When will I make the Karen Puzzles puzzle?

Hi everybody welcome back to karen puzzles my very first video of 2021. I have been trying to film this video for like an hour now and there has been so much construction outside. So if it comes back – and you can like hear it in the background – i’m so sorry just starting the year off right right anyway, this is going to be a q, a video. I gathered all your questions. Let’S get right into it, because i already know that i’m going to be talking for quite a while all right.

Our first question actually comes from my sister who wants to know what puzzles i got for christmas and also my birthday this year. So for christmas she got me this puzzle and i actually didn’t show it on instagram. I wanted to wait until i could show it in a video. This is called the puzzler. It is a vintage springbok video and it is a jigsaw puzzle of a jigsaw puzzle, but the puzzle cuts are not along the lines here, so you can see up in the corner.

It’S like a jigsaw, puzzle, texture and then the cuts are completely random. On top of that, so this is going to be really hard um. This i’m actually planning to do this, one for my first real puzzle, video of the year, so look out for that soon and then for my birthday, which was on new year’s eve uh. My sister also got me this puzzle, oh my god, can people not and then for my birthday, which was on new year’s eve. My sister got me this puzzle, which is another springbok puzzle, but the box is actually octagon shaped.

Look how cool that is. It is of all of these stamps it is called postage paid and then also for my birthday, my parents got me my birthday front, page jigsaw puzzle. You can order these for any date that you want, and it is just a jigsaw puzzle of what the new york times front page looked like on your birthday or whatever date you decide to get since i am now old um. I just turned 30 when i was born. The front page was only in black and white, it wasn’t in color.

So i think this will be a challenge, but i am planning to do this in a video very soon. Where did i put it? I don’t have it out right now, but i’ll show it in a close-up. My sister also got me puzzle-shaped glitter and it’s not really glitter, it’s more of like sequins or confetti, but they’re puzzle piece shaped, so i’ll definitely have to think of something fun to make with that next question: what is one puzzle that you really want to try? But you haven’t yet, and i actually do have one answer to this question.

There is a puzzle that i have been obsessed with like since i was in high school. I’Ve been wanting to do it. It is the 24 000 piece life puzzle from echuca at the time like a dec 15 years ago. It was the biggest puzzle in the world. Now plenty of puzzles have surpassed it, but i just think it is such a beautiful image.

It’S so colorful, there’s so much going on. There is someone on instagram that i follow. Who is doing it right now and i’m so jealous. I got a few other questions asking if i would ever do another giant puzzle, because the biggest one that i’ve ever done is 9000 pieces, and i would love to do another really big puzzle. But the problem is that my apartment just isn’t big enough for that.

Right now like in the time that it would take to do a giant huge puzzle, it would just take over my living spaces, and i don’t really want to do that. So i figure once i move to a new place. The next place that i live in that is bigger. That’S when i’ll take on a giant puzzle all right. So this next question is something that i have been wanting to talk about um.

Why did i stop posting on my original youtube channel, the diy channel? If you don’t know – and it’s totally fine, if you don’t but i’ve been on youtube since 2008, since i was 17 years old, i’ve had this diy channel, it wasn’t always diy it kind of grew up. Along with me, i used to do graphic design videos. I used to do sketch comedy, which i was not good at so do not look up those videos a lot of them i’ve taken down by now, so you couldn’t watch them anyway. I even have the url youtube.

om karen, because it’s actually a funny story and that’s all i’m going to say, because i don’t think i’m really supposed to get into the specifics, but yeah. I still have that url so anyway. What i wanted to talk about is why i’m not posting over there anymore. I just kind of feel, like i outgrew that channel, i’m so glad that i have it and then i have a record of all of those videos of me like growing up and finding myself as a you know like video creator and as a host and as A youtube personality, but i mean number one i just got really burnt out on diy videos um. I still make diy videos for hgtv but doing those and then also trying to do like more diy videos.

I just i didn’t have any more diy ideas, plus, as this channel was taking off um. I just was putting a lot more time into this channel, so i just didn’t: have the extra time and energy to put into my old channel um? What’S that quote from parks and rec, like don’t half-ass, two things whole ass, one thing, and so i decided to put all of my extra energy into this channel to grow it as much as i could, because making the puzzle. Videos is what i was really excited about and what i really wanted to spend my time on and then also there are just like algorithm reasons like since the channel is so old. So many of the subscribers over there are dead accounts and quick disclaimer.

