thank you for watching and I'll be back soon with another tutorial bye


Hello, you're watching NewsClick and People's Dispatch and today we're going to be talking about the economic crisis in Sri Lanka and other media reports have painted a very disturbing picture of course, lot of power cuts stretching for as long as 10 hours, there's a fuel crisis, long queues at petrol pumps, people struggling to buy food, crisis in the terms of medicines, but a lot of these are also symptoms and we wanted to talk today about the deeper structural crisis that has led to some of these issues. To talk more about this, we are joined by Ahilan Kadirgambar, a senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, somebody who's been studying the political economy of Sri Lanka for a very long time. Thank you so much, Ahilan, for talking to us. Thank you for having me. Right, so Ahilan, as I said, we've heard, we've read a lot about the symptoms actually in terms of the individual crisis and how they're affecting the people, like I said, very disturbing reports. But could you maybe first tell our viewers what is the say underlying structural element that has led to all this. There is talk of course of the fact that there is a foreign exchange crisis, but what really is leading to this? Yes, I mean, while it's reflected in the day to day problems that have emerged and some people, including the government claim that this is a problem that emerged with the pandemic and the lockdowns and the disruption of the economy, others are saying this is due to with the change of government two and a half years ago and the emergence of a president go to buy a Rajapaksa. He immediately cut taxes. So our state revenues have fallen by almost a third. So they claim that is the cause of this crisis. Others trace it back to the Easter attacks in April, 2019, when the tourism sector first got disrupted, but I see this as a much more longer drawn out crisis in the making. I would go back to 1977, 1978, when Sri Lanka was the first country in South and Southeast Asia to liberalize its economy. Sri Lanka has been the first on many fronts, both positive and negative. We were the first country in Asia to have universal suffrage going back to 1931, and that has played out in our political economy as well. We are the first country, as I mentioned, to liberalize its economy. We've continued to have free education and free health care all the way up to university education. So there are very particular characteristics that have played out into the political economy of Sri Lanka, but this particular crisis, this crisis has been in the making, I would argue, for a number of decades. But it was disrupted in a major way by the civil war, the long civil war of 26 years. So while liberalization was initiated a few years into it, even as that sort of bubble that comes with initial opening up of the economy was getting disrupted, there was a kind of a state engineered program, which was July 1987, July 1983 riots, which led to the civil war. And after that, while the liberalization trend continued, the emergencies of successive governments was to address the civil war. So they couldn't go as aggressively with liberalization. It is after the end of the war in 2009, when actually Sri Lanka went into another IMF agreement, Sri Lanka has gone to 16 IMF agreements in its post-colonial history, a significant one was of post-structural adjustment in 2000, sorry, in 1977-78, when we liberalized the economy. In 2009 again, we went into an IMF agreement and we got the kind of positive report card from the IMF to be able to go borrow extensively in the global capital markets. There was a huge amount of capital that came into Sri Lanka because Sri Lanka was not only seen as a post-war economy, there was also a trend of after the global financial crisis of 2008 funds flowing into the what we're called the emerging market. So Sri Lanka was seen as an emerging market and a post-conflict economy. So our stock market in those 18 months after the war quadrupled. So you can imagine the euphoria, it was one of the best performing stock markets, there was a lot of investment in real estate. Colombo changed over the next few years after the war. So a lot of investment in infrastructure and real estate. And we actually showed very high levels of growth on the order of over eight percent growth in GDP in those first few years after the war. But this was a sort of a bubble that was created by speculative finance coming in. And when that started to peter out, there has been another conflict that has been created by the Rajapaksadam at that time. That's when it started to unleash attacks on the Muslim community. So it was no longer the Tamil minority, but now the Muslim minority has been created as the enemy. And but there were also economic pressures that led to large amounts of trade union struggles and so on, which is what led to the fall of the Rajapaksadam government in 2015. And that change was significant because at the end of the war, many actors felt that the Rajapaksadam were here for decades. But as I mentioned Sri Lanka has a long history of democracy and and that little routine change again, even with the new government in 2016, as the economy continued to collapse, despite the goodwill of various actors, India, the West