Post Surgery Update 1

Hello everyone, and thanks for all the thoughtful comments and well wishes for this week.

My operation to restore my hearing in my right ear went well. And as expected, I was able to hear as soon as I woke up. I wouldn’t say the hearing was normal though, but as each day passes it does seem to get better. There are some sounds that are amplified in the ear canal which are out of proportion to other sounds. For example when I go for a drive the wind passing outside the car is amplified in my ear canal, and at first I wasn’t sure if I was driving with all windows and doors open. Imagine if you will, the sound you hear when holding a sea shell up to your ear, but greater. Or the really wierd one was when the toilet was flushed, and I could see the water swirling around, but the noise of it was right up next to my ear drum, as if I was underwater. And blocking my ears doesn’t diminish the sound in anyway either. Weird. LOL. Thankfully those noises are getting lesser as things are settling down.

One of the things I’m not allowed to do is blow my nose and I have to avoid sneezing while the ear is healing. Without even thinking I naturally went to clear my nose. Oh dear! I wont do that again for another week I’m sure. And you know what, sometimes I just want to cry just to releive some tension, because it’s been a big week and I’m just a girl, but I dare not because the first thing I’ll want to do is grab a tissue, and of course blow my nose, lol. So I’m stifling a good cry which I’ll have to save up for another time.

And that brings me up to today, which is Friday. Later on today my Daughter has her reconstructive surgery. She is in good hands and all your prayers are appreciated. And I need the strength, will and determination to not cry. Breathe deeply. Aaahhhhhhh.

I’ll report back after it is all over.

12 tags of 2012 – May

Hi guys, I’m still here, and I want to thank you for all your kind thoughts and prayers as I’m about to go through an anxious week with the upcoming surgeries. I found some time to turn my hand to making a tag inspired by Tim Holtz about two weeks ago, and today I squeezed some time in to do my post.  I’d made several attempts at making this tag, as my application of the tissue paper, like Tim used for his background, was just not working for me. So I had a rethink about it and came up with this.

I had originally started out with tissue pattern paper, just as Tim did, but I eventually got the message after the forth tag that this just wasn’t working for me. What to do?  Then I remembered, recently I purchased a small stack of vintage sewing magazines from the Op Shop, and one of them was a ratty duplicate. So I adhered some of the paper to my tag, and I knew I was onto something that would work for me. Despite the age of the paper (older than me I’m sure) it was surprizingly good to work with. I added some stamping with Archival Inks to the background, numbers to represent measuring tape, and circles that looked like buttons.

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I tried the faux porcelain flower technique that Tim used for his tag. I really like how this technique made the mulberry paper of the leaves turn translucent. I layered a scrap of hand dyed lace behind the flowers for some textural interest. I was having a hard time getting those flowers to ‘look right’ on my tag, and I tried various arrangements and embellishments to get an over all look that was pleasing to me. As soon as I found that scrap of lace I could visualize how the tag would take shape and I finally had some direction to finish off the piece. I have to say up to this point I was making more of a mess than a creation, lol.

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Lately I’ve been buying and collecting  vintage dressmaking patterns as I like the graphics on the envelope. I don’t mind that the envelopes are stained and have small tears on the edges. I imagine they look like that because they were well used and I used that as inspiration for my tag.

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I found three images in my Crafty Secrets stash of sewing themed scraps and used them as my ‘model’ in lieu of the stamped mannequin that Tim used. I aged them with distress inks, including stamping on some water stains with one of Tims stamps. And call me crazy, but it’s those barely noticed (from afar) splotches that I like the best, since it really looks like some of the patterns I have in my collection.

At this point I was going to consider my tag done, but I had a nagging feeling to add something extra.

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I decided I needed some ‘Hardware Findings’ to finish this off. So I ferreted through my old sewing box and found my own bits of hardware in the form of these hooks. I then found a scrap of ribbon floss and wound it around the hooks. Now I’ll call it done!

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And the Tag Wall as it looks for the month of May.

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And now a little update about me and mine.

Monday 28 May, I go in to hospital to have a Stapedectomy. This will restore my hearing in the right ear, all things going well. An overnight stay is required, which I’m almost looking forward to since it’ll be a forced rest. I’m told I should be hearing as soon as I wake up from the General. It’s about a two hour operation.

