WOYWW 447

First of all, I am really sorry not to have replied to the lovely comments I had on my blog last time I was on here. I shall endeavour to do so in the next few days. As you can imagine, with my mum dying, and my hubby’s broken leg, and then Christmas, I have had more than enough to cope with and time has been very short. At times I have become quite overwhelmed with everything and have lost the plot on more than one occasion. When things are normal, I can just about cope with what I have to do, but add another raft of problems and things start to go a bit pear-shaped chez Shosh.

However, over the past few days things have generally been better. We have had a quiet couple of days over Christmas with no visitors, and I was able to concentrate on the dinner and just spending time with my hubby and the kitties.

We have loved having everyone dropping in to see us, but it all takes up such a lot of time and I can find my schedule slipping alarmingly, and I begin to get a panicky feeling that things are slipping beyond my control. Sometimes I’ve just had to apologise to people and take myself off and get on with things, and leave them to socialise with my hubby, which has made me feel a bit rude but it was the only way to keep going. Another problem is that most people have no idea about not letting the kittens out into the house from the flat – they stand with the door open, and before we know it, Ruby has dashed off upstairs, or worse, into the kitchen and I’m terrified of her getting outside when people are in and out! I can’t blame them, because they don’t know our arrangements and their aim is to see my hubby and they aren’t concentrating on anything else, but on occasion this has happened when I am at some crucial stage with the cooking or I’m already multi-tasking more than my poor brain can cope with!

Once we are back to normal again and people aren’t in and out all the time, we will be able to give the kitties the run of the house as we were doing before. At the moment they are generally very content in the flat with my hubby – they have loved having him there all the time, with a nice big warm lap for them to sleep on, and I have been spending as much time as possible in there too.

Here is Lily, lying as she so often does these days – shameless hussy, everything exposed!!

She is the most soft, floppy and laid back kitty you could imagine. She’s as bad as my hubby – all she wants to do is sleep!

Here is Ruby being queen of the castle on top of the cat tree. This one’s full of life, and wriggles and fidgets when being cuddled, but purrs her head off the whole time!

Do you remember Beatrice the Computer Queen? Well, it seems that Lily is following in her footsteps! She has been helping my hubby on his laptop.

Ruby, like Phoebe, isn’t a bit interested in the computer – she is more interested in having fun and generally being a really cheerful, enthusiastic kitty with no intellectual bent whatever.

Here are the latest videos of them. Can you believe they are now seven months old?

I have been doing lots of therapeutic cooking! On Christmas Eve I cooked a new recipe after watching Mary Berry on TV and just had to try her fish pie with soufflé topping. Here is the result.

The topping is done with cubed white bread and whipped egg white with a melted butter and cheese mixture. I used a combination of cod and salmon and chucked a few prawns in for good measure, and it was the most delicious fish pie I have ever tasted! This one’s definitely a keeper, and I don’t think Mr. Tesco will be persuading me to buy his “Finest” fish pie again! Thank you Mary!

My Christmas dinner was a triumph. It was the first I had cooked since 2006. That was my swan song, and I managed to prepare everything and did my best table decorations ever, but I didn’t really enjoy eating it because I was going down with a horrible flu-like illness and by tea time on Christmas day I was feeling so rough that I went to bed and didn’t get up for a week. I never bounced back from that, and it developed into the ME which has been with me ever since.

This year I was determined to cook a proper dinner again, with all the trimmings. OK, I did buy a Lidl Christmas pudding, but everything else I cooked from scratch, just for the two of us. I thought my hubby could do with spoiling, having broken his leg and been deprived of going out and doing all the things he wanted over Christmas. Here is the table, just as we were ready to sit down and eat.

Starting top left: crispy bacon and pigs in blankets. Top right: gravy, bread sauce, carafe of the delicious red wine which was given to us by our lovely neighbour. Middle, left to right: roast turkey, carved and ready to serve; three stuffings: chestnut, mealy (a traditional Scottish recipe made from oatmeal, a firm family favourite), and date and walnut; carrots and sprouts with whole chestnuts. Front row – the best roast potatoes I’ve ever cooked, after finding a tip online to par-boil them and then freeze them, and cook them from frozen, having tossed them in semolina. Crisp on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside. I used Maris Piper potatoes, which, like King Edwards, are ideal for roasting. All laid up with my best china and silver on my favourite hand-embroidered tablecloth from my Scottish grandmother.

Here is a close-up of the decoration for the table napkins.

This is the small table centre I made.