and so on. They had to go for another IMF agreement and through this IMF agreement in 2016 again, we went and borrowed in the capital markets, sovereign bonds, where 40 percent of our external debt is sovereign bonds. So this accumulated debt, a form of debt trap, I would say, is what has culminated in this crisis. Of course, the disruption that came with the Easter attacks, the tax cuts and the pandemic have sort of pushed us over the cliff. But this has been a long crisis in the making. And it's important to recognize that because getting out of this crisis is also going to be long and arduous. And I don't think either in Sri Lanka or international analysts are recognizing the depth of this crisis and what it would now take to get out of it, which would mean really completely shifting the direction of our economy. Absolutely. We'll come back to that, of course. But I also wanted to ask you about specifically the pandemic itself. We don't know that the pandemic had a very drastic impact on the economies of many countries across the world. But in Sri Lanka, how did it specifically contribute to the worsening of the crisis, both the pandemic itself and the policy framework the government chose in the event of the pandemic? Sri Lanka had become considerably dependent in terms of foreign earnings. You know, there are three sectors, the kind of agriculture exports, mainly on tea, rubber and coconut. But the other two sectors, tourism, is what Sri Lanka was counting on. So all this investment that I mentioned, the beautification of Colombo was all about trying to get the returns through tourism. The pandemic put a full stop to that. And so it completely crippled the tourism sector. The other sector from which, in fact, we actually get more foreign earnings in reality, migrant workers going and working in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. You know, initially it was mainly women and now more tilted towards men, but and those foreign remittances were also disrupted. Now, keep in mind, so many of the rural households depend on the foreign remittances. The other sector that will continue to function are the government industry, textiles. And but there are a lot of rural women go and work there. They have greatly reduced the employment in that sector. So in terms of rural income streams, there was a major disruption due to the pandemic, in addition to it being a kind of a national macroeconomic problem of balance of payments and foreign reserves. It's really affected the population. The urban informal economy, as in much of the world, was also disrupted. So these disruptions meant that the government had to give out much larger relief. But that is where Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka had the lowest amount of relief even in South Asia with the pandemic. Part of it was the the tax cuts that I mentioned just before the pandemic. Soon after the election of a president, Gottabai Rajapaksa in November, two thousand nineteen, he carried out those tax cuts in December by March, the pandemic had hit us. So then we were already in a sort of austerity mode where we didn't even provide relief. Any relief that was given was mostly to businesses and the tourism sector. So in terms of actual relief to the people, it was lacking. So it's it's been a very hard time for the for the ordinary working people in Sri Lanka. In this context, there's been a lot of discussion about the food crisis. And there are two questions I wanted to ask about this. One, how much did the ban on chemical fertilizers actually contribute to accentuating the crisis? And also if that ban, for instance, had not been there, would this crisis have been averted or was it bound to happen? Nonetheless, because of dependence on imports. Yeah, I would go back to again, liberalization in nineteen seventy seven seventy eight because until then in the nineteen seventies, we were moving towards a policy of self-sufficiency at least in food, right? But with liberalization, they also liberalized agricultural trade and given our sort of small holding, small producers in the various agricultural sectors, whether it's fisheries, dairy, livestock, agriculture, it's very hard for us to compete in the global market with agricultural produce. So when they liberalized trade and they reduced state investment in agriculture, there has been a long decline and a dependency on imports. We are an island nation, but the last few years until the pandemic, we were importing 200 million US dollars in seafood. We were exporting 250 million US dollars, but we were importing 200 million US dollars in seafood. Or if you take dairy, almost 60, 65 percent of our milk food needs are imported in the form of milk powder, mainly from Fonterra and in New Zealand and so on. So we really neglected our food system along with liberalization. So when the pandemic hit, people actually on their own turn to agriculture, you know, people from the urban areas went back to the rural areas. So fellow lands were being cultivated and because at least through subsistence, they realized that they had to address the pandemic. Of course, the urban working people did not have that option. But in much of the rural areas and Sri Lanka, you know, not rural as in the hinterlands as you might see in India, but rural in terms of not