WOYWW 460 Interlude

I am writing this on Tuesday evening, because I am due to go into hospital tomorrow morning early (really early – 7.30 a.m. yikes!) and won’t be able to post it then. Zsuzsa has kindly agreed to sign me up for WOYWW.

Not much on my desk. Originally I thought all I’d have would be an empty desk, but yesterday evening I made a tag with my name on it, to tie to my wheelchair so that it ends up in the right place after my operation. I’ve done a blog post about it here. On the desk, from left to right: my box of ink blending pads, on top of which is my notebook with Cuttlebug sandwich recipes and other notes in it. Stacked up plastic bowls with flowers left over from the Floral Album (mystery project). In front of this, a strip of scrap card with some inking experiments on it and a trial run eyelet. Some kitchen roll used for mopping up inks from the tag(see below). Distress Re-Inker and Stickles – both empty bottles given a new lease of life with the addition of some water. Bits and pieces from Dad’s workshop, left out when I was looking for something else. Instruction leaflet for Crop-a-Dile Big Bite.

Here is the finished tag before I wrote my name on it.

I used some of the flowers left over from my mystery project. For those of you who didn’t manage to see the big reveal, please go here to see photos and a video. Here’s the front cover, for starters.

We went out for lunch with our friend on Thursday (postponed from Monday because of the snow) and I gave her the album then. Before we set off, I wrapped it for her. I didn’t have enough tissue paper in a single colour, so I did a bit of eccentric parcel wrapping, using several colours and holding it all together with hot glue. I embellished the parcel with a length of yellow ribbon and some of the flowers left over from the project. I do like to be as creative as possible with my recycling!

I am pleased to say that she loves it. I finished it on Sunday night with several hours to spare before our planned lunch on Monday – why was I worrying haha! Plenty of time…

We went to a fabulous place recommended by our friend, an old water mill, and the food was quite excellent. There were all sorts of extra little touches that showed that they had really thought about what their customers would enjoy, for instance, just inside the main entrance was a bowl marked “Doggie Treats.” My hubby, who has been told not to eat sugar if he’s to avoid diabetes, always has a cheese board instead of dessert, and for the first time ever, he was allowed to choose which cheeses he had. Here is his board – actually a piece of slate.

For my dessert, I couldn’t resist a popcorn and caramel pannacotta! It was scrumptious.

All this was a special treat because of going into hospital to have my parastomal hernia repaired, and I won’t be able to eat normally again for about six weeks. I am hoping against hope that the NHS won’t postpone the operation. Given their past track record and reports I keep hearing from other people, it seems to be almost inevitable to get postponed. I am trying not to get upset about it and get in a state if they do postpone it, but I confess to being quite anxious about it – we psych ourselves up for surgery which is a big thing to face, however often we may have undergone it in the past, and the powers that be seem to have no concept of what we go through. For those in work it’s even worse, because they have to arrange cover etc. and it really puts a lot of people out if the NHS messes them around at the last moment. The hospital staff at the sharp end – my lovely surgeon, and all the nursing staff and other health professionals, are not in control of this situation and it must be extremely hard for them, trying to provide a first-class service. Torbay Hospital is a wonderful hospital and the staff are second to none – never have I experienced such care and compassion, friendliness and cheerfulness, and being treated as a real human being who matters – and not just for myself either; we experienced exactly the same level of excellence over the care of my elderly parents at the end of their lives, and my hubby recently had the best of care and attention over his broken leg. It grieves me that these superb professionals are undermined because of government policy and financial cut-backs. The recent bad weather hasn’t helped the already over-stretched system either, so I think I’ve got to be prepared for the worst.

Well, maybe I won’t get postponed… My hubby said to me the other night, “I don’t think you will be. I feel it in my bones.” I said, “Oh, really? And just how reliable are your bones?” He replied that they were thoroughly to be relied upon. Again I said, “Oh really? As I recall, one of them broke not so long ago! Very reliable!!” Haha!

If things do go ahead as planned, I shall have my iPad with me in hospital, and as soon as I feel up to it, I shall be online, and hope to be in contact with everyone, and will let you know how I am getting on.

The standard letter for this type of surgery says I shall be in for four nights. However, they judge each person according to their individual needs and how well they do post-operatively, and because of my ME, starting with a lower baseline, I tend to take longer to bounce back than normal, which means I’m usually in for longer till they are happy I’m well enough to go home. In addition, four nights would mean I’d be discharged on Easter Sunday which certainly wouldn’t happen – there’s a skeleton staff at the weekend anyway, and also we’ve got the 2 bank holidays (Good Friday and Easter Monday) so the earliest I could anticipate being discharged would be the Tuesday, six days after admission.