These ribbon and paper decorations were made for my swan song Christmas table and I’ve used them on occasion in between. I can mix and match the different elements.

After we’d finished, we settled down to watch the Queen’s Christmas broadcast.

I was delighted a few weeks ago to discover that because I’d lost so much weight, I was able to get into my Afghan Nomad Dress again! I made this many years ago and could never bear to part with it. The whole of the front of the bodice is covered with hand embroidery, and it has a very full skirt, and is made of several different fabrics, all in rich colours.

A bit difficult to photograph as a selfie –here’s an old photo of myself in it when I first made it.

For Christmas this year, I braided my hair with ribbons and added some gold flowers. Here’s a back view.

My hubby was thrilled!

Mum

In view of all our current difficulties, we decided to have Mum cremated privately before Christmas, and then to have a memorial service in mid-January. This means we’ve got more time to plan something really special, and also more people will be able to attend who might have been away at Christmas. There’s still quite a bit to sort out, and plans for the service are coming together nicely now, and once the Christmas dust has settled, I shall be able to get down to producing the order of service as I did for Dad’s funeral.

Health Update

At long last I have an appointment to see my surgeon – on 11th January. I was getting desperate, having been promised an appointment before the end of the year and hearing nothing, so I phoned his secretary, and she passed me on to the appointments department, who immediately referred me back to her! I was spitting tacks after this. Since the return of Miss Piggy, my hernia, things have got more worrying – it is now in the same state it was at the beginning of the year when it caused a blockage, resulting in emergency surgery and me being really poorly for ages, something I am more than anxious to avoid repeating at all costs. I am suffering quite a lot of skin irritation around Kermit, my stoma, and he has not been settled all year really, and things are now worse, not better, which has been very disappointing after having such a good year last year. Hopefully my surgeon will agree to go ahead and do a proper repair in the New Year.

Finally, here is what my hubby gave me for Christmas: a set of Derwent Graphik Line Painter pens. I’d seen some reviews of these on Youtube and was longing to get my hands on a set! They come in a lovely box with a slip cover.

Hopefully in the coming year I shall get more time and energy to do a decent amount of art, after what has been a pretty disappointing year.

Infusions Mini-Album–Working on the Tags

The second of two posts for today.

I actually managed to do some art today – for the first time for goodness knows how long. I managed to extricate myself from the kittens and spent a couple of hours in the studio, working on the tags for the Infusions mini-album.

I began with the title tag for the “Various Effects” section, listing the three techniques on the front of the tag.

The background was created using Black Knight and Are You Cerise Infusions from Set 1, sprinkling on the Infusions and then spritzing with water, and I repeated this for the reverse of the tag.

It was so long since I’d done any of this project that I’d forgotten that I was going to use Distress Inks and a minimum of Infusions on the tags! Having done it, I didn’t want to waste the tag, so proceeded with it, using the white Uniball Signo pen for the text, which matches the tag holder.

The next one was for “Drips,” on the front of the tag.

I inked the background for both sides using Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick, Picked Raspberry and Victorian Velvet Distress Inks, applied with Inkylicious Ink Dusters. I sprinkled on a small quantity of Are You Cerise and Black Knight Infusions (both from Set 1) and spritzed it with water, and then dried the tag with the heat gun. I spattered this with water and blotted it off for a bit of texture, and dried the tag before adding the text with my white Uniball Signo marker pen. As I am doing for all the tags, I distressed the edges with Black Soot Distress Ink, using a home-made ink blending tool (just visible on the far left of the above picture).

The “Kissing” tag. This was done on the reverse of the “Drips” one.

I chose colours of Distress Inks to match as far as possible the two “kissing” pages. These were Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky and Faded Jeans, all blue Distress Inks, and then Crushed Olive, Peeled Paint and Forest Moss in green, and finally a little Fossilised Amber. The Infusions I used were Royal Blood and Golden Sands from Set 1. I wrote the text using a black permanent archival pen and the white Uniball pen.

The “Infusions with Glimmer Mists” tag was made by inking Scattered Straw Distress Ink over the entire surface of both sides of the tag, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster. On the front, I sprinkled some Lemoncello Infusions from Set 1, sparingly, on two of the corners and dried it with my heat gun, and repeated the process on the back, using a bit more Infusions to cover the surface.

I spritzed both sides with my DIY Glimmer Mist made from Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink re-inker in water, with some Perfect Pearls added. The blue of the Glimmer Mist mixed nicely with the yellow of the Scattered Straw Distress Ink to create bits of green. Those little spray bottles don’t give a really fine spray, unfortunately, so I think in future I need to use my mini-misters instead. The text was done with a black archival pen.