urban and maybe semi urban, 80 percent of our population is there. So they thought of some form of agricultural production. And that is where last year, when the government came out with a fertilizer ban, that crushed the hopes of the existing farming community and anybody who tried to work around this food crisis that was emerging. And there's a history to rice, I must say in Sri Lanka. Rices are stable. In the 1950s, we were only 25 percent self-sufficient in rice. And we had people also talk about Sri Lanka's relationship with China. We had the rice deal with China where we were importing rice. And during the Korean War, we were getting very good prices for our rubber. And in turn, we were importing rice. I mean, the Korean War ended in 1952. We were in a balance of payment prices, very similar to what we are now. And the World Bank had just come on its first mission to Sri Lanka. The Central Bank had been led by an American, John Exeter, who created our Central Bank. Their advice was to cut the rice subsidy because we also had a food subsidy. And the price of rice tripled from 25 cents a measure to 70 cents a measure. And we had the largest protest known in Sri Lanka. The entire country was shut down. Cabinet had to meet on a British warship. That sent a message for the next generations of the political elite that you don't touch rice to the extent that from no other country has achieved this, from being 25% self-sufficient in rice in 1953, in the course of almost 25 years, we went to 90% self-sufficient in rice. That was that kind of investment in agriculture and rice. And what President Gautabhai Rajapaksa did last year is political suicide in the sense that he banned the fertilizer subsidy after the Green Revolution, after channeling all our farmers towards agriculture production with chemical fertilizers. And from being almost 100% self-sufficient in rice and our production costs are not something that we can export rice, suddenly the yields with the monsoon season has been probably dropped by 40%. So can you imagine from being 100% self-sufficient in rice in a time when we are going through a balance of payment crisis where we don't have the foreign exchange to import? A man-made disaster in agriculture where we reduce yields by 30 to 40%. So we would have anyway had a food crisis when it comes to milk foods, when it comes to pulses, when it even comes to seafood, but a staple in which if you asked me two years ago, I would have said, our strength is that we are self-sufficient in rice. And that was also destroyed. So it's a very tragic kind of moment in Sri Lanka where even the best efforts and the strivings of the people have not only haven't they found support from the government, their government has in a way actively destroyed their prospects in terms of them trying to make the food needs. Absolutely. I have two more questions. But before that, to go on a slightly political note, what would you say prompted this decision because it sounds like, like you said, there's a long history of why such a decision would be a disaster in so many ways. But to make such a in the midst of a pandemic to make such a transformative decision, what do you think what kind of thinking was behind this? You know, from the time President Rajapaksa was elected and, you know, and even though the pandemic hit three or four months later, the regime had only one interesting mind. And that was political consolidation, consolidating more and more power. So they were only focused on the parliamentary elections that followed. And soon after that, they passed the 20th Amendment to the Constitution where they keep huge amounts of power, centralized powers in the president. Then they passed the Colombo Port City Bill with the two thirds majority to be able to financialize. So this this continued drive. I mean, that's how I define neoliberalism as a classic project of finance capital and Colombo Port City is considered a financial city. That was their goal. So it was all about consolidation. And it neglected, as I mentioned, giving even relief to the people during the pandemic. And it has been a very authoritarian, militarized two years after the president came to power.  And he says that famines are not caused by shortages. Famines are caused by the lack of democracy, right? Because if there was democratic consultation, if there was that democratic space, if the farmer, the farmers would have not allowed this to happen. And it has happened much later. I mean, there are certain parallels with what's happened in India also over the last two years with the fact I was thinking of demonetization when you're talking about a number of these factors. So and these things like the pandemic spread in a subcontinent. So and I mean, as Sri Lanka is the first, it's also a warning to other countries in South Asia that you don't go through this kind of tragic moment in the future. So I would say it's authoritarian power and bad advisers and without consultation of the people that led to this disastrous policy. Thank you so much, Ailan, for those answers. This concludes the first part of this interview. In the second part, we'll be looking at what comes with this IMF conditions that he was talking about, what is the future or what is the possibility of re-envisioning the Sri Lankan economy?