In January when I last saw my surgeon, he told me that after the operation, I should expect quite a bit of discomfort. He will be inserting quite a large piece of biological mesh to reinforce the area and hopefully prevent future herniation. It has to be larger than usual because my muscles are weak due to my ME. The hole in the mesh for the stoma will be the size they anticipate the stoma will eventually be after the swelling has gone down, but while everything is healing, things are going to be quite tight and I could experience quite a bit of pain. No doubt they will be prepared for this – their previous record on post-operative pain management has been excellent, so I’m not too worried. In any case I’ll get through it, and the long-term benefits will far outweigh any initial discomfort. He has to make incisions either side of the stoma in order to get the mesh in, which may cause me some problems with the adhesion of the bag initially, but the stoma nurses will be on hand to help with everything. Also, because access will be through the hole in my abdominal wall that was made to form the stoma, he is having to remake the stoma, so it will be the equivalent of starting again from scratch with a new stoma, and I have no idea what size or shape it will be, and whether my existing bags will still work for me. At least this time around, I have three years’ experience under my belt (literally!) and I am approaching this knowing how to manage most problems, and I won’t be freaking out about the whole thing in the same way that I was at the start. The stoma nurses will be available during my hospital stay and afterwards and they will know what equipment will suit me best.

The great advantage of this approach is that I will not be undergoing such major open surgery as previously. Each time they open you up, your body responds by creating adhesions – fibrous bands of tissue between the internal organs, preventing them from sliding freely over one another, and potentially causing major problems. If these immobilise the loops of small intestine they can cause an obstruction. A large proportion of the time taken during my emergency surgery last year was spent in separating adhesions, but this very interference can cause more to form. I am glad I am not being opened up right down my abdomen again because my stomach is already an awful mess, having been opened up twice! My hubby says it is my badge of victory and I shouldn’t be ashamed of it – I went through a lot to get it!

I hope the kittens won’t forget me while I am away! On Saturday they were 10 months old. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone. They are now so big but still babies – they regularly suckle together on the little fluffy black toy. This past week, Ruby has become slightly less teenagery and has allowed me to cuddle her and has purred, so I think things are looking up! Typical adolescents – babies one minute and pseudo-adults the next…

A strange thing – exactly 3 years ago I was also in hospital over Easter, having my first operation to remove my cancerous colon, and Kermit, my ileostomy, was born. His birthday is on 27th March, and Kermit Mark II is being created on 28th! (I wonder if I will recognise him…) I can’t believe I have had him for 3 years. Where does the time go?

When I developed my hernia in the autumn of 2016, I had to give it a name, and what else but Miss Piggy? Kermit hates this monstrous interloper and regularly retreats from her – retracting till he’s level with the surface and causing me no end of problems with leaks etc. It’s poetic justice that the dreaded Miss Piggy is going to be finally defeated by the insertion of a mesh derived from pig skin!!! I’ve had enough of all this constant fighting over who’s to have supremacy over my belly, so I’ll be very glad to have her retreat back to where she belongs, allowing Kermit and me to resume our hitherto peaceful and happy relationship.

These few days between finishing the mystery project and going into hospital have been by way of an interlude, and much of the time has been spent organising things on the home front in readiness for being away, and for my return when I will initially need a lot of help from my hubby. I have organised the freezer so it’s easy for him to find things, and written out instructions on how to use our rather complicated combination microwave, got plenty of food in, got the laundry out of the way in good time, and packed the stuff I am going to need. It’s a rather strange limbo period, made all the worse by the uncertainty as to whether anything is actually going to happen tomorrow at all!

Regarding the mystery project, I have now started uploading the daily blog posts I wrote and saved on my hard drive in anticipation of the time when I could reveal all after our friend had received her gift. They are appearing in order below. So far I’ve only done the first four, and the rest will have to wait till I’m home from hospital. They detail, step by step, the whole process of creating the album from beginning to end.

Floral Mini-Album Pt 4 Working on Pages 2 and 3

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

I have been following some amazing Youtube videos by Jen, who I discovered the other day: https://www.youtube.com/user/jenofevedesigns

She makes and sells beautifully organised templates for downloading and printing, for making mini-albums of various sizes, and the videos show how she constructs them. I am adapting some of her ideas for this project, and think I may follow her example and create my own templates for future use, because when making mini-albums, you can spend a huge amount of time planning and measuring and adjusting, and if you had a standardised set of components that you could mix and match, this would be a huge advantage and would save a lot of time – you would know that the various pockets, tabs, envelopes etc. and their respective mats, would all fit perfectly. Finding her channel was a revelation to me.

