HELLO ALL YOU WONDERFUL PEOPLE!

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Wow! In a lot of places, Mother Nature can't figure out whether it's truly winter, or the start of spring.

In Michigan we've been having temperatures in the 50's and 60's and at night going down to the 20's and 30's. This is making for some really interesting holes in the roads, whether they are paved or gravel. The freeze/thaw cycle just really makes a difference and when it is happening almost every day, the roads really suffer. Usually February is the coldest and snowiest of the winter here. We'll see if that happens this year.

I know in some places, the snow is the worst in a long time. Tornados are starting to happen in a lot of states already this year.

Well, Mother Nature doesn't like us to get bored or too sure of ourselves where she is concerned.

I want to thank those dealer/instructors that have gotten their up-dated sales tax license to me. Thank you. That makes us in compliance with the rules that we have to follow. Those that don't have them to me yet, please, get them in.

Well, most folks seem to like the new Quilt Blocks of the Month sets that we're putting out this year. Sales in all six (6) sets of designs are going well.

I'm getting things done on this end so that the designs are ready to go out on the first of the month. Just know that I am trying to get back to getting the newsletter out on a more consistent schedule, but even if I don't (due to the shoulders, generally) the designs are ready to go on the first of the month. Last year, even with how bad the shoulders got at times, I was only behind on that particular thing once, and that was in November.

I see by the sales that a lot of you have wanted to buy the quilt designs without the quilt blocks. I'm glad I decided to try it out.

After the paint class here in January, I figured out that I had some of my own paints marked wrong. After a very confusing time of thinking that I had sent out paints that had the wrong name and number on them - we figured out that I had only messed up my own personal bottles of those paints. Those of you that were here for that class - you're paints are correct. Mine were messed up. Thank goodness we caught it in time to not mess things up on the rest of the year's charting, especially the Hearts 'n Flowers charts. I only had to go back and actually change one chart that I already had done. (Sometimes things like that happen when you get things done ahead of time.) (Hummmm…..does that mean I should go back to doing things at the last minute? NO! Okay, I'm glad we got that settled.)

I want to welcome a new dealer/instructor up in Alberta, Canada, where the winters are hard and folks need something to do to pass the time. Welcome to the team Susan Janzen. I hope that everything goes well for you. Let me know if I can help. It sounds like you have a good plan. (She is going to start with two (2) classes a month, one in her home and one in another home.)

Having a monthly class in your own home is a great thing. A lot of folks would like to have a night out once a month, doing something they like, but they really don't have time to have one in their own home.

Frieda Hass is doing a good job of getting the paints out to her customers. She's in Ontario, Canada.

Rene McDonough, in Venice, Florida, always has great classes. She teaches everything from outline and fill-in, to 3-dimensionalizing your designs. I always get good comments on her classes from other people.

Sandy Wadelton and Kathy DeGroat, also, have great classes in Florida. I hear wonderful things from their customers.

So that gives you some far northern dealers and some far southern dealers to go to for your products and learning.

We always need more dealers. Contact me if you're interested.

The first thing that you need to know - you need a sales tax license from your State Treasury Department. These are usually either free or with a small cost. It means that you are in charge of paying your own sales taxes to your state for the sales that you make to your customers. I don't charge you for your state sales tax, so it's up to you to take care of it.

I will put a list of dealer/instructors in the next newsletter. These will be people that have a copy of their sales tax license in to me at the office.

Let's talk about one of the quilt block designs that are going out this year.

The Hearts 'n Flowers (H'nF) are a great start to learning how, or teaching how, to blend. The heart that is around the flowers in each design, is done with three (3) different colors (101-123-124) and these colors are blended together to give it a little bit of a three dimensional look. If you want the heart shape to be in another color, be sure to use at least two (2) different colors of the same family to do it. You can always use 101 as the highlight.

Do the different parts of the heart one at a time. When you are blending colors together, it is best if they are wet, then they blend better. Outline the part with the dark color - then add the next color in little bitty swirls that overlap the dark color - then put the highlight on in little bitty swirls that overlap the medium color. Now take your Fiber Blender and, again, in little swirling motions, meld these colors together. When you have done all the pieces of the heart - look back at each piece and see if you need to add a little more of the highlight color. Sometimes when you blend colors together, you lose more of one color than you want to. All you have to do is go back and put a little more of that color in and blend it out into the rest of the colors. It's actually easy to fix most errors. Just add more paint.

The rest of these designs are fairly simple - it's just putting in shadows where they go. Remember - shadows are places that don't get as much light as the rest of the design. Shadows = less light. You can paint, say the ribbon, in one color, then put the shadow color on over the base color - or you can put in the shadow color - then add the base color - and blend them together.

If you're putting these designs onto a color other than white, be aware that the colors will not show up as brightly in the beginning. After letting the part of the design dry that you are working on, add another coat. Don't push down really hard with your Fiber Blender or the side of your tip, that will just push the paint right through and out the other side and won't make the color show up any brighter. Think of the first coat as the primer. When it dries, then you have something to work on top of. Push the 'primer coat' down into the material - then paint on top of it to get the look that you want. When you're working on blue jean material, this is how you get the colors to come out nice and bright and visible. When you're working on the 'primer coat' the rest of the coats will adhere to it and not wash out, because you made the 'primer coat' a part of the material by making sure that it penetrated the material really well, that's what locks your painting into the material that you are working on. Usually the darker the material that you are working on, the more coats of the lighter colors are needed to make them 'pop' out into view. When you make sure that each coat is completely dry when you put the next coat on, and don't push the new coat through the material, it takes fewer coats to get the finished product that you want.

We didn't get to the Kitten at the paint class, so I will talk about fur and hair next month. There are many techniques to painting these - but I will only be talking about a couple of them.

Here is a tip to get more sales. It works!

If you sell paints to your customers, it will pay you to make sure they get a T4673 - Dots transfer. Make sure that they only fill in the paints that they have. What happens is that they want to fill in all the 'dots', so they keep buying paints, as they can, to make sure that happens

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