What's up everybody? I'm Jason here for jaspyscasebrake.com. This is our last filler guys Gives away the last 10 spots in the hip parade jaspy edition football break with this 2021 prestige football fat pack break number 24 Yeah guys third two small spots everybody gets a random team then it fell first We're randomized because our names teams distribute the hits out of the little fat pack here And at the end we'll randomize the original list top 10 out of the 32 get in to this break here And that'll be coming up next So dice roll it and we got ourselves a 5 4 or 4 5 9 times one two three four five six seven eight four five nine Chad down to Chad four five nine one two three four five six seven eight Nine here my packers out of the Vegas Raiders.   Most of these will be base. So no that base will ship just the inserts It's like this one right here extra points Kaskowski to 149 will ship So this trey Lance rookie As well so is this this this this this And of course rookie wise cow pits there jake funk dream and kitty These are all just based there as well Nice little pack right there Now let's switch scenes guys and let's do the main giveaway. That's what everybody's here for right here. We go No, top ten get spot to the Jaspie hip pray roll it Four and a four eight the hard way top ten are in here. We go one two three four five six seven eight bone eight times So remember top ten are very happy James down a mark unfortunately not in He's to give it a shot guys. Good luck Martin you're in Wesley Chad Coleman Anthony Tanner Rick Martin Mark L Kev and Martin congratulations top ten Are in there so Coming up next guys is the Jaspie hip parade Appreciate it guys. Thanks


Have you ever entered a lucid dream and then found that because you got so excited during the dream you just woke yourself up? I Don't know you probably have because a lot of guys who email me They'll they'll say I entered a lucid dream. I I did what I needed to do Performed a reality check did a technique and then as soon as I entered the lucid dream as soon as I got lucid I just woke up and they're saying what do I do like why why is this happening? Well, it's happening for a number of reasons. So firstly when you normally when you have a lucid dream It's something new to you like this is not something that lots of people do Obviously lots of people do lucid dream, but not the majority of people that majority of people have normal dreams They don't remember them most of the time and then they just wake up and that's that sleep is just sort of like a mini coma for them It sounds fairly boring, but that's what most of the world are doing. They're just sort of sleeping through their dreams However lucid dreamers want something more.  You want to have you want to continue that dream. You want to have that dream play out So what do you do? Well? There are two things you could do Probably more but we'll cover the main two Firstly if you meditate during the day you'll find it easier to stay in that focused state in the dream because you'll have been practicing the the act of of keeping your mind aware and sort of calm and relaxed and focused That's the first most effective way that you can stay in a lucid dream and not wake yourself up The second way is you could try taking a supplement Now there are a number of supplements you could try. I'll try and link to some in the description But ideally you want to be taking a supplement that That contains Koli. So this is gonna help you with your dream recall dream vividness And ideally you want to have one that doesn't contain galantamine simply because galantamine can be quite rough on your system It can be quite difficult to digest people report that they feel like nauseous or you know They have headaches or the sort of things that might wake you up So in order to stay in a lucid dream for longer and not wake yourself up You want something with Koli and a few other other ingredients as well I'll make sure there's a link in the description for you guys to to check that out Yeah, so you want to make sure that you're if you're doing something exciting Which hopefully you are because that's the whole point Just don't get too engaged in it emotionally Okay, so obviously if you have sex in a lucid dream, you're gonna nine times out of ten wake yourself up It's it's a very exciting thing that is gonna push you over the edge of being awake and lucid dreaming That's like a really fine line between being lucid in a dream and Being awake or having your mind wake up so much that you just end the dream dream collapses. You wake up and your day starts so it's important to sort of Understand that before you do something in a lucid dream that you think might wake you up So if you for example are having a fight with someone