Friday 1 June, my daughter, Audrey (18), goes in for her Orthognathic Surgery. This is one that involves the realignment of her jaw/s to correct an overdevelopment of her lower jaw and improve the functioning of the mouth. We went to the final pre-op consultation yesterday to get the run down on how things will proceed. Since this surgery will affect her visual appearance, this needs to also be considered with the main goal of correcting the disfunction caused by the jaw. Some decisions about what will need to be done will not be made until an assessment is made during the operation, so she could be under anethesia for up to six hours. I have faith that she has good team of surgeons working with her and she is in the best of hands. We’re feeling positive about moving forward with this. I look at her and I see a beautiful young woman and I must confess an anxiety at times about the visual changes, but her concern would be a hundred fold of what mine would be, no doubt. She avoids wearing lipstick, so when this is all over we are going shopping for lipstick, and she tells me she wants a bold red! LOL. Something fun to look forward to.

I must start packing. I’ll post an update after she gets home. Thanks for all your prayers and well wishes.

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Preparing Some Swaps and Preparing For Some Changes

 

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Today I’ve been playing around with a project I started on months ago. Some of you may recognize those stamped words from my 12 tags of Christmas 2011, and the many stampings I did with a custom stamp pad I made. Waste not, want not. I wasn’t that keen on keeping the custom stamp pad since I didn’t want to store it, as I was sure I’d never find it again. I also knew I was going to go to a Stamp camp later this year and would require some swaps, so I got as many stampings as I could from the custom stamp pad. Any left overs I’ll use for Christmas cards later in the year. When the mood hit I’d work on my swap project, either die cutting, or embossing, or sponging or …… whatever. I had to make 40 of something and I didn’t want to have to do it all in one go. The swap guidelines have been announced and we are to do Technique Tags. Easy! Today was the day to spend some time assembling some finished tags.

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And here is my effort for today. 20 tags completed. Me being me, I’ve incorporated a number of techniques into my tag, but the main ones would be emboss resist, custom stamp pad ( of course) and hand dyed lace trim. Yes, I dyed the lace too!

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I had thought to add some flower embellishments, but I think I better not overload myself with too much work. I hope these look shabby in the right kind of way – chic not cheap – lol. I don’t often do swaps, coz lets face it, everyone has a different idea about styles and tastes and efforts. I was quite pleased with last years Stamp Camp swap. I still have most of them out on display and quite often just study their composition. I’m already thinking about how I can display the Technique Tags once the swap is complete.

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So what are these changes I’m referring to in the post title? I’ve been comtemplating how I broach this subject. Where do I start? I’ll start with how I’m feeling.

Tired. Just plain old weary some days. I also have periods when it’s most days. That saddens me since I love to spend time doing my arts and crafts and blogging. I’ve always kept myself busy and loved to catch snippets of time to add a bit of crafty goodness to my day. I love the frantic pace of the Hope You Can Cling To Challenges or squeezing in some Tim Time to work on a tag or two. It was nothing unusual to work on something while having my early morning (4.30 am) cuppa as I got ready for work, or quickly stamp something just before I headed out the door to socialize. Now I’m just too weary. For now at least.

In truth, this past couple of months has been a time for me to face some changes. Some big, some not so big and some very small. But change nonetheless. In no particular order those changes involve a review of all my finances and insurances (eek!), an update of mobile phones, computers and telecomunication services (I’m ready to move into the 21st century, LOL), I’m moving house in a couple of months (thats big!), selling my car ( I liked that old girl) and a bunch of other trying things. And it all takes up a lot of time and energy.

And the bigger event(s) will be not one, but two, surgical operations at the end of May. One will be a relatively small op to restore my hearing. The other is a more intensive op on my daughter, which will see her in hospital care for several days and then several weeks off of work as she is healing. We’ve known about the need for the ops for a few years now and the time has finally arrived to get them done. By the way, in case your wondering, the ops are not related in any way, it was just a matter of timing.

There is some other changes on the horizon too, but I’ll save that reveal for another day. I think you’ll agree I’ve got more than enough to keep me occupied for now. So where does that leave me with crafting and blogging? With very little time I’m afraid. But I’m not ready to give it all away just yet, but my posts for the next few months will be a lot less often than once a week. At the very least I still want to participate in 12 tags of 2012 once a month. Anything after that will be a bonus. Once all the dust settles after I move out in July, I should be back to a more regular routine with blogging. I hope!