What i’m saying has nothing to do with me being a youtube employee, then, or what i just did for the last few years. I was also it’s it’s a whole thing anyway. What i’m saying has nothing to do with being a youtube employee. I don’t even know if it’s correct. This is just how i understand it from talking to other creators and going to youtube conferences, but the way that i understand it is one of the things that the algorithm looks at is the percentage of subscribers and um impressions of people who then click on your Video and so on, my old channel, if i have almost 200 000 subscribers, but only i don’t know 3 000 of them are active accounts, then that is a very small percentage of people who are clicking on the video and so to youtube.

That looks like hundreds of thousands of people, don’t want to watch this video, so they’re not going to recommend it to other people, whereas on this channel, even though i have fewer subscribers, i think it’s at like 60 000 right now, somewhere around there. If 20 000 of those people watch, the video in the first 24 hours youtube sees that huge chunk of people who decided to click on the video and they’re. Like oh people like this, a bigger percentage of the people were showing this to you want to watch it so we’re going to keep showing it to more and more people, and then that’s how you get the snowballing view counts and that’s how you get those huge View counts that exceed your subscriber numbers which, since my old channel, doesn’t really work with how the algorithm works. These days, like i just can’t get those views on my old channel and because i can’t get the views, i don’t get the adsense, so i’m not compensated properly for the videos that i’m making over there for the amount of time that it takes to make those Videos, so this is a problem that a lot of very old youtube channels have and honestly, just starting this new channel starting fresh. It is like the best thing i could have done on youtube and i’m seeing so much more success over here than i ever saw on my old channel, all right.

That was like very nerdy. But oh here we go another very nerdy question. How do you edit? Your videos, what software do you use? Um?

I use adobe premiere pro. I love the adobe suite. I’Ve worked with adobe a lot in the past. I’Ve gone to the adobe conferences. I’Ve worked at the adobe office for a week like giving feedback directly to the premiere team, which was very cool, so i love adobe premiere how long it takes um a video like this, where i’m really just talking to the camera.

I would say this will take like three hours to edit, but a full-on puzzle, video with hours of footage where i have to like write, voiceovers and organize everything and do a lot more like intense editing. Those probably take like 12 to 16 hours to edit. Some of the longer videos are like two full eight hour days of editing like a lot of my videos. It takes way longer to edit the content than it does to actually do the puzzle. Next up we have another tech question and i got a lot of questions about how i film my videos – and i actually have an old video on this channel, called like how to make chick saw hustle videos where i go through all of my equipment.

My entire setup – i am getting a new camera like later this week, so my cameras will change a little bit, but the rest of the setup is still exactly the same. Next we have a question about college um. I went to risd, which is the rhode island school of design, which is a pretty like traditional art college. You know freshman year i had to do the foundation year, which is eight hour studios of drawing 2d design and 3d design, and i’m really bad at drawing. So those drawing classes were not fun for me, but i started making youtube videos my freshman year of college.

So a lot of my very early videos are like about art school and about graphic design, which is what i was learning and what i was studying. And i actually did find a job in what i studied um right out of college. I got a job at google at youtube. My official job title was visual designer, but it was basically like a ux designer, like those roles, kind of all merged, together, which i was not very good at, because risd is a very traditional school. So most of my classes were in like very traditional print design and not web design, which is what like this entire job was.

So i was only at that job for about a year from 2011 to 2012, but i learned a ton. I just wasn’t very good at it, so i only lasted a year, but i’m glad i did it and some of the people that i work with. I still know and i’m friends with so yeah. It was a great job, just not quite the right one. For me, oh, and then we have another school question um.

I probably should have done this one first. What was high school like for you, so i went to a vocational school which was all about communication and design and art and video production. So i learned photoshop when i was 12 years old. Also i went to high school at 12.

That’S another thing you guys are learning so much about me but yeah.