That's obviously quite stimulating and so that could wake you up Whereas if you were instead lucid and you were reading through a map Okay, or you were talking to someone in a bar paddling down a lake in Thailand or so, I don't know some whatever the case maybe If you're doing something less Arousing you're gonna stay in the lucid dream for longer Like I've had lucid dreams where I've been lucid But I just didn't fancy doing anything exciting like flying or fighting or whatever it is And so I just sat in a bar which it might sound kind of sad or weird But I was just talking to this dream character Which the conversation? I'm not gonna go into because it's quite personal But it was a very stimulating Interesting conversation that I had with this dream character And so I was quite happy to just sit in the bar in my dream and talk And so in that particular dream I was able to stay in it for what seemed like hours and hours Obviously it wasn't ours in in real life time, but it felt like ours, right? So my point here is that the longer you want to stay in a lucid dream You want to try and do things that are less engaging So if you want to have the exciting dreams, that's great But they'll last typically less time than if you just had a lucid dream about walking down a path So it's kind of annoying, but the more exciting and arousing the dream The shorter it will be And there is sort of like a balancing act you can do here You can you can lengthen it by by taking certain supplements by listening to brainwave entrainment by neural beats There's links for that in the description if you guys are interested But most of the time okay as a as a rule of thumb the majority of the time is what I'm saying The more exciting the dream the less time you'll have in it


Welcome folks. This is Tom O'Brien of TFNN. We have 5 days a week. We go 7 hours a day. We go 24 hours a day on the internet at tfnn.com. Always remember folks, whatever you think about, you bring about whatever. You focus on growth. Hope everyone's having a great day, safe day. Let's make it a great night, folks. Don't make assumptions. Ask for what you want. Find the courage to ask for what you want. Others have the right to tell you yes or no, but you always have the right to ask. Likewise, everyone has the right to ask you for what they want, and you have the right to say yes or no. Macadamias! Let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries up 270. Nasdaq's down 167. S&P's off 18. Gold contract down $6.30. Trading at $16.62 an ounce. We have Silver down 5 cents. $19.43 an ounce. Light sweet crude up 83 cents. $88.73 a barrel. Notes and bonds. A 10-year note. Up 18 ticks. Trading $1.1120. The 30-year up 27 at $122.10. And $Kingdala. $Kingdala's up 886.6. Trading out at $1.10.850. 885.87. The euro's at 99. The yen is out here at $146.00. And the British pound is at $115.00 to $1.00 U.S. iPhone number's<PHONE_NUMBER>. It was called, folks. One note's going on in your world. The world of the S&Ps. Let's take a look at it. Well, actually, let's go to the futures first. We've had quite a few trading days here, folks. You know, you can be long and are shot and make money in this market right now. So let's take a look at it. What do we have out here? Well, let's see. Let me get this back. I got to get this back. I'm going to just put it back. So this is, I'm going to go back nine days. Okay. So I don't have to go back nine. Let's do it. Oh, I see. One, two, three. Let's go back four days. Okay. So what yet? Spread this open a little. Okay. So what we have is this. You first had the first downdraft this morning, you know, basically at the open. We got down to the price point of $38.25. Now, that was the last time that we had big volume. And the futures market on the way down. Well, we had volume out there at $9.50. That was $63,000 contracts. We went higher up there with $54,000. That first time we came down, you had $37,000 when it was breaking the low. This one right here that we're doing right now, you got $30,000. Yeah. So you can see the correlation, the correlation. First leg down, $63,000. Next leg down, $37,000. Next leg down. We're almost finished with this one. We're at $31,000 right now. That's saying, now it has to catch price, but the bottom line is saying that the cell is drying up here. That's on the e-mini. Now let's go to the NQs. We take a look at the NQs. We know the NQs are the weakest thing to see out there. We take a look at the NQs. We're going to do the same type of setup. So I'm going to open this just a little. I'm sorry, what? Okay, sorry. There we go. Sorry, folks. Let me get that in the den one second. I'm getting one second. Where one thing keeps getting in my way. There we go.  