Romania–People and Animals

Following on from my first post on Romania, much of Romania is agricultural, and certainly 10 years ago when I visited, many of the practices and techniques seemed old-fashioned to western eyes. We have a saying, “In Western Europe, rich people own horses. In Eastern Europe, poor people own horses.” We saw lots of evidence of horses hard at work – horse-drawn wagons are common on rural roads. This is an example of an old wagon which we saw at the Sibiu Village Museum, which is a large area of countryside onto which ancient buildings and examples of rural industry have been transplanted from all over the country.

There is a modern take on these, though – these days they use old car wheels instead of wagon wheels!

This photo was taken in the charmingly faded and dilapidated town of Cisnadie, which is populated mostly by German speakers – it was curious being greeted with a “guten tag” from an old lady leaning over her garden wall! I will be showing some more pictures of Cisnadie in a later post because I was quite bowled over by the lovely worn, pastel shades I saw everywhere. This is the normal one-horse wagon you see everywhere. You also see the two-horse variety, this one in Maramures County up in the north, near the Ukrainian border:

We saw this two-horse wagon returning home laden, in a village in Maramures County – again, I shall be posting about Maramures in more detail because the wooden buildings and carved gates are like nothing I’ve ever seen before or since!

When we were in Bucovina County, also adjoining the Ukrainian border, there was a distinctly Russian flavour to the houses, and the wagons! I was surprised to see the Russian troika-style harness with the hoop over the horse’s withers – these wagons were very prevalent in Bucovina, but not in neighbouring Maramures.

During the Communist era, there were collective farms, and we saw a few surviving ones, but nowadays, old-fashioned peasant farming has returned, with small farms, often at subsistence level. There is still a lot of poverty in the country. Romania is incredibly rich as far as the variety of its agriculture and minerals are concerned, but after such a long period of appallingly bad management, they’ve a lot of catching up to do.

Travelling near the Prislop Pass in the Carpathian Mountains, we saw some village people who obviously couldn’t afford a horse wagon!

We saw shepherds in the roads, herding their sheep, often wearing the traditional sheepskin jacket. These shepherds spend all their time with the sheep, and come to know them intimately, and sing and pipe to them; the theory is that if the shepherd dresses in sheepskin, the sheep will think he is a sheep too!

These chickens were happily scratching around in the grass verge beside the road in a northern village near the Prislop Pass:

and we came across this farmer taking his cow out for a walk, leading her with a piece of string! Here, they had sat down for a rest and a quick look at the paper.

On the day we drove up through the Carpathians, my hubby chose a short-cut route, a minor road which looked like a straight line running due north on the map. However, it was anything but straight – it twisted and turned as it climbed ever higher – one of Romania’s famous “serpentina” roads – all un-made-up, and we generated a huge cloud of dust behind us as we skittered across the loose stones! It was a hair-raising experience but one not to be missed, as each turn of the road revealed even more stunning views of the mountains. I was not quick enough off the mark with my camera at one point. Out of the blue, a horse and rider came galloping towards us and was gone in a flash – the man looked like a Cossack with a large moustache and rather a flamboyant hat! It was like something out of the movies.

We stayed for a few days with some friends – a large family, who gave us a simply wonderful time. They lived in Cluj. Here we are sitting down for breakfast – the usual spread of wonderful country food – fresh fruit and veg, home-made pancakes… You can see my hubby’s hands clapping in the bottom right of the picture!!

One day they took us up into the mountains, to Beles, where they had a cabin that they had built with their own hands. We carried watermelons that we’d bought on the roadside:

and ate them in the open air outside the cabin. (You can see Humphrey, my little platypus, sitting in my hubby’s blue bag.)

Everywhere we went, people were so delighted to have us with them, and were so friendly and hospitable. This couple took us to see her elderly parents who lived in a village not far from Cluj – although they were very old, they still had a large patch of land and grew everything under the sun, and kept pigs and chickens too! People had to learn to be self-sufficient during the Ceausescu years or they would have starved to death. It was easier for people living in the country than for city-dwellers.