These are the little mop-up pieces so far – for each tag I am creating a new one of these, to clean up the non-stick craft sheet and provide a resource for future projects. Each one is edged with Black Soot Distress Ink.

I’ve finished the “Miscellaneous Techniques” section and the next section to be done will be the “Painting” section.

Second Wind–Second Part

Today I added some extras to the pages for my “Second Wind” mini-album. For the beginning of this project, please see the previous post.

These are the materials I ended up using for the various embellishments to the pages. Bottom left, clockwise: gel pens in silver and gold, and silver and gold glitter gel pens; white fluid acrylic by Pebeo, watered down for spattering; black acrylic. I used two sizes of fan brush for the paints.

I wanted to add some touches of gold to the pictures, and did some experiments, first with foil – this was not a success. Very difficult to get it accurate, and it was too bright and shiny. I also tried a gold Uniball Signo marker pen but it was rather a dull gold. I ended up using the gold gel pen from a set I have, and then added some gold glitter pen on top.

As always, gold and shimmery effects do not show up well on photos, but I hope you can see a bit of it. I just added some touches.

I also added some black acrylic paint with the large fan brush, to accentuate the curve of the hurricane. Where the lines came out too harsh, I added some dry brushing with the same paint and brush to feather it somewhat.

You can also see that I added some white acrylic spatters, using the small fan brush.

Where the hurricane is at its most violent, I added some lightning flashes, using the silver gel pen, with some silver glitter gel pen on top. In the photos it looks white, but in reality it is more subtle, and shiny and sparkly.

I didn’t add much to the centre picture – just a few light touches of black acrylic to the water.

 

I think the addition of the black acrylic adds dimension to the vortex of the hurricane, and it makes the pictures more dramatic.

There are touches of gold added to the circle in the centre in all the pages.

Not a lot added to the final page either – just a few light touches of the black acrylic paint, and a bit of gold.

The pages are now complete. The next step is the cover and the binding. I am still undecided about the cover, but if I sleep on it I am sure something will come!

Florabunda Book

Even though the oncologist reduced my chemo dose by 50 percent on Friday, I am still feeling extremely wiped out and exhausted. However, the peripheral neuropathy is much reduced, which is a good sign, and this was the main reason for the dose reduction. My appetite has been poor these past couple of days and I’ve just got to do my usual, and go with the flow, rest as much as possible, sleep when I need to, and try to keep as positive as possible, always remembering that I now have only one treatment to go.

Recently I commented on Neil’s blog and amazingly, I won the book he was reviewing, of which he had a couple of copies to give away. For someone who never wins anything this was a big surprise! The book arrived today.

It is written by Suzanne McNeill of Design Originals, a prolific Zentangle artist and CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher) in the USA. Her videos are a delight – this lady is so full of joy and inspiration! This latest book is a sort of offshoot of Zentangle, being a form of floral doodling. There is loads of potential for design with this – in the same way as Zentangle, you build up the designs one stroke at a time, from simple elements. She shows how to get different effects with different types of pens and colouring, with lots of inspiration for creating different projects

Neil popped in this adorable little tangled card he made for me with my initial on it, and with some kind words inside.

Here are a few sample pages from the book. I am sure you will agree that it is beautifully produced, and high quality.

It contains pages that you can colour in yourself, and plenty of blank spaces for developing your own practice drawings.

I love the lettering section towards the end. Lots of inspiration here!

I hope this sample has encouraged you to look further at this.

I am just starting another card factory to replenish my stash, and this time I am intending making lots of relatively simple cards that I can produce fairly quickly, while my energy levels are so low. This book has come at an ideal time – I can do some simple floral doodles on small squares of card while resting on the recliner, and make them up into cards in my studio during those short periods when I feel up to sitting up at my work station.

Watch this space!

Thank you so much, Neil, for making this offer of the book to give away. I am highly delighted to have won it, and it made my day receiving it today when I am feeling rather poorly.

A Seahorse for Marlene

Great news, folks! Mr. Mojo and Mrs. Muse have returned at last from their extended holiday/absence without leave! Since my cancer diagnosis in mid-January, I have been so preoccupied and unsettled, and with my mind so full of it all, that I have not been able to focus on anything creative. Today I am really feeling a lot better – it is now over 6 weeks since my surgery, and although I still tire more easily than in my normal M.E. state, I do feel more myself. I am about to embark on six months of intensive chemotherapy and am determined to take advantage of those periods when I am feeling better in between.