Let's see. There we go. Okay, so now let's get into the NDX100. NDX100. Oh, we're bringing this back. Six days. I think it just broke. There we go. Okay, so here we go. We open this baby up. So first, let's do the same type of exercise. So the first exercise, same type of setup here. This is going to be interesting. First time down at 10.50 this morning, $25,000 contract. Next leg down, $13,000 contracts and we just did, we just did $6,800 on that bar. Yeah, this is pretty cool, man. Bottom line, you know, we'll see where this just shakes out after the close today, but when you take a look at, well here, now let's go to the dailies. We take a look at the dailies, we go inside the dailies, we go inside the spy. What we have in the spy right now, bottom line, you're coming back with 56 million shares. We made a high yesterday with 104 million. You know, you're coming into, let's see, at 374 or 379, you have a huge volume, 131 million. Right the bar we're coming into right now still has 85 million and you're not going to do 85 million there. And the X100. Take a look at the three cues. One, two, three. There we go. We take a look at the three cues. They're pulling back 40 million. We made a high with 59, you're coming into 77. Now this is going to be really cool because this is going to be hard to do. So we're into the bar, the top of the bar was 275. Now we're into that by three points, which is a big number, no doubt. If we close the above it, that'd be really bullish, but I don't think that's what's going to happen. The lower part of this, when we hit 272, well here, let's, we haven't hit 271 yet. We have 272.36. We'll see how this shakes out coming into the close. That's the real bottom line. Inside the end of the X100, the strength versus the weakness out here today, you've got O'Reilly Automotive is up 4.5%. You have Constellation Brands up 4%. Honeywell is up 3.5% and Charter Communications is up 3%. Taken away from it. Monster Numbers, you get Meta down 25%. Align Technology down 18%. Vertex Pharmaceutical down 6.5%. And you get Micron Tech off 5.5%. We go into the Dow Industrials. We take a look at the Dow Industrials, the strength versus the weakness inside the Dow. We have out here, Pointwise, you have Caterpillars putting 104 positive points. Honeywell 45, Boeing 39. Taken away from it. Apple minus 31, Microsoft minus 31, Nike minus 7. Now, let's get over to that gold contract. GCCZ. What do we have inside the gold contract? Sideways move. And it's with light volume. Let me see what this volume was yesterday. Well, we get down to 1658 where it's 1652. It's going to be close, man. You're coming in to 171,000. Oh, I see what's happening. I know you're actually coming in to 271. Okay, the high 1663. So this is going to be interesting, right? 1663.80 was how we came off the last bottom. So that's important to keep your head on. And, you know, bottom line, we close over that. That's going to be a rejection of lower price with much lighter volume. Our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. We have the Dow. Dow is up 269. Mazdax down 168. SAP is up down 17. We'll come right back.


Everybody forced here a big 2023 Bowman Chrome baseball hobby 12 box case number 37 pick your team style God Anton H with the twins on war the Phillies Blaine has the white socks Brad are the Braves Brian C. Orioles Brian H. Blue Jays Charles a nationals David F. Rays David D. Cardinals Duke with the Rockies Holly with the Giants James L. Tigers Mets Jeffrey H with the Diamondbacks Dodgers and Yankees Jordan C with the Astros Joseph F. Guardians Luke R. Marlins Matthew a Reds Brewers or in W. Red Sox Padres Mariners Phillip and with the Rangers Rick E with the A's Ron a Cubs Thomas V with the Royals William S. Pirates and you on with the angels. Good luck everybody Sorry, Walt. No big Francisco's unfortunately, man Brookies are tougher hits in this though All right, we got blades. We got him Jake. We got him We could just have Sean go to sorting shipping. I thought we got blades in here Put him in the back Vaughn will get Vaughn will be discussed in Vaughn's weird. He is an old Boston fan, but it is a Montreal Canadians fan Which is the Bruins biggest rival one woke up one day and chose violence Is that what's his name? No way, dude solo team Jake Deekman. Yeah, he's been actually pretty solid. Has he? Oh, let's go Manny Margo. Manny Mar. Let's go Manny Manny being Manny Manny Wait, what? It does it does sound like that, right Chris? See, I'm a all Boston fan, but I like the magic instead, but my reasoning is sound my reasoning is sound for sure Got one Benjamin first speckle for the Guardians number to 299. You've never had NFL and LB or NHL team here, that's all my family. Oh, yeah refractor rookie our first auto to 499 BJ cook for the A's They're from the Northeast. They're