Thanks to all my readers for your encouragment to me to keep on moving forward.

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12 Tags of 2012 – April

After doing Tim’s online course, Creative Chemistry 101, I was intrigued enough about the Ranger Archival Inks to branch out of my water based dye ink zone and experiment with these oil based dye inks. Tim used these inks for the technique used on this months tag so I waited for my order of a few colours to arrive so I could try them out. The technique involved inking the background surface of an embossing folder and then transferring the ink onto cardstock as it is embossed thru the folder. You can see the technique demonstrated in this video.

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And this is the completed  tag I made using the technique.

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I was undecided about what combo of embossing folder and background stamp to use, but in the end I settled on this Cuttlebug Script embossing folder, stamped with an Impression Obsession Cover-A-Card Bubbles, using Ranger Archival Saffron ink. I was well pleased with the result. I’m sure I’ve tried the technique before, using other inks but was not satisfied with how they turned out, so I’m very happy with my first foray into using these new-to-me inks. The raised embossing was inked up by sponging on some distress inks.

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I had no plan on how to decorate my tag apart from not wanting to get any dies out to make new cuts. I was feeling too lazy for that this week. So I bought out my selection of die cuts that I’d pre-cut from scraps one day when I was just messing about. These two birds in their cage were cut from a Cottage Cutz Birdcage die. I bent the assembled die cut so the cage popped out, putting dimensional adhesive where I wanted the die to sit out from the tag, and glueing the sides down with Glossy Accents. I added some heavy sponging of a dark brown ink behind the cage to create a contrast from the rest of the tag.

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The other embellishments were a hodge podge of bits and pieces found in my stash, including a paper rose I made, a mulberry rose and leaves, and an assortment of ’vines’ cut with a My favourite Things Flourish die. It was very handy having all these elements pre cut. Generally I make and cut things up as I go along, but there was no way I’d have the time this week to do all that. I can see myself doing this more often because I quite enjoyed arranging the parts without the cutting.

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And I leave you this week with the tag wall. It’s looking very colourful now!

Theresa.

Creative Chemistry 101 – Making Something Of It

The last three weeks participating in the online Creative Chemistry class was well worth the effort. I got to learn and discover a great deal from the products I use. I thought I already had a pretty good understanding of what I use, based on previous trail and error, but this class delved even deeper  to explain some of the chemistry behind the products. In this post I want to take you through some of my processes as I go about making a card, or four.

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I loved the Day Four reinker sprays we make for one of the techniques, so I wanted to start my backgrounds using some sprays I made up. I started out with a full sized manilla folder cut into A4 sized sheets, and started spraying. This was the results of the first round of inky play.

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I started with this one first, spraying the background with three colours and then stenciling over the top with the same sprays. I just love the look of this and I found working on a larger piece of cardstock less resticting than a precut tag.

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This piece came about somewhat differently. This time I wanted to mop up all the sprayed ink off of my craft sheet after doing the first piece. Before I dipped the cardstock into the puddles I added an extra colour direct from my stamp pad onto the craft sheet. So it was a hybrib of sorts, of a wrinkle free distress technique. Any bare patches where over sprayed with my made up sprays.  When it was dry I misted the spray through a stencil, but this time instead of letting it dry, I lift the colour off by pressing a dry paper towel into the wet ink.

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Before I move onto the cards I made, I thought I’d show you this. What is it, I hear you ask? Something I found curious during the course of the class, was a lot of questions directed at Tim about what the back of his tags looked like. So for those people, uber curious about these things, I thought it’d be fun and revealing to show what was on the back of my cardstock after messing about with inks. All my tags look a lot like this on the back too. It never occured to me to be clean and tidy when working with inks. Where’s the fun in that? Please tell me that I’m not the only one who thinks the messy backs look kinda cool too.

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And this is what my cards eventually ended up looking like. I cut one of the sheets ( the left one)  into four for the card fronts. I stamped the silhouette stamp and heat embossed with white powder. Added some sponging and water flicks, before adding the final stamping of the words and flourish.

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I just love all the layers and textural interest of the background. And you want to know something really cool about this. It hardly took any time at all to do. I had all four card fronts done in about an hour and  half, while doing some housework chores. Seriously.