I originally intended to use lace for the page I’m working on at the moment, but nothing I had seemed really suitable. I found myself wishing I’d got a border punch to produce a nice lacy effect, and then I remembered I’d got a multi-shaper punch which I hadn’t used for ages. It’s OK, but the pattern repeat is rather large for what I want, so I shall use it for now, and probably get myself a more suitable border punch before too long.

I cut a long narrow piece using the part of the punch for border punching, and trimmed it down to length, and scored and folded a tab at the top. This is the piece on the right in the above photo. On the left is the piece I cut off, which I am keeping for now as it might come in handy somewhere else in the album. The centre piece was produced using the punch as a corner punch, and then trimming the card down to size, to produce a useful lacy black mat for one of the pages.

Here is the strap being constructed. I have taped a magnet on the reverse of the top layer. The photo shows the straps for both copies of the album.

The inside of the flap on page 3. This shows the magnet at the left-hand edge, which will keep the flap closed, and the one in the middle is for the strap. These will be covered up by the Distress Oxide background piece.

The front of page 2 with the magnetic strap in place. The tab over the top attaching it to the page will be covered by the Distress Oxide sheet lining the inside.

This is the pocket for page 2 being constructed.

You can see the tabs for attaching it, with the double-sided tape in place. I distressed the edges of the green paper with Forest Moss Distress Ink.

In her fabulous Youtube videos, Jen has so many useful tips, and I used one of these on this pocket. You peel back a small amount of the backing on the double-sided tape at the bottom of the side tabs, fold them in, and then fold up the bottom tab so that it sticks to the exposed glue on the side tabs. This holds the bottom tab in place. You can then remove the backing paper and stick the pocket in place on the page. (Another useful tip she shares is that if you make a mistake – and I make plenty! – you can unstick things stuck down with double sided tape by heating it with a heat gun, which softens the glue, and you can then peel the pieces apart! I never knew that, and always regret how permanent double-sided tape is when you get it wrong. I have wasted quite a few things in the past because I thought my inaccurately placed pieces were beyond redemption.)

The pocket in place, with the magnetic strap folded down.

If I had thought about it more carefully, I would have put the magnet for the strap inside the pocket rather than behind the page, because as it is, it has to work through more layers of cardstock, but it seems to hold OK. That’s the trouble with projects like this – they tend to evolve as you go along, and it’s really hard to think ahead sufficiently!

Here is page 2 with the magnetic strap open.

This is the double-page spread of pages 2 and 3 with the page flaps closed.

You can see that I have used the oval black punched piece on page 3, simply sticking it down as a photo mat.

The inside of page 2, with the flap open, showing how I have used my Distress Oxide background pieces.

The double-page spread with the flaps open, revealing the Distress Oxide background pieces.

It’s coming along nicely. I’m getting very excited about this project!

Floral Mini-Album Pt 3 Starting on the Pages

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

A little more progress has been made on the mini-album.

I have stuck the hidden hinge element into the spine of the book.

Adding papers to the inside front cover and the first page. These papers are from the paper stack that has been in my stash for more years than I care to remember. I cut off a triangle from the larger piece and clipped the corners a little, so it could be slipped just inside the triangular pocket with nothing showing. I stuck the piece I’d cut off onto the triangular pocket. If I’d thought ahead a bit more, I would have covered the page first, before adding the pocket.

Turning the page, the double page spread is the twin pages with the flaps held closed by magnets. I chose a couple of pieces from one of my Tim Holtz paper stacks (can’t remember which one – all the sheets are mixed up now!).

To go under the flaps, and to show towards the spine in the centre, I decided to create a couple of backgrounds using my new Distress Oxide inks – I actually got these several months ago but had no opportunity to try them out, so this was by way of an experiment as well. I am delighted with them – gorgeous smoochy colours and they blend beautifully. These were the first two backgrounds I created.

The next day I made two more, and I am happier with these ones, as I built up the layers a bit better with a little more practice.

Floral Mini-Album Pt 2 Constructing the Cover

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

On day 2 of this project, I made the cover and the hidden hinge binding system, continuing to follow the Youtube tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBmXa_YQDJY&t=617s.

The pieces for the front and back cover and the spine were cut from mounting board, and they were covered with some long pieces of white card which I have had for many years. You can join two shorter pieces but since I had this, I thought I’d use it and avoid the join.