all very fans, but Magic only hometown team that I had Purple shimmer to 258 Isaac for the rays Vargas Green refractor is a first bowman for the Mets is Daverson Gutierrez to 99 I do respect Sam's reasoning for choosing the Hawks though There was to troll his friends They're playing like the Bulls or something like a series Against the Hawks or something. I don't know who it was. Yeah, he was like, yeah I'm just group of the Hawks just just to go against you guys That is all you need. Oppo first woman auto A's again. Yenny a la boy You say it boy la boy Yeah, boy la boy Josh young on the rookie refractor to 499 Rangers Why do you keep saying I keep sitting in Hill? That's a balk. It's got to be a balk blue refractor is Goldie out of 150 for the Cardinals God oh Stanches First woman auto Joel Diaz Mets shimmer Elijah Green Nationals Green refractor is Edwin Diaz the 99 for the Mets on the world baseball classic flag What's up Invicta Kate Horton Ethan Salas First woman auto Marlins Javier Sanoha Fractor first Ariel Castro twins to 499. All right. He's some big hits here. Come on now Come on Boma Chrome. All right guys Boma chrome choice next down to one to go. Let's get that filled on up Maybe if you root it harder for them Pinto I'm not sure Oppo Really depends on how he plays that's pretty much it for a prospect. That's as hyped as him But if you wait and he starts hitting well, it won't go down Makes a jump to like, you know makes a couple of jumps up up levels Then yeah, then then the hype is gone. It's it's over to 499 For the pirates role baseball classic flag Camilo Diaz first woman auto for the Astros Devers their first fuchsia shimmer to Nietzsche Valdes Going to the Cubs to 199 Orange rookie Jordan Walker Nice one there for the Cardinals 11 of 25 Invicta of Avon Melendez Do we need to see a retro fracture? Like we're here so we still haven't hit one here Atomic is a Ricardo Oliva our first auto 17 of 100 for the Mets Well, then yeah, if you think if you think that it'll go down just based on that then Then you should wait if you think that 499 trout for the rays a trout franco There was a trout before that Walker has been fantastic the past little while I've been picking up some of his tops chromes still so young And hit bombs and pull the full pack out. Yeah, he might be hitting better. Yeah, you 100 Vargas Walker not necessarily defensive asset Osorio first refractor at a 499 going to the Dodgers But hitting is what drives First auto Luis Torres for the Angels first shimmer Christopher Torian for the Diamondbacks Purple spackle out to pretty solid one Orange is a prospect process Brady house going to the Nationals number to 25 Celestine Don't forget about your members only coupon in the community tab everybody if you're a YouTube member 10% off on a single order through midnight Can be multiple things on the order though First auto junior Marin for the Royals Aqua Rayway rookie is Osvaldo Cabrera for the Yanks numbered to 199 Arias That's the big thing for the Orioles is the Orioles are killing it And it's literally because they got The help from the young players The Cardinals are terrible That's the big difference in the in the hobby right now. I think that and the just consistency with guys like Adley He's older more polished for Walker has to be in the Cardinals stink We've also got flawless come up a bit everybody flawless NT mixer on sale 329 99 a spot Salas base Got an Edward Solano first refractor to 499 for the Nationals How the rushman iconic Beaver's Invicta that's while resident came to the league first auto fell in Celestine Congrats Seattle there you go Seattle Celestine base auto Gunner Henderson iconic with a speckle of coming arrow to 299 for the Rays Got a Nick Gonzalez on the orange Pirates fall league to 25 Blue Rayway first auto Luis Reyes out of 150 for the White Sox Glad jr. Got wrist receipt. Yo first shimmer Rockies Prada to we We he mad chateau Come on bubble chrome see a super or a red Patrick Mullins WBC flagged the pool were 99 Orioles Atomic first auto Yeniel LaBoi 64 of 100 for the A's Good boy. LaBoi Got purple shimmer to 250 is Luciano Giants Nipah Maya Jackson choreo brewers refractor to 499 first base auto Mets Joel Diaz Speckle Jackson Meryl the 299 Padres Canther's O line already got Bryce young hurt SMH Not gonna play this week sprained ankle SMH Yeah, he just calls him ya boy LaBoi. That's all he calls Sam and who flavor Flavies Steve see you grabbing a spot in its Floss NT number two and three guys we gotta get moment chrome choice filled up Just wanted to go division's case next moment chrome choice 36 autos Blue to 150 is the on the Jorge Rockies Raza Purple refractor first auto Hans Montero to 250 for the Yankees Montero Lanzo Jimenez the 499 Guardians WBC flag