Recovering at Home, and WOYWW 404

There’s actually something on my desk this week!

More later.

Health Update

I am sorry for my lack of response to all your many kind comments over the past couple of weeks – I do thank you for them – they cheered me greatly! It was all I could do just to get a post up, reporting on my progress. It is now nearly a fortnight since I came home from hospital. I am making slow progress with my recovery but I have to be patient and realise that it will take as long as it takes. I am having regular visits from the district nurse to check and re-dress my wound which has been weeping and is not completely healing yet, but there is no evidence of infection and I have been reassured that all will be well in time. The nurses all tell me that recovery from major emergency surgery is very different from the planned variety, and it is bound to take longer in my case because of my existing ME and the fact I had so much chemo. This whole experience has been a major assault on my system.

I have now written a full blow-by-blow of my hospital experience on my Gutless Bag Lady blog if anyone feels up to reading it! It doesn’t make particularly pleasant reading as I’ve left in all the gory details and it’s really for my own benefit so I remember what happened, and it will remind me just how much I had to recover from when I look back at the ordeal!

I have received so many wonderful visits, cards and flowers from our many friends. Here is a picture of our miniature Chelsea Flower Show.

In the centre is a beautiful bowl of flowering plants that will be planted out in the garden once the flowers are over. This was from all our friends at St. Luke’s Church – the beautiful painted Victorian Gothic Revival church I wrote about in my blog a while back. I was so thrilled with this, and sad that I wasn’t well enough to join them on Sunday, that I made a card for them on the computer – easy to edit the photo I took of the flowers, and play around with my photo editor and desk top publisher while relaxing on the recliner, and run it off the printer – minimal effort required! My hubby gave it to them on Sunday and they were thrilled.

This is the inside.

That’s the only creative thing I’ve done since being taken ill!!

Stocking Up on New Stash

Feeling a bit better over the past few days, I’ve been indulging in a bit of Internet shopping. I’ve been watching quite a few Youtube videos and I must be feeling better because I can feel my creative mojo stirring again with lots of ideas I want to get going on in my studio.

Over the past months I’ve been intrigued by a few WOYWW-ers mentioning a mysterious thing called a Misti and I had no idea what that was so decided to investigate. I realised that although I have a love-hate (more hate really!) relationship with card making and don’t want to spend too much time doing it, anything that makes it quicker and more fun has to be a bonus, and I thought I could mass-produce some cards fairly quickly for my stash which is rapidly running near empty. I was about to order a Misti when I came across a Tim Holtz video showcasing the new stamp platform made to his design by Tonic, which looked even better than the Misti and I think less expensive. It won’t be launched until April but I’ve put in a pre-order at a pretty good price. It looks quite brilliant.

Then I decided to find out more about his new Distress Oxide inks which I’d been hearing about, and have found a set on Joanna Sheen’s site at a very competitive price – out of stock for now, and waiting to hear when they are available again. I found the effects you could get with these absolutely stunning and they got my creative juices really flowing! A real mixed media look and very versatile. Have a look for them on Youtube if you haven’t come across them.

I’ve been waiting for a while for the 2017 set of new colours of Infusions to be available and was thrilled to be able to order them, and they arrived yesterday – photo above. There are loads of brilliant Youtube videos on using these extremely versatile paints and the new colours are fabulous. You can also see them in action on the Paperartsy blog. I’ve already had a lot of fun with the original set – these sheets were done with them, using my “mask and spray” technique:

which enabled me to produce lots of leaves and flowers in the process, many of which got used in my Mamhead album project.

Here are the backgrounds used as endpapers in the album:

and on the front cover, with some of the leaves.

See what a cheat I am. I haven’t got much to show because there’s nothing on my desk except my new Infusions, so I’m showing you old stuff!!

Happy WOYWW everyone, and hopefully soon I will be fully back in the swing with something real to show you.