WOYWW 472

Contrary to my expectations, I managed to do a bit at my desk this week. This coming Saturday we are going to a party to celebrate the 100th birthday of a delightful Jewish lady who regularly attends our Christian Friends of Israel meetings. She is truly amazing for her age and you’d never guess she’d reached 100! I didn’t have much time but decided I must make her a card and a present.

On my main desk is her card so far.

The papers I am using were given to me for my birthday by a friend, and she’s delighted that I am putting them to immediate use. I have used the Die’sire butterfly card dies I bought at the craft show in February – at last I am starting to use some of the stuff I got then! I have cut the mat layers from some of the decorative papers I had for my birthday and the base layer is a thicker gold embossed card with the words “Congratulations” all over it. I will cut a “100” from gold card on the cutting machine and will use one or both of the ribbons you can see on the left.

I have also managed to clear a space on my office desk, which is now marginally tidier than it was before – ready to start last month’s accounts once I get time.

I’ve still got a lot of sorting to do as I’ve got far too much junk in there that should be shredded.

I decided to make a little embroidered frame for the 100-year-old’s birthday present.

You can see the original one on the right, which is normally hanging in the bedroom. I started the other one at the weekend and finished the cross stitch last night – been working flat out! – all that remains is to outline it all in black back-stitch and to tidy up the back. I am sure I shall get both this and the card finished in time for Saturday.

The design in an original one that I did several years ago – the Hebrew word “Shalom” in English and Hebrew, the central letter of the Hebrew becoming the “L” in the English, worked in rainbow colours, mixing the threads on the needle to get the graduation of colour. I designed it using a programme called EasyCross, which I have not used for years, and which I have subsequently discovered does not work on Windows 10, and which has been discontinued, and the company has gone out of business. I have purchased another cross-stitch design programme which I have yet to get to grips with. I managed to open the original “Shalom” design and do a screen grab and print it but it was covered with dotted lines and the colours weren’t right – I’ve had to edit it quite a bit with coloured pencils and notes. Eventually I shall redo this design, and my other EasyCross designs, into the new programme.

Ongoing Computer Stuff

The sorting out of my various hard drives and back-ups has had to take a back seat until after the weekend as I’ve got to get this birthday stuff finished first. There are still hard drives and cables all over the sitting room floor! At least I’ve managed to sort out the recovered back-up that I did last week.

Bread

On Friday I went to an Erev Shabbat (Sabbath Eve) meal at a friend’s. We had a wonderful evening and I made some new friends. He had done the table most beautifully.

I offered to make the challah (two plaited loaves of enriched egg bread) as he would not have been able to get any locally.

Somewhat lumpy at the ends! Next time I must remember to taper the ends of the long sausages of dough before plaiting them!

This is the challah cover that I made many years ago.

The Hebrew words are the blessing before bread: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

This week I also made my first attempt at making sourdough bread. This is the starter I made, from organic rye flour and kefir whey (I had made some kefir cheese by straining the kefir and reserving the liquid whey which is full of goodness).

The starter takes several days to develop, during which time you feed it daily with more flour and water (or whey).

Here is the resulting sourdough bread that I made yesterday evening – I started it on Monday evening, leaving it to prove overnight, and knocking it back yesterday morning, and leaving it for its second prove all day in the fridge until we got back from our day out – sourdough takes longer to rise than normal bread, and long slow proving improves both the flavour and texture of the bread.

It was so successful that by the time we’d finished our supper, there were only two slices left!!!

This is definitely something I shall be doing regularly. It’s not much trouble to make, but you just have to think ahead a bit and allow extra time for all the proving. You can keep the starter going more or less indefinitely, like kefir.

New Stash

Today, the friend who gave me the lovely papers for my birthday, turned up with a carrier bag absolutely full of craft goodies that she’d bought for me at a coffee morning – it was like Aladdin’s Cave opening it all up!

Lots more papers, cards, stamps, embossing stuff…

Also in the bag was this gorgeous Docrafts folder, absolutely stuffed with clear stamps.

I am overwhelmed – so much stuff to play with, and also with her kindness, thinking of me and buying me such a fabulous present! She said she got it all for an absolute song. What a treat, and what a lovely surprise.