Cisco, I mean it's called HTH choice. I'm pretty sure I've never really called it HTA Home team advantage is kind of I just call the choice Because in Bowman did the HTH jumbo Got atomic Prospect process Brooks Lee for the twins 250 they both are correct. There's not like a wrong First auto is Bessio. Here we go Orioles. Oh is Bessio base auto green shimmer to 99 Xavier Isaac going to the Rays purple Elijah green out of 250 for the nationals Pena and Victor Rindon con for the Dodgers angels pitcher Not doing the best First purple auto mariners Axel Senchez the 250 Nipah Maya Aqua to 125 is first woman one Benjamin for the Guardians. I still want to go on the next case Costus iconic That is a Serena pink and fuchsia vapor wave first for the Yankees the 199 Base auto pirates and Manuel Torero by the junior purple shimmer first bowman Yadair are in ammo 250 Even like bring it to a shtick mr. Arinamo Mr. Arinamo Bummo Arinamo She has Harrison tonight young pitchers Got a 518 here a but hey super young She has been really good Delgado pink fuchsia paper wavy Yankees the 199 Invicta of Sterling Thompson Rockies God Gunner Henderson it came to the league Speckle Yankees first auto Luis Serena the one that the 299. Oh, sorry. Oh first refractor Dodgers number to 499 To Wayne right? Well, yeah, I mean, dude Wayne white Wayne right a servant of meatballs all year Chris somebody got aqua to 125 first woman Edwin Solano for the nationals base auto Jacob Melton for the Astros shimmer first his tamaris for the rays Still want everybody still want to go on the next one Yeah, see you see you were right up. Oh, you were right Ricky refractor Josh young the 499 Texas first auto Emmanuel Torreiro for the Pirates Nipah Maya shimmer first is Bonilla. Oh, I didn't anything. What are you talking about? Pink aqua vapor wave to 125 these threes for the Guardians. Yeah, and you passed right by the water You need to mix in some Victor Yankees Roger Garius I'm not even the kind of some water on Sunday. That's for sure Yeah, no mess he's just depression dude Yeah for you guys First auto Blue Jays Peyton Williams aqua array wave Raphael Devers to 199 Red Sox Jake, come on man. I've always hit 200 miles an hour, right?  We got choice coming up next don't want to go Breaking right after this. Come on last two boxes here Number two two ninety nine is Tatis There was a response to one of the you know, we sounded the SMS like bumps. Oh, it's automated Jaker to 75 is a Bayez Yellow refractor for the Tigers Let's get let's get HDA choice for love guys breaking next division style first auto is Brett wisely for the rays We're gonna try to Ramar's Just have enough people on Monday first shimmer is one Benjamin Guardians Yeah, we plan to try a lot of things But we just we don't know when and don't know how yet first refractor to 499 is cash I we know how to do it, but like how we want to use it I don't know and Victor one been show Cardinals that it came to the League Corbin Carol Speckle first auto Yankees again Luis Serna to 299 Purple Aran Sanchez first for the Cubs to 299 Bruins They'll be so so like they'll be good, but I don't know if they're gonna be like great Aqua ray wave to 199 Bryce Harper for the Phillies base first auto Dmitry O'Crisant is for the dime of X Salas Never's there first purple shimmer are are now the old Antigua going to the Dodgers number to 250 Wave refractor rookie for the med spread baby to 100. George Walker came to the League. There's a Francisca Refractor angels first woman auto Daria Loverde will 485 out of 499 there and a Gunnar Henderson sp Soon as Appa mentioned now we hit back-to-back cases with it, of course Gunner SP nice card Orioles give me a second to a recap everybody Danny, thank you. Danny selling us out on choice First one for to go on the second choice still Yeah photo variation of Gunnar Henderson It's 499 Jimenez Mullins Contreras Franco young young choreo Castro Castro Solano Osorio twice there to 299 Merrill Comanero Benjamin Tatis the 250 Luciano Isaac Aranamo Antigua green and Sanchez Number to 199 Harper Devers Cabrera Delgado Valdez Serna to 150 Brooks Lee Paul Goldschmidt the on the Jorge number to 125 East Thuris Solano Benjamin to 180 to 99 Isaac Diaz Gutierrez to 75 Baez to 25 Nick Gonzalez and the Brady House. You have autos Jacob Melton Diaz twice Terraro twice Payton Williams Marin Torres Diaz Sanoha wisely la boy Crisantes to 499 La Verde and BJ Cook 299 Serna twice 250 Montero and Sanchez to 150 Luis Reyes To 100 Oliver and La Boy orange rookie to 25 Jordan Walker Very nice card there base auto Felene Celestin for the Mariners and base auto Stanley Basio for the Orioles Thanks again everybody knows decent case nothing too crazy though. We appreciate it moving on to an HTA choice case now