Recently a friend of mine contacted me to say that she was exploring the idea of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) and asked if we could swap. I was thinking perhaps I had an ATC in my stash that I could send her, but there was nothing suitable. She said she had done a seahorse one so I decided to do the same.

Her ATC arrived yesterday and I love the colour, and the addition of a little bling, which I am pleased to see how well the camera picked this up for once – it is usually really hard to capture sparkly surfaces!

I decided to do another of my signature teabag stain ATCs. I’m afraid I didn’t remember to photograph the stain before I drew on it, but it was one on a sheet of watercolour paper that I used to dry teabags on – they leave such lovely marks.

I used a fine Faber Castell sepia pen to do the drawing, and added some Zentangles around the edge, and after completing the drawing, I cut it out around the outline.

I shaded the drawing with a brown pastel pencil and blended it with a paper stump.

I took one of my ATC blanks and inked the edges with Tea Dye distress ink.

I used Scotch Quick Dry adhesive to stick the drawing onto the back piece, and added a little more drawing around the edge.

I wrapped the ATC in a scrap of tissue paper which I stamped with some of my seashell stamps, using sepia archival ink, and repeated this motif, adding a little seahorse, on the small cream envelope I chose to send Marlene her ATC in.

I included one of my little fans in with the ATC – I made a whole lot of these to go with ATCs for the last ATC swap I took part in. These were stamped with Versamark onto black card using one of my favourite fan stamps, and then brushed with dry Perfect Pearls, adding a little tie of ribbon on the handle.

I tied up the little parcel with some co-ordinating fancy yarn. I hope Marlene enjoys her ATC.

OK, so it’s a small start, but the creative block is down, and I am excited about getting back into my ARTHaven again. Watch this space – I hope it isn’t just a flash in the pan!

Misc Christmas Soaps Pt 2

Here are the remaining photos of the soaps I’ve made for Christmas presents.

Turned out of the moulds. You can see the brown cameo to the right of the lavender soap.

I was wondering how to highlight the cameo a bit, and then remembered I’d ordered some cosmetic-grade mica powders for my soap making, and used some of the white. I put the cameo onto the top of the soap and drew round it with a scriber, and then with a modelling tool I gouged out some of the soap. I filled the cavity with the melted soap base, scored the base of the cameo, spritzed both surfaces with rubbing alcohol and popped the cameo in place. There was a bit of leakage of the melted soap base but I was able to get most of this off. Unfortunately I lost the pristine shiny surface of the soap straight from the mould but once wrapped, this didn’t matter quite so much. I did a bit more touching up with the mica powder once the cameo was in place.

Here it is, wrapped.

I made a label for the base. All the labels were written with my sepia Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen and embellished with distress inks. In the case of the lavender soap I used Milled Lavender and a touch of Dusty Concord on the lavender flower paintings, and the leaves were painted with Mowed Lawn.

Here are the rest of the soaps, all wrapped in cellophane and labelled. For the gardener’s soaps, I put the main label on the top, and added a small label giving the ingredients on the bottom, as this was a more complicated soap, and I thought the recipients might be interested to know what went into it, making it so suitable for garden and workshop use. The lemon soaps just had the label on the bottom, with the information about how this soap removes onion smells from one’s hands. The gardener’s soap labels were coloured with Spiced Marmalade distress ink, and the lemon soaps with Wild Honey distress ink.

The gardener’s soaps. The orange Stickles glitter glue doesn’t show up on the photos at all, but it is a nice echo of the speckled orange rind on the surface of the soaps, as is the label border.

Single gardener’s soap.

Label on base of gardener’s soap.

A pair of gardener’s soaps, tied with an orange ribbon.

Lemon soaps.

Lemon soap label.

The three teddy soaps, tied with ribbon, with applied decorative bow. Each soap is individually wrapped. They are definitely too small for everyday use, and I shall be sourcing a larger teddy soap mould online.

Three teddy soaps, side view. I had to put the middle one face down because they are not uniformly thick.

All that remains now is to finish packaging the honey soaps I made before. I want to make tags for these, using honeycomb-embossed card and my large bee stamp. I am a bit annoyed that the medium bee stamp is still out of stock, and I have been waiting for some time for an email notifying me that they have arrived – the large stamp is a bit too big for this but I can make something of it, no doubt.

After Christmas being a total non-event this year, everybody will have to put up with their presents being late! This week, I also have to make a bee birthday card to go with some of the honey soaps, and hope I shall retain enough energy to get that done, or it will be another late arrival.