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This is a style of inky, stampy goodness that I love most. I must do more of it. LOVE! And a little note about my stamp. One of my most favourite stamp sets ever is the Donna Downey Insightful Meadow set by Unity. I bought the extra large version of this set recently and was glad to finally put it to good use during this class. These stamps are now delightfully stained and have earned their keep in my stamp room. And what did I do with the other piece of inked up cardstock? I cut it up with various die cutters, so no doubt you’ll see them making an appearance on something soon.

Until next week, happy inking everyone!

Theresa.

Creative Chemistry 101 – Part Two

Hello, I’m back again with samples of what I made in week two of Creative Chemistry 101. I didn’t come thru with a post midweek, as was the hope I expressed in my last post. I opted for some much needed time out after a hectic week, and grabbed a moment here and there throughout this week to play with some more ideas from the class.

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This is how my sample board is shaping up. I was not able to test all the techniques due to lack of suitable supplies or lack of time, but I’ll revisit those classes when I have what I need to complete them. My purpose was not to make a completed tag, but rather I wanted to get to know my products and what I could achieve with them. Some of my samples turned out somewhat ugly or messed up, but I learned the most from these. So I’ll run through a few of the tags with you today and touch on a few things that were of interest to me.

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These tag samples above were my own tests to satisfy my curiosity about my water based dye ink pads. The two samples on the left were done with Stampin’Up! Classic Ink, and the ones on the right are made with Distress Ink. I purposely chose dark browns for this test as brown is usually a composite reds and greens, and I wanted to see how much the colour separated when water was added.

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Day Eight of the class was all about paints. I worked on two techniques using Distress Crackle paints, and combined them onto one tag. The first technique on the background, was to use the crackle paint as a resist and to create texture. I wasn’t too keen on any of the results I got from several attempts at this technique. User error maybe? The other technique of applying clear crackle to a chipboard base, and then inking over the top when dry gave a much better result. I loosen a couple of crackle ‘chips’ from the surface of the chipboard doing this technique, so some more experience to prevent this is in order.

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Day Nine lessons were about mica powders. I used the Lindy Stamp Gang Magical Micas for these tags. The first three tags here are the same technique but changing the amount of water spritzed onto the tag to make the ink bleed. The last tag is like a wrinkle free distress with  blobs of mica added to the ink puddles. The mica powders I used have a dye (?) and a mica component to them, so when they were spritzed I got some extra unexpected colours when they mixed with the inks already on the tag.

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The leaf tag gave me the most unexpected results. I used about four different mica powders here, and when spritzed other colours emerged. It would be fun to explore different colour combos of dye ink and Lindy’s Stamp Gang Magical Micas. Love the way the micas catch the light and make the leaf images pop.

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The last lesson was all about mediums, glues and sealers, and the technique we were shown was using Distress Stickles, a glitter glue. For my backgrounds I used Stampin’Up! Classic Ink (L) and Distress Ink (R). I applied a little more water then I intended, so the image got blurred up more than planned, but I was still happy with the end result. After getting the tags as dry as possible, I wiped clear Distress Stickles all over the surface with my finger. 

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Tim described this like sugar coated sweetness, and thats a perfect way to describe his glitter top coat of these tags. This is the kind of glitter effect I find most palatable – pun intended. I can see me using this more often in my crafting. This was my favourite technique of the week.

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This last photo is a revisit of the water colouring with reinkers technique I showed in the last post. The one on the right was the one I showed using the Distress Reinkers. Since I was doing double ups of techniques using my two brands of ink I had to go back when I had some time and do a sample with Stampin’Up! Reinkers, which you can see on the left. My workmanship is a bit sloppy (I need to wear glasses when doing this, lol), but my objective was to see if I could achieve a good result of blending with both brands.  I think they both work well.

During class I got to learn more about Archival Inks by Ranger, an oil based dye ink. I’ve not tried an ink like this before so I order a few colours to play with. When I get them I’ll go back and try some of the other techniques and report my results in the weeks to come. I’ll be back soon with some finished cards I made with what I learned during this class.

Theresa

What? No Pictures?