Kitties

Can’t leave you without a kitty picture. Here are Lily and Ruby watching me intently from outside the kitchen window.

Ruby in particular likes to jump up there, in the hope that I will let her in through the window – which I don’t want to encourage!

They are both still really enjoying being in the garden all day, and doing quite well with the cat flap, but Ruby keeps forgetting how to use it! They are better at going out than coming in, probably because they have more incentive to go out, as they are both little garden addicts these days.

So you can see I’ve been very busy this past week, and this will continue for a while until I can get on top of things again. At least I’m being creative again!

Have a great week, everyone.

Explosion Box Pt 8

I've finished the Explosion Box! - and in the nick of time, too. We're taking our friend out for lunch tomorrow to celebrate our mutual belated birthday together, and I'm giving it to her then.

Because I'd only taken photos of the "work in progress" and not in an ideal setting, I've re-taken photos of the finished box in daylight and with a better background, which really show it off better.

I have also made a video:

Enjoy!

Explosion Box Pt 5

Over the past few days I've made good progress and have pretty well finished the inside of the explosion box. Here's a general view of it:

and here it is, looking straight down on it:

You will see that I've completed the waving flowers. Each one is double-sided, and stuck onto a strip of clear acetate which is quite springy, so that when the box is "exploded," they wave about in a jaunty fashion! The strips were cut from the packaging around an Easter egg. (Not much gets thrown out in this house, I can tell you!!!)

Also you will see that on each flap of the box, there is a small pocket. I have made tiny cards to go into each of these. Whenever my friend and I email each other, we always send "Shalom" (Hebrew for "Peace") to each other, in abundance, so I decided to make this "a box of Shaloms" - there are seven altogether, and it will be her task to find them all!

Here are pictures of some of these little cards. The lines on my cutting mat visible in each picture are one inch apart, to give you some scale.

This, and several of the cards, have been given a bit more dimension by the addition of some shading - in some cases being lightly brushed across with a stamp pad, and others with some chalks, and the edges touched with a little "Rub-and-Buff" which is a metalic paste in a tube which you apply and then buff to a shine when dry.

This one is a photograph of an embroidered plaque I did several years ago, with the Hebrew and English letters spelling "Shalom," with the "L" letter combining in both - I really enjoyed mixing the embroidery threads on the needle to give the graduated rainbow effect:

This one has a number of small red hearts suspended inside from gold thread. These hearts are like sequins but without holes - I think they are called table confetti, and they are available in lots of different shapes, and are very useful for embellishments. I stuck them together in pairs with the end of the thread trapped between, and the other ends go through a slit in the crease of the card and are glued between the two layers so they don't show.

This one is a graphic I've got of a triptich of lilies, again greatly reduced to fit on the tiny card. Inside are strips of card decorated with chalk and gold, with Bible verses on them, and some cut out and applied flowers from some decorative paper I have.

My friend will have to look hard for this "Shalom" - a butterfly has landed on it! The inside has a seven-flower popup, but I made the flowers out of card rather than paper, which has made them a bit stiff, so it doesn't open very easily, hence my fingers holding it! Card would be fine for a larger card, but for such a small one, if I did it again, I'd use paper.

I did quite a bit of the text on the computer first - on my desktop publishing software, printing out a sheet of card with several frames containing text with different fonts and styles, measuring each frame carefully so that it was the right size for the project, and then cut them out and embellished them. I do this quite a lot with my cards - you get lovely results with the fonts, and I quite often emboss them with gold, too.

Work still to do: The lid, and some panels on the outside of the outer box, to strengthen it and also for decoration. I've found a marvellous Youtube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbGqao5Gcw - giving instructions on how to use a Cuttlebug embossing folder for the background, and a Spellbinders Nestability die to make a plain oval with an embossed surround in the centre - it's quite complicated and has to go through the Cuttlebug machine several times to complete it, but it's exactly the effect I want, so I'm longing to try it. I can't do the panels until I've completed the lid, though, as I won't know how far down the sides of the lid will come. More pictures to follow!

We are hoping to see my friend on Thursday, to take her out for a meal for a belated celebration of "our" birthday, and I shall give it to her then - always assuming, of course, that I finish it in time!!