I’m going on the YouTube Made For Kids’ (MFK) Creator Accelerator program!

I have been invited by YouTube and Changer Studios to join the ‘Made For Kids’ (MFK) Creator Accelerator program to see if we can’t get my Drawstuffrealeasy channel to be a little bit more successful – ( I say a little bit, but I have my eye on the Gold award for 1 million subscribers – I’m one 10% the way there.)

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking and researching the last few days and I realised that all my talking might actually put off a lot of the audience and so I’ve re-edited a video (below) with no talking – after all, a huge number of the YouTube audience don’t speak English – a large percentage of my viewers live in India!

It will be interesting to see what happens to this video compared with the one with audio description – and a colour thumbnail.

I need to radically alter my mindset. Luckily there are some amazing people lined up to teach us (a cohort of 25 in UK USA & Canada) all about Made for kids channels.

California brought in a law in 2019 that turned everything upside down for creators who made videos deemed to be made for kids. I sort of lost heart after that. I think I felt I had been cut adrift.

But now I’m feeling quite upbeat. There are 16 weeks ahead of me. I imagine there will be quite a lot of A/B testing, like the videos above, so if you want to chip in and make suggestions, I’ll be glad to hear what you think.

How to draw wedding buttonhole flowers

Learn to draw a wedding buttonhole flower arrangement in traditional pen, ink and watercolour style.

Click here or click the image to download a pdf sheet with an actual size drawing that you can copy or trace so you can follow along with the video.

Have fun. Let me know if you have any questions or ideas for new videos that will help you on your drawing and watercolour journey.

A garden without a cat – what happens?

Mr Darcey
Mister Darcy in young hunter mode

We have had a few cats over the years. I can’t really remember living without one. At times we have had three at the same time.

Mister Darcey, a handsome and very aloof cat, with two white hairs on his chest and black stripes on his black fur in the summer sunshine, succumbed to old age and illness a month ago or so. We miss him and keep seeing black shapes out of the corner of our eyes.

But what is amazing is the birdlife in our garden since. in his final days, he would lie on the grass and watch a magpie walk past him just a few feet away. He did love to Cath a magpie. We knew he was on the way out when he couldn’t even be bothered to twitch his tail.

We’ve never bothered to cage or cover raspberries before. We picked quite a few, then I went out to pick the final berries… and they had all gone! That never happened before. We were always happy to share the fruit, but not to be raided.

We picked a good quantity of ripe gooseberries too. Mrs Rayner made some wonderful chutney with them. The remaining fruit had ripened and we decided to pick them after a walk. But they had gone! All of them!

Pigeons (I think) are intent on digging up the roots of my French beans. A robin has become very friendly and watches me dig or weed from within touching distance. I hold my finger out for him to sit on but he hasn’t fallen for that yet!

We had always had the occasional bird brought in as a gift and found remains around the garden, but I never knew how much the cats were keeping birds “under control”.

We are not planning to get another cat anytime soon. But I think I’m going to have to learn new bird avoidance gardening techniques soon.