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.

WOYWW 452

What’s On My Workdesk this Wednesday? A Crop-a-Dile!

Magnificent beast, isn’t he. He arrived yesterday morning. I wrote a blog post about him here. Any suggestions for a suitable name for him? He’s no wee timorous beastie, that’s for sure.

This was a staged photo taken just after I’d opened him. I’m afraid I can’t show you my desk proper this week because it is covered by my Mystery Project which has to remain Under Wraps till it’s completed. Sorry about that.

I can give you a sneak-peek of one bit, though, without giving anything away.

This was some additions I made to some pieces of green patterned card in my stash which I didn’t much like (the piece underneath). I added some Forest Moss Distress Ink by smooshing the card through it on my craft mat, and then added some Broken China Distress Oxide, and finally distressed the edges with more Forest Moss, and a little Black Soot Distress Inks. I think this is an improvement. It was very wrinkly by the time I’d finished it, but I flattened it nicely with my craft iron, which I suddenly thought would do the job a lot more quickly than the heavy-books-overnight treatment.

My blog editing app seems to be working OK again! I didn’t do anything, so I’m not sure what’s been going on. I just hope it lasts.

Kittens

I’ve been so busy this week that I haven’t had time to edit my recent videos of Lily and Ruby, but I’ve got some photos.

They’ve both been incredibly wild and playful and now they are so big, they are careering about the place and nothing in their path is safe! When they wrestle they don’t seem to know their own strength and often make each other cry if they bite too hard! They are turning into two little adolescent hooligans. Lots of naughtiness which isn’t as sweet as it was when they were tiny (oooh how I miss that!) and my threats to sell them on Ebay if they don’t behave, fall on deaf ears. Ruby is far too busy and fidgety to enjoy a cuddle with Mummy at the moment, although they are both still cuddling up with my hubby while he’s still only semi-mobile.

They still suckle on the little black fluffy thing though, and like the babies they were when they first started doing that, they crash out, totally exhausted, after a heavy bout of play. I don’t think they realise how big they’ve got, because they still squash in together in the top section of the cat tree, but now, bits hang over the edge!

When a tail hangs down like this, you can lift it up and drop it, and it’s completely floppy and lifeless. We’ve never had such laid-back and relaxed kitties.

Lily got all wild up there yesterday evening and started rolling around, much to my alarm – it’s a long way to fall!

I know that all of us arty and crafty folk like to distress things. Years ago I bought a Tim Holtz distressing tool which roughens up the edges of card really nicely. I could have saved myself the money. Lily and Ruby do a far better job.

This is about two days’ work. Feline deconstructive art. Note the bits of cardboard all over the floor, too. I’m always sweeping up.

Health Update

I’ve got my second pre-assessment appointment on Friday, this time with the anaesthetist, when I am going to discuss with him my request for a PICC line to be inserted from the outset – I hope he will agree to this, so that I don’t have to go through that whole awful performance of every cannula failing, and my arms blowing up, and me not getting sufficient pain relief etc. etc. I ended up like a complete pincushion by the end of it, but got instant relief with the installation of the PICC. Here’s hoping.

I will probably get an operation date soon. It can’t come soon enough now. However, after my past experience with postponements, I shan’t believe it’s actually happening until the anaesthetic enters my system.

“Normal life” again – at least for a while

A small oasis of near normality till I have to go into hospital. Now that my hubby is so much more mobile, I’m getting my life back at last! We are back in a routine where he gets his own breakfast so I haven’t got to get up so early, and can have a more leisurely and restful early part of the day which suits me better – my internal clock is all haywire with the ME and I tend to stay up well into the small hours feeling wide awake and wired, and need time to get going in the mornings. He is also doing all the kitty feeding, just for now, and I will take back the lunch and supper feeding eventually.

I have started doing some cooking in readiness for when I go into hospital and for afterwards – I am making up some low residue dishes and over the next week I shall try and organise the freezer so that things are easy for my hubby to find. I am hoping not to be too long out of action this time, and hope to be doing the meals before too long, even if he has to carry and fetch for me for a while! I’ve also started putting things like shredless marmalade and white bread on the shopping list – I shall really miss my home-made brown bread and chunky marmalade, not to mention the huge quantities of fruit and veg I eat (mostly far too fibrous for Kermit to deal with after he’s been remade).

The greatest result of thing getting back to normal is that my creative mojo has returned big time, and I’m spending as much time as possible (never enough) in my studio. I just wish I could share with you what I’m up to…