As instructed on various Youtube tutorials on making album covers, I left a gap between the pieces, the width of two thicknesses of the mounting board, to enable the book to close without tearing the paper.

In the above picture, you can see the double-sided tape on the covering card, and the corners trimmed ready for mitring.

The covering card folded over and the mitred corners created.

The cover construction completed.

Because it was covered with white card and I wanted all the borders to be black, I painted the edges all around with black acrylic paint, inside and out.

Making the hidden hinge system.

In the above photo you can see that the length of card has been scored and folded, and double-sided tape added, ready to create the hinges for the binding.

The hidden hinge binding completed, ready to be stuck into the spine of the book, with double-sided tape on the reverse.

Each hinge, or projection, slots into the open side of a page. Once in place, all you see is the gusset between each page.

This next photo shows what I’ve done so far, working on two identical albums side by side.

Two sets of pages on the left, complete with flaps and pockets; two hidden hinge systems, two covers.

Next stage: to stick the hidden hinges into the spines of the covers, and to begin covering the pages with designer papers.

Floral Tag

Today I made a tag. I have been told by the hospital to put a label on my wheelchair with my name on it, so that it will go up to the ward with the rest of my belongings after my operation on Wednesday. Originally I was just going to use a luggage label but then couldn’t remember if I had any left or where they were, so I decided to make a pretty tag with my name on it, and afterwards I could put something else over my name.

Some time ago I bought a set of Sizzix tag dies and used the largest of the set to cut the tag, from a scrap of fairly thick slightly shiny card that came with a parcel in the post the other day. I lined up the die as accurately as possible in the centre of the piece so that I could use the piece as a card mat later.

For the waste piece, without removing the die from the card, I put it back through the Cuttlebug with my No More Shims embossing mat to get a nice embossed edge to the frame. As for the tag, I selected the die of next size down, lined it up carefully on the tag with the cutting side to the back of the tag, and again with the No More Shims embossing mat, put the whole thing through the Cuttlebug again. I was very pleased with the great embossed edge I achieved.

Last week I had to re-ink my Spun Sugar Distress Ink pad and finished the re-inker. There was still a tiny bit left in the bottle so I added a small amount of water and thought I could probably use this. The same applied to my Fruit Punch Stickles – I’m not surprised I’d finished this bottle because this colour is my go-to Stickles colour! On a scrap of white cardstock I did a bit of experimenting – dropping a few splodges of the diluted re-inker with the dropper in the bottle, and then squirting two or three blobs of the diluted Stickles onto the craft sheet, spritzing with water and smooshing the piece through it. I dried the whole thing with the heat gun.

This shows that you can still squeeze a bit more life out of products when the bottle is empty! Always worth trying, anyway. At the top of the above photo, you can see the kitchen paper I used for mopping up – already maturing into a really useable piece for other projects!

I decided that it might be a bit risky to do a lot of wet smooshing with the tag, because I didn’t want to lose the embossing on the edge, so I abandoned the re-inker idea, and applied Spun Sugar Distress Ink all over the tag with an ink blender. This began to pick out the raised embossed edge very well. I spattered the surface with my finger dipped in water, left it a few seconds and then blotted it off.

I repeated the process with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink.

I distressed the edge with three colours of Distress Ink: first, Aged Mahogany.

I forgot to photograph the second colour, which was Vintage Photo. I finished off with Black Soot, just doing the very edge by swiping downwards with a blending tool.

I dropped a little of the diluted Fruit Punch Stickles onto the craft sheet, spritzed it with water and gently smooshed the tag through it. I achieved the lightest of glitter finish to the surface of the tag. I propped it up to photograph it and I hope you can see at least a little of the shimmer.

I added Spun Sugar Distress Ink all over the reverse of the tag, and distressed the edges lightly as for the front.

Now for some fun with my new Crop-a-dile. This was the first time I’d used it, and I managed to place a very nice bronze eyelet on the top of the tag.

I coloured a length of twine with Aged Mahogany Distress stain but it came out too dark, so I rinsed it quickly under the tap and squeezed it out in kitchen paper before drying it with my heat gun, to get the colour I wanted.

I selected several flowers from my recent Floral Mini-Album project and hot glued them to the tag.

I added my name with a sanguine archival pen.

After the tag has been used to identify my wheelchair, I intend cutting one of the labels from the tag die set and adding some different text to the tag, and possibly some more decorative yarn to the top. I made sure the flowers were well attached right to the edges with the hot glue, to prevent them catching and the petals becoming damaged.