So, here I find myself on a Sunday evening, sitting quietly at my computer wondering what to blog about this week. This past week has been unusually full of life outside of the craft room. Looking back over the week, I recall Wednesday evening being the last true quiet time I had. Since then my time has been taken up with sleep, work and visitors. I doubt I had 15 minutes true rest in the past few days, apart from bed time. Would you believe I even crawled away during my lunch break on Saturday to find a place a catch some much need rest/sleep?  I could have grabbed some shut eye on a pile of jaggered rocks and still found comfort there, lol.

So the upshot of this is that I’ve got nothing to show you today. Anything I may have completed, with my Creative Chemistry 101 course earlier in the week, I never got a chance to get photographed. But despite my lack of time to experiement with techniques, or even watch the last part of the course videos for week two, I’ll have a life time access to all the class content to catch up. In truth, my head is still back in week one, with all the stuff I learnt then and ideas I still want to test from that week. I’ll be having fun for weeks, playing and learning.

I’d like to say I’ll be back with a mid week post, to fill in for todays post, but I better not test fate. Sometimes life just goes into overdrive and you just have to run with it. I love being busy, but I do manage to get a good balance of quiet time into my busy-ness. My main objective these next couple of days is to get the balance back, and unburden myself of all the stuff I feel I don’t need to carry with me into the fresh, new week.

See ya all soon. Cheers.

Creative Chemistry 101 – Part 1

Hello readers. This week I’ve been participating in Tim Holtz Online Class – Creative Chemistry 101, and today I’ll share what I’ve been doing from the lessons and some of the discoveries that I’ve made. This will be a longer post than what I would normally do.

First I’ll talk about me and my style of stamping, as I see it. When I first started stamping, like most, I’d bought all sorts of ink pads, stamps and papers. Sometimes I got great results and sometimes I got disappointing results. So after much trial and error I discovered my preferred tools for stamping were water based dye inks and rubber stamps, and the cardstock I use almost exclusively for stamping on, is by Stampin’ Up! Thats not to say that other brands and types aren’t good, it was just a conbination the suited the way I like to stamp. I use two brands of dye ink, Stampin’ Up Classic Ink, and Tim Holtz Distress Ink. Of course dye ink can’t do everything, so I have a small selection of pigment and solvent type pads to compliment them, and they are mostly black/brown  or clear. I use Versamark (clear) often enough, but I didn’t realise until recently that most of my work rarely includes any black, so the other inkpads barely see the light of day. All my pigment based products are mostly paints, pastels and pencils.

When Tim Holtz announced that he was putting a class together about chemistry of how some of our products work I decided I wanted in. After all there is always someting new to be learned even if you know a product very well. Tim Holtz works for Ranger, so he uses those branded products to demonstrate techniques, but the principles of how they work, based on what makes up a particular product, apply to many other brands too. Each brand will have it’s own features and colour palette, so there will be variences in the final result, but the principles remain the same. I have a lot of the Tim Holtz Distress and Ranger line of products so I have used them a lot in making my samples, but I’ve also experiments with other products to.

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So what have I discovered this week with my experiments? Manilla! And not just any manilla either. I’d played around with bought manilla tags before and was very disappointed with them, so I left them alone. Tim uses manilla tags and comes up with great results, so I wanted to give manilla another try. This time I went to the local supermarket and bought a couple of packs of manilla folders and cut my own tags. I’ve only tried one pack so far, and I’m amazed! Oh boy what a difference. I’m getting results I love. I’ve been trying techniques several times over, using different inks and different surfaces to really see how they all react with each other. I revisited my purchased tags and still got the same disappointing results, so that tells me that not all manilla is created equal, and my first attempts where not user error. In some samples I much prefer the manilla look than my much trusted Whisper White by Stampin’Up!.

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Here are some of the sample tags I’ve been making. As you can see I make several of each technique, changing the inks and surfaces I use. Some results are nearly the same and difficult to tell apart, and other results are vastly different. I’ve not been able to try some of the techniques due to not having a produt that can be used or substituted to get the required results. But I have a greater understanding of why these products will work the way they do, and thats fascinating. Will I be running out to purchase these products? Not neccesarily, since I’d want to determine if a product would be versatile for my style, but I am curious to find out more about them. At this stage of the game I don’t feel my creativity is stifled for lack of variety of products, and as much as I like Tims work, I want to create in my style and not just recreate his. But you already knew that anyway, I suspect.

