WOYWW 497

Sorry not to join in WOYWW last week. It’s been an extremely busy time with a lot going on and I’ve got very exhausted and have had to rest as much as possible between our various activities.

No desk pic again this week because my mystery project is still under wraps but hopefully all will be revealed next week. In the meantime, here’s a fun little gift I made for the friend we had lunch out with today (writing this on Tues. evening).

“Peachies” is a joke we have with our friend over a mistake made with our name when we were together once, and it stuck. Hope you like my vintage-style label.

Lunch Out

One of several meals out this week – today’s lunch at a lovely place where they have peacocks wandering around outside, and they had decorated their Christmas tree with a peacock theme. I just had to photograph these gorgeous decorations, which included clear baubles with a peacock feather inside, baubles made with overlapping sequins in peacock colours, and peacock feathers sprayed with something to stiffen them, and painted with glitter – just gorgeous!

Sourdough

After a break for a week, I made sourdough again this week. A great success. I think I’ve really cracked it now.

Car Woes

The steering on the car has been a bit ropey for a while so we took it in to our friendly car mechanic today and he put it on his lift, with me in it, and I spent the next hour or so up in the rafters of his garage, doing my knitting – a most uplifting experience! He can repair it, but had to keep the car in overnight so he sent us home in his courtesy car. My hubby should be able to pick it up tomorrow, all being well.

Computer Woes

A nightmare week, having to format my hard drive and reinstall everything. I had a minor problem which online research assured me could be safely cured with the removal of a couple of small files from the registry, after safely backing up the registry in case of problems. Problems? I’ll say. The computer wouldn’t boot up at all! What use is a registry backup if you can’t access it? Grrrr. Major stress, huge amount of work, some things still not operating as they should and needing tweaking. Two external hard drives not being recognised by the computer but eventually I narrowed this down to a problem with their enclosures (they hadn’t been tried before) and they are now being examined in our local computer shop, and I should get them back in a day or two. I wasn’t worried about my data etc. because I back everything up religiously. It’s going to take me a while to get things back to normal, though.

Kitty Woes

Ruby is grounded. Again. Despite extra defences, she was straight over the fence again. Stronger defences were installed by my hubby, and after a short period of frustrated yowling because she couldn’t get out, she made another attempt and succeeded. My hubby says he will get this sorted, and in the meantime she is strictly an indoor kitty. Lily gets so anxious when Ruby gets out, and comes running to tell us, in great distress. She’s such a good girl, and Ruby is an absolute terror! They are so different.

They are different in their tastes in TV, too. Lily likes educational programmes like wildlife. Here is Ruby watching Star Trek.

Health Update

I am seeing my surgeon on Thursday, following my recent CT scan which showed the return of my parastomal hernia. I am hoping he will agree to leave it alone and just keep an eye on it for now, as I really don’t want further surgery after being so ill earlier this year. It’s not giving me much trouble.

It’s been quite a week and I’m not surprised I’m exhausted.

I shall be glad when this season is over. It’s my least favourite time of the year!!! Can’t wait for January and a good rest and at least another 11 months till next C. (I’m not a bah-humbug type – really – but at this time of year I always feel like emigrating.)

Here’s a seasonal funny.

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Cars

I have now completed the Cars pages. I began by printing out some “Cars” text in various sizes, and at the same time, to fill the page, I printed some material for the Professional Life pages.

Fussy cutting the cars text.

I applied the text to the page using soft matt gel medium. The pieces were rather delicate and I thought they might tear if I used regular medium.

Once they were dry, I made a wash with titanium white acrylic paint and acrylic polymer and roughly painted over the cars text.

I had a rummage in my card strips box and made a selection, for some “go faster” stripes for this page. I was rather pleased to find the offcuts from the recycled Christmas cards that I used for the pages of this album! Seemed fitting somehow. Recycling the recycled.

I thought the page looked a bit dull so I added a small suggestion of colour with white and brown pan pastels, which also had the effect of muting the brush strokes on the page. I fixed it with my Rustoleum spray sealant (great stuff, but it really stinks!!).

Now for the fun part. I had printed and cut out several car badges and stuck these down with regular matt gel medium, and then cut the card strips to form the “go faster” stripes which were laid down with a suggestion of randomness. You can still see the “cars” text echoing the title and forming a subtle background.

I completed the first Cars page with the addition of a border – I was pleased with how this turned out because it looks almost suggestive of car tyres!

The second “Cars” page shows the cars my dad owned during his life (with the exception of the first one, a Riley, which I do not remember, and have no photo). I wanted to keep the look of the page consistent, and also to introduce a somewhat vintage appearance, so I edited the photos in Serif PhotoPlus, creating a duplicate layer which I desaturated, and then erased away the actual car, so that the colour from the bottom layer popped. Unfortunately when I printed them out the colour balance wasn’t quite right and I had a bit of touching up to do. I fixed the photos first, with Rustoleum clear sealant, and then used various distress inks as watercolours to alter the colours somewhat. The MG Magnette (second down on the left) had no colour added because it was dark grey anyway. After this came the first MG sports car – an MGA in red. This car was, in my opinion, the most attractive of all his cars – it had such beautiful lines. The MGB sports cars (top right) had to be printed from a downloaded image because for some reason I have no photos – he had two (if not 3) of these, all in British Racing Green. He loved his sports cars!

A good number of years before he retired he bought his first Porsche. He drove this for many years, well into his retirement. The second Porsche, a Boxter, was the last car he ever owned, which he was still driving aged 89!!