I just feel really lucky and privileged that i had those opportunities so early that i could learn photoshop. I could learn video editing, although it was like 2003, when i first learned video editing and we were literally still on mini dv tapes. We didn’t have smartphones. Obviously so it’s much harder back then than it is now all right. So other than puzzles.

What hobbies do you have so my biggest hobby is one that i have not been able to do this year, which is thrift store shopping? I guess not really thrift stores, but like consignment stores, basically pre pandemic. I would take like once a month i would take like a hundred dollars and i would go to buffalo exchange or a similar type of consignment store and just get some new clothes. I just love secondhand clothes shopping because you can find some real treasures. You, like you, never know what you’re gon na find you can get really nice brands for really cheap, and i just think it’s so fun to like go and look through the racks and try things on and come home with some new clothes, probably like three quarters Of my wardrobe is secondhand, and most of it is like a really nice brand stuff in really good condition that i got for way cheaper than the brands would have been.

Obviously, with the pandemic, i have not been able to go out to a thrift store. I just don’t feel safe doing that in la and also i’m not going anywhere, so i’m not even wearing like any of the clothes that i have, but once it’s over, i am so looking forward to going back and i can spend like three or four hours In one store going through literally everything, so i have to go alone. If i go with someone else, they would be so bored and i also collect um shoes. I’Ll include a little clip here of my shoe collection. Again, i don’t even wear most of these shoes, but i just like having them.

I just like collecting them. I just really like interesting shoes. Oh and then we have a question about what hobbies i would want to take up. I actually bought a book all about sewing because i got very into sewing tick tock. I was watching all of these sewing tutorials on tik tok and i was like i’m going to learn how to sew properly.

I have a sewing machine. I can do the basics, but i never really learned like all the different types of hems and how to use a pattern and any of the like real stuff when you like actually want to make nice things. So i bought this book and i have not yet uh done anything with it, but hopefully at some point i can properly learn how to sew, which also goes back to my love of second-hand shopping, because i’m constantly having to alter things so that they fit me Better, so if i could be a better sewer seamstress, i could you know, get more clothes that don’t quite fit, but i know they could almost fit all right. So this next question is probably my most asked question: when am i going to be coming out with my own karen puzzles puzzle? Here’S the thing i would love to do this.

Obviously i know that it’s something that you guys want. It is something that i definitely want to do, but i feel like, if i’m going to produce a puzzle, it needs to be something really good. It needs to be something unique like some idea that hasn’t been done before, like there needs to be a reason. For me to make a puzzle, i don’t just want to like take any old image and throw it on some regular old puzzle like i want to do something really cool and last year i basically had three jobs, because i was doing this. I was doing the videos for hgtv handmade and then i also had a third job of doing the youtube originals thumbnails.

That was like a part-time graphic design job. So i really just had no time at all to conceive of and go through, the manufacturing process of making a puzzle. You know i’m just one person, i don’t have a team um. There are people whose full-time jobs is just working at puzzle, companies and making puzzles, and so for me to take on all of those responsibilities myself on top of everything else that i already do, it is just a lot. It’S just not anything that i’ve had time for to do yet, but because this channel has grown so much, i was able to quit my job doing the youtube originals thumbnails, and so now i’m hoping that 2021 will be the year that i can make the karen Puzzles puzzle: i do have a few ideas in mind, but they’re all very um, like unique things where i’d have to work very closely with a manufacturer, and i don’t really know how to do that.

So i am fully anticipating this being like a year-long process. So we’ll see hopefully someday um, but you know i just haven’t had time to do it yet to do it properly so that you guys are getting a good product all right. I’Ve been talking for a really long time, so i actually think i’m gon na wrap this up here, but i’m going to film a second video with more questions, so keep an eye out for that and that’ll be out at some point in the future. Um, you guys need a code word. Your first code word of 2021

You know what let’s go back to the first puzzle and let’s make the code word puzzler all right and speaking of this puzzle keep an eye out.

Hopefully soon this video will be up and you’ll see me take on this really difficult puzzle, which i am a little nervous about. So thanks for the really hard puzzle for christmas katie, oh my god, the construction is starting up again outside. I don’t know. If you can hear that so i’m gon na go but thank you for watching and i will see you all in the next one. You