I’ve often wondered if my water supply might a bearing on results when using it. I live on unfiltered water straight from my rainwater tanks, one concrete and one polyplastic. (I never get sick, feel ill or have gastric prolems for all those who may have been shocked by that bit of news, lol).  I can safely say it has no bearing whatsoever, based on the way I use my water, with inks and the surfaces I use. I bought demineralized water from the supermarket, and I got the same results as when I use my tank water.

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These are samples made with techniques using waterbased dye ink pads.

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I tested two brands of ink pads on two different surfaces for this technique, and got two different results. In this case the surface was the determining factor for the differences.

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Brushless watercolour technique using distress Inks on two different surfaces. Cold press watercolour paper and Fabriano.

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Samples from play with two inks and two surfaces using the winkle free distress technique.

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These are my samples using two  techniques using reinkers. Butterflies are painted with reinkers and an aquabrush.

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I love the way my reinker sprays turned out. Reminds me of those lovely batik patchwork fabrics. I only used Distress Reinkers on these samples, but I’d like to redo the samples with my Stampin’Up! reinkers too. Tried this on Whisper White cardstock with disappointing results due to the paper being very porous.

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Finished off week one with playing with Distress Stains. This line has a white pigment based colour, which combines beautifully with the dye based colours, to give some really interesting results. Here I’ve used the white to stamp, stencil and marblize with.

So there you have it. The results of a week of creative play with my stamping products. This has been a great course well worth the admission price. For anyone interested, the course infomation and content is always available for purchase, even after the live part of the class finishes (in a couple of weeks). And the part I really love, class members have lifetime access to course content. If you want to know more about the course, check it out here at Creative Chemistry 101. I’ll be back next week with Part Two of my course discoveries and play results.

Theresa.

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12 Tags of 2012 – March

Hello readers. Thank you for all your positive comments about the change in the look of my blog. While I had some fun playing around with the creativity in the digital realm to get the look, it’s good to get back to the tactile experience of paper crafting. So today I give you my March tag for the 12 Tags of 2012, inspired by Tim Holtz. As usual I adapted some of the ideas to suit my own supplies and tastes.

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This is the final result after a few false starts. Tims tag started with a kraft base, but when I went in that direction it just looked miserable to me. I tried a couple of different coloured bases and finally settled on a Baja Breeze (Stampin’ Up!) cardstock for my base, teamed up with two Seasonal Distress Inks, Evergreen Bough and Iced Spruce.  I used the Iced Spruce to stamp the music sheet image by Impression Obession Cover-A-Card. The sentiment, a Tim Holtz stamp, was stamped with the same ink. The tag edges were distressed and sponged with the Evergreen Bough ink.

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Tim featured a mosaic technique in his original tag, but I just couldn’t get that look happening on my card. A small, but growing, pile of paper crafted rubbish, told me I need to rethink this part. I knew I wanted a glossy tiled look, so looking thru my stash I found what I needed to get that look. I picked out the bird image from a Crafty Secrets collage sheet, covered it with a film of glossy laminate, cut it up into squares and adhered it to a base, leaving a margin between the squares to mimic grout lines. The ‘grout’ was sponged with Iced Spruce, and the laminate acted as a resist which left the ’tiles’ clean of ink.  The embellishment was made from a variety of die cuts from my stash.

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I wanted to add some splatters to my background, just like Tim did. I used a Starburst Stain, Azure Sea Asters by Lindy’s Stamp Gang, and flicked it on with a paintbrush. The fun part about these stains is that sometimes they look like splotches with little to no shimmer.

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But change the angle of the light hitting it and…POW…. you get to see a super shimmery, other colour. Cool huh?

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And lastly, here is what the Tag Wall looks like now. At this stage I’m not sure if Tim has plans to do a belated January Tag, so I’ll just leave that one blank for a while longer. I’ve just signed up for Tim’s Creative Chemistry 101 Online Class, and I’m sure I won’t be short on inspiration to fill the gap in myself.

Hope you all have a great week.

Theresa

Welcome to Misty’s Mess

Hello readers. As you can see I’ve been working on my blog overhaul. What do you think? It looks a bit more crafty don’t you think. I’ve learnt a lot during the past couple of weeks as I try and work out how to customize the look of the blog. It’s only small steps, but even these small beginnings have freshened up the look. This has been my creative pursuit for this week, so I have nothing hand crafted to show.

Just a quick post for today. I’ll be back next week.