I am quite pleased that the border on this page, which was determined by the page of the same size further back in the book, looks like a chequered flag! Although he wasn’t into motor racing, it seems appropriate with his love of sports cars.

The final step was to add the journaling and final embellishments to tie the page together.

This takes us up to the end of the second signature of the book.

Kitty Squad, Tyvek, a Page About Cars and a Health Update

Yesterday my long-awaited new stamp arrived – it has been out of stock for weeks and I asked for an email alert when they were back in. It’s one of the wonderful Stampotique Originals art stamps, and it’s called Kitty Squad. I just love those cute kitties. They are cute without being cutesy if you follow me – I am not into cutesy lol!! Like all their stamps, it is wood mounted – I don’t like this, and can’t understand why they don’t do cling mount as an alternative as most people are using these nowadays, but at least I shall get another useable wood block for other purposes once I get round to unmounting it!

I shall cut the stamp to separate the kitties, to make them more versatile.

I also got some sticky embossing powder. I thought this was a brilliant idea. You stamp with Versamark and sprinkle on the powder as usual, but when you heat it, it becomes glue! This means you can add whatever you like to your stamped image – foils, glitter, flock, etc. etc. – making them much more versatile. I am looking forward to trying this.

I love how the stuff was packaged. It was wrapped up in red tissue paper with the lovely rough string tying it up, and attached was the little double-heart charm! All these things will be useful in projects.

Also this week, my Tyvek envelopes arrived from Ebay. I was thinking again about getting stuff much more cheaply from different sources from the usual art/craft suppliers who really bump up the price of things. I know that in the USA a lot of mailings are done using Tyvek envelopes because this stuff is so tough and won’t tear, but it is still light, and superficially looks and feels like paper. I had never seen them used here in the UK but decided to have a look on Ebay, and there were masses of them listed, and they are really cheap. Several years ago I bought a couple of A4 sheets of Tyvek at a craft show and spent quite a bit on them, but I have worked it out that I can get a whole A4 sheet and two smaller pieces from each of the A4 envelopes and it works out at approximately 17p per sheet! Not bad, eh? On the cutting machines forum several people have reported that this stuff cuts fantastically well – a very clean and detailed cut is possible, and being so strong, there’s no danger of it ripping as you take it off the mat. Don’t attempt to cut it with a punch, though – I tried this and it jammed in the punch, and I had to prise it apart with a screwdriver!!

I also have some soap making supplies on order from Ebay. Our teacher supplies all we need at the class but since I want to continue at home, there are various bits and pieces I need.

In my Recycled Mini-Album I have now started the page about cars. My dad was very keen on all the cars he had in his lifetime, and only gave up driving when he was 89! So some pages about his cars will be a real celebration. They meant more to him than just a means of getting from A to B.

I began by selecting some images and typing some text, printing them and then cutting them out.

Some of these will be used for the “professional life” pages, but in the meantime I cut out the “cars” text and stuck it down onto the page with soft matt gel medium.

I then added a rough wash of titanium white acrylic paint mixed with Golden GAC-100 polymer.

There may be further layers added to this page – it is still very much in the embryonic stage and I need to think a bit more about what I am going to do! The photos will be laid down over the text and more paint added, and I may add some further embellishment. And, of course, the borders! Watch this space.

I had the result of my latest blood test a couple of days ago and I am no longer anaemic! I need to check with the doctor, but she said to me last time I saw her that once I am back to normal, I may need to carry on with one iron tablet per day instead of three, in order to keep me topped up. I can’t say I feel any different, but my haemoglobin levels were only slightly below normal.

Yesterday my hubby took me back to the mobility centre because the new and improved seats on the small folding buggies had come in. The new and improved buggies themselves are still on order, but at least I could try the new seat. It was very comfortable, and a huge improvement on the original awful bicycle-saddle-like seat! We have decided to get a small foldable buggy that will go in the back of the car so that I can go further afield on outings than with the wheelchair. The big buggy will only go in the car with a huge amount of effort and is so heavy that my hubby says he can feel it affecting the steering. I shall continue to use it for outings from the house, and for church, as it is nice and comfortable when I have to sit for a long time. They think the new ones will be in after Christmas. Again, watch this space!

Katie’s Butterflies

You may remember when we got our new car (Katie) my hubby and I had a “battle” over whether or not I could have my butterflies on her.

 http://shoshiplatypus.blogspot.com/2011/03/meet-katie-our-new-car.html?showComment=1301289734666

He eventually agreed (we’ve been married 25 years this May and we all know about compromise ROFL!!!!!) so I went ahead and got the butterflies off Ebay. I got two large decals, one for each side, and also a pack of separate, smaller butterflies, which duly arrived, and then I promptly lost them! (Put it down to M.E. brainfog…) My hubby put the big decals on, and then several weeks later I found the small ones again, but I couldn’t put them on until he’d got round to cleaning the car.

I put them on this morning, and what’s more, the sun was shining brightly so I could get some photos too! (My hubby pulled a face when he saw I’d put some on the doors as well… then he said, “I suppose I’ll get used to it!”)

Here’s Katie in all her glory.

I had a few left after decorating Katie’s outside, so I decided to put them inside where I could see them when we are driving her. Unfortunately it was really hard to get these ones to show up on the photo, despite adjusting the brightness and contrast – it’s a very bright sunny day today, but I think you can see there are three butterflies here.

I then put the last one at the top of the window.

I’m really thrilled with Katie’s Ebay butterflies! My hubby just likes to make a fuss but he’ll soon forget they are even there!