WOYWW 379

Nothing very different on my desk this week but I thought I’d join in and catch you up with bits of news!

On the right you can see the small mixed media piece I started a while back (no further progress there) and in the middle, the printed photos of our Mamhead Woods outing ready for work on my album (no further progress there either). In the small black bowl in front of the jar of brushes are some of my mask-and-spray flowers and leaves ready for that project.

On the left, in the large black bowl, you can see three of the tissue paper collage boxes I’ve been working on recently. You can read all about them here. These were under wraps with some other work, which was all part of my friend’s 60th birthday stuff which I didn’t want her to see on my blog. I gave it to her on Friday so I’m now able to remove the wraps.

The fourth box was the one I completed for her present, and you can read about it here. Here’s a picture of the finished box.

It is lined with my faux mother of pearl that I shared recently, and there’s a single pearl stuck inside. You can’t see the sides of the box properly on this photo – this is what they are like:

Done with transparent 3-D gel medium, glass microbeads and pearlescent acrylic inks.

I made her a 3-D floating butterflies card – which was why I was cutting out so many butterflies recently! I’ve done two blog posts about that, here and here.

Here are a couple of photos of the finished card.

Quite hard to get the colour just right – it’s actually more orange and less pink than this!

Health Update

On Saturday night I was cutting a piece of very hard ginger with one of my large kitchen knives and the knife slipped and I cut my finger very deeply, necessitating a visit to A&E. It bled a LOT. I couldn’t bear to look at it!! They strapped it up for me and that first evening I had to keep my arm in a high sling to prevent further bleeding. I went back a couple of days ago and they changed the dressing and checked on its progress – no sign of infection but too soon for the steri-strips to be removed. I have to return on Friday and hopefully they’ll take them off then, and maybe give me a smaller dressing. It’s more inconvenient than anything else and hasn’t been too painful – except for about half an hour ago when I inadvertently caught it on something just in the wrong place! Ouuuuccchhh!!!

I had a CT scan yesterday to check that I am still cancer-free. I have to phone through in about a week to see if there’s a result. I am not worried – I am sure they got all the cancer out with the surgery, and the subsequent chemo will have mopped up anything else, but if they do find something, then we’ll just have to deal with it as and when. Got to keep positive!

Other Stuff

I’ve been feeling so much better this year that I have been picking up many threads of my old (and even pre-M.E.) life – my baking, singing, guitar playing… and I’ve been feeling very strongly this year that it’s time to re-start a Bible study group in our home. For the past few weeks I’ve been working hard on revamping my old material (I have a lot – I taught groups for many years where we used to live) and adapting it to modern technology. I have re-designed the group logo and this shows how much the technology has moved on, as well as my ability to use it:

Multiple photo-realistic images with transparent backgrounds, re-sized, layered, addition of shadow layers, etc. etc. Who needs clipart these days? I’m pleased with the result.

I’ve finally got all my computers taking to one another in a friendly fashion on the home network! I’m now able to use PowerPoint for my visual aids and words of songs, and I’ve got the Windows laptop communicating with the TV to display the visual aids, and using GarageBand on the MacBook for voice recording for the sessions. I even have a foot mouse to control the PowerPoint pages so I can be hands-free while playing the guitar. I shan’t be playing for this first session though, with my finger all strapped up!

Nature

Nicholas brought home an orphaned baby squirrel last week, which we had to find a more suitable home for asap – we had it for about 24 hours and probably saved its life, feeding it milk from a syringe.

Beautiful cobwebs in our garden this morning, revealed in all their glory with tiny water droplets from the mist.

More pictures here.

I think you can see why I haven’t had much time for art.