I hope the nurses will get a bit of joy from seeing that I’ve taken a bit of trouble to identify my wheelchair, to co-ordinate with the floral decorations already on it.

Floral Mini-Album Pt 1 Going Back to the Beginning–Preparing the Pages

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

I vowed I wouldn’t start any new projects until I’d completed my Infusions mini-album which has more or less bitten the dust recently! Ah well… This new project takes priority for now! Nothing has been done in my studio for weeks as there has been so much to do, with Mum’s death, and my hubby breaking his leg, and my health problems to think about, not to mention Christmas in the middle of it all. It has been a real joy to get back in the studio, and to spend some quality time in there again, doing what I want to do, instead of running around like a mad thing and getting really stressed out!

For the template for this mini-album, I have been following a Youtube tutorial for a basic mini-album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBmXa_YQDJY.

It’s only got four pages (eight sides) and the finished book is very thick, but this allows for plenty of pockets, flaps, additional photo and journaling mats, and embellishments. I have a paper stack that I’ve had for years and never used, and masses of embellishments and other bits and pieces, and I think this will be a good opportunity to use some of these things – over the years one can accumulate an awful lot of stuff and it’s good to root it out and use it once in a while. Most of the embellishments will be flowers, though, made specially for this project.

Note added later: The paper stack in question is of unknown origin – I may have bought it, or I may have been given it. In the early days I acquired a lot of stuff, not really knowing what I was doing, and as I progressed and developed, I realised that much of this early stuff really wasn’t what I liked at all, so it just sat around gathering dust. This particular paper stack seems to be unbranded, and while some of the papers are quite nice, and the whole thing covers a range of different colours, much of it is horrible, and it has a lot of text on it, which I would never want to use. I think it was primarily designed for scrapbooking on the theme of family (lots of quotes about families) and the paper certainly wasn’t designed for altering, as I discovered as this project progressed – the surface is slightly waxy and it resists water, causing any applied wet inks to bead up. However, after several layers, it does seem to behave a bit better. Pages I thought I could never use have now been transformed and have become eminently suitable for the current project. Nice to know that I now have the skills to use up stash that might have ended up being given away, or in the bin!

As I did with my Mamhead mini-album, I am making two identical copies of this mini-album so that I can give one away, and keep one. For the sake of simplicity, I shall describe each step as if I am making only one copy, although some of the photos may show the parts for both.

On this first day, I completed the basic structure of the four pages. I have made them from American Cardstock 12 x 12 in black which will give a nice uniform look once the papers are added, leaving a narrow black border around everything. For the entirety of the album I have chosen a 1/8 in border for matting and layering which also helps with the uniformity of the design, particularly as I am going to be using a lot of different colours.

Cutting, scoring and folding the page pieces.

Each page is constructed as a tube, closed at top and bottom, and open at the sides. One side will be attached to the hidden hinge system of binding, and the other side will remain open for the insertion of a large pull-out tag for photos and journaling.

Here are the larger pieces with the double sided tape applied, ready for assembly.

The page pieces assembled. You can see the open sides.

Although the album has four pages, from now on I am going to treat each side as a page (like a normal book) as this will help with the descriptions, and to remind me where I am.

On the first page, I have added a triangular pocket at the bottom left which you can just see if you look closely.

On another Youtube video I saw these triangular pockets which I really liked because while they are effective at holding tags or photos or whatever, they do not obscure them as much as a standard pocket would.

The second page has a large flap attached at its outer edge.

The third page is a mirror image of the second, creating a double-page spread with large flaps either side.

The fourth page has a pocket along its inner edge. In the photo, you can see that I have attached this to the page, and the pocket for the other album is resting on top, showing the scored and folded edges ready for the double-sided tape.

On the fifth page, I have decided to add a pop-up, and I have attached a flap at the bottom for this.

The sixth page has two large flaps attached top and bottom, which overlap.

This is what they look like when open.

The seventh page has a pocket at the bottom.

I haven’t added anything to the eighth page yet. It will probably have another pop-up.

Inside the front cover there will be an waterfall mini, and inside the back cover, there will be a holder for a CD of Mum’s favourite music. I have yet to decide how to embellish the front cover.

On several of the pages, the flaps will be closed with a magnet fastening.

This was the amount I achieved on day 1 of this project. Not bad! I am very pleased to be back in the studio again after so long, and I want to crack on with this project and try to finish it before I go into hospital for my operation, because I’ve no idea how I’ll be afterwards, and how long it will take me to recover.