Finally, some pictures of the wedding. This took place in two stages, the first in Baia Mare (the home of the groom’s parents) and involved the civil ceremony, a short church service for the blessing of the rings, and a feast, and the second a week later in Focsani, the bride’s parents’ home, and included the service in the Romanian Orthodox Church, and another feast!

This picture shows people gathering in Baia Mare church for the blessing of the rings, and gives an indication of a typical Romanian church interior, with all the wall paintings.

This picture shows the couple after the exchange of marriage vows in Focsani church a week later, having been crowned, in the tradition of the Orthodox Church.

Finally, some Romanian children. At the beginning of our visit, we stayed at the home for orphaned street girls in Bucharest in which my hubby took a special interest.

Some of the children are so damaged from lack of love in the appalling orphanages which so shocked the world after the fall of Ceausescu, that they will never be able to function independently and will always need care. Much damage is also caused by the horrific street living, keeping warm in the sewers and sniffing glue, and often progressing to other drugs, and alcohol. Others have grown in responsibility and maturity, first being given tasks around the home complex, and then finding work outside, and many go on to live normal, happy, independent lives. One of the girls went to America and became a lawyer!

Finally, a sweet little girl called Iulia, whom we met in the Cathedral of Baia Mare, which was under construction (I will be posting some photos of that, in the buildings and architecture post).

So, that’s a sample of the people and animals living and working in Romania, and some of their traditions.

Romania

Not having been very active in Blogland recently, and not having anything of great interest to share because my whole ARTHaven is packed up, I thought I’d go back in time and share something a bit different with you.

For many years, my hubby has been involved in charity work in Romania, and during that time he made many good and lasting friendships. In 2003, the son of one of them got married, and we were invited to the wedding, so of course we combined this with a fortnight’s holiday. It was my first visit, and nothing prepared me for the beauty of the country or the generosity and warmth of the people – they had all suffered terrible privations during the Ceausescu era and many were still struggling financially but they welcomed us with open arms, and opened their homes and hearts to us.

We went at an extraordinary time – it was several years since the revolution, and the country had had some time to pick itself up by its bootstraps and was beginning to repair the infrastructure. It was a time of a great building boom – particularly of churches, after a long period when the Orthodox Church was barely tolerated, and we were privileged to see how they constructed these buildings, and decorated them – so unlike our building styles here in the UK.

As you can imagine, I took loads of photos – over 600 to be exact! It is a country hugely rich in cultural heritage, and their wooden buildings and brightly coloured textiles were crying out to be photographed! I was particularly interested in all the small details, so my camera was clicking almost constantly.

When we came home, I transferred all these photos onto discs, and put them away. They did surface a couple of years ago, and I thought, “I simply must get those onto the computer and uploaded to my Photobucket album” but at that point the discs completely vanished! Recently I’ve been turning the place upside down in an attempt to find them, and when I packed up my ARTHaven ready for our house move, I was sure they would turn up, but they didn’t. Yesterday I was clearing some stuff dumped in the dining room while packing boxes, and I found them! I am so delighted. I have now transferred them and uploaded them all, and they can be seen here if you are prepared to dip into over 600 photos!!

Rather than give you a blow-by-blow account of our trip, what I propose to do over the next few blog posts is share a selection of these photos, following a theme in each case, to give you a flavour of this wonderful country we were so privileged to visit, 10 years ago! To begin with, here are some photos of the stunning landscapes we encountered.

After spending a couple of days in Bucharest, we drove to Sibiu. This is a river scene beside the road.

We went in September/October, and everywhere there were fields of sunflowers – all getting themselves ready for harvesting. I stood underneath this one and felt as if I could have a shower of sunflower oil from its massive “shower head”!

Staying with friends in a cabin in the mountains near Horea, we were surrounded by this:

We loved the stooks and haystacks they made, over a wooden support. They were everywhere in the fields, and we called them “dumbies”!

Sunflowers on the roadside as we drove from Cluj towards Baia Mare:

Beautiful Mogosa Lake:

A picnic spot in Maramures County:

The dam at Bicaz Lake:

This gives a taste of the landscape and countryside. It’s been such fun looking at these long lost photos once again – I am so glad they have turned up! (Nothing like a house move for finding lost things, is there.)

Watch this space for more. You’re in for a treat.

Thai Takeaway Zentangle Again, and More House Move News

Zentangle Art

In my last post, I described how I decorated the front of a most attractive Thai takeaway pack we’d had. I have now decorated the back of the box.

Again, you can see my own tangle pattern, Spawn (approximately in the centre of the design). I have also used Meander and Nzeppel as fills, and Pokeleaf, Jellyroll, and again, Planateen for the oriental roof, amongst other patterns. Again I have used Jetties to fill the spoon, and this time added a little steam!

Here are some detailed shots. On the first one, you can see Spawn and Meander clearly.

This has been a fun project to do. After completing the front, I contacted the manufacturer of the food, called simply “COOK” (www.cookfood.net) and they were kind enough to say they would like to put it in their weekly staff newsletter! They said how pleased they were that their packaging had inspired my art.

House Move

One brief bit of news – yesterday the sale of my parents’ house was completed! We are delighted that Phase 1 has now been achieved. We are still waiting to hear from the solicitor that a date has been set for exchange of contracts on our purchase, and as yet no completion date has been set – it should have been 17th May but now looks likely to be early June. Nothing for us to do except contain ourselves in patience for a little longer, I’m afraid! Meanwhile, work continues on the home front, with box packing etc. My hubby has been busy dealing with the paperwork associated with the transfer, cancelling services and insurance etc. etc. As we cross each task off the list, it’s one less thing to do, and we are gradually making steady progress in the right direction.

Thai Takeaway Zentangle, and an Update on our House Move

Yes, it’s me back again, at long last! I have really missed going on my blog because I’ve been so busy with the house move, and thought it was high time I posted again.

Zentangle Art

Now that my ARTHaven is all packed up, I am very limited in what I can do creatively, but I have my Zentangle album to work on – I have done quite a lot of designs since I last posted on that subject, and need to get them scanned and uploaded so I can share them with you. However, I’ve got a piece of Zentangle art that I’d like to share. Several weeks ago my hubby went on a trip, and brought back some rather posh Thai takeaway food. The packs were so lovely that I thought they would be nice to embellish with Zentangle art – they have been sitting on my table since then, and last night I thought I’d have a go and see what I’d come up with.

Here is the front of the box as it was:

It is printed in purple on buff coloured cardboard, with designs of chopsticks and oriental spoons. The back of the box is decorated similarly, but so far I haven’t decorated this.

I began by outlining the shapes I wanted to fill, and I drew a string in pencil to indicate different areas to fill. Here is the front of the box with the completed decoration, coloured with my Inktense pencils. I kept the palette somewhat limited, to complement the existing purple.

One of my favourite tangles, Planateen, I used to create an oriental tiled roof. I also included my own patterns, Y-Ful Power (in purple, on the left), and Spawn (to the right of the lower spoon). I filled the two spoons with Jetties and Meander.

Here are a couple of detailed shots of the box.

I hope I have achieved a nice oriental feel to complement the design already on the box. Once I get my new ARTHaven running, and have access to all my stuff again, I am thinking of putting some acetate behind the aperture in the box, possibly coloured with alcohol inks to complement the design. I am also going to decorate the back, and the second box with a different design.

These boxes were just too nice to throw away!

House Move

It’s so long since I’ve been on here that I need to update you all with news of our house move. We have now exchanged contracts on my parents’ house, and the completion of the sale is set for next Thursday, 9th May. Mum has gone up to Dorset to stay with my sister until the new house is ready for us to move in.

We haven’t exchanged contracts on the purchase yet, because the solicitor acting for the vendor seems to be dragging her feet. We have been informed that our proposed completion date of 17th May (with our builder coming in on 20th May) is now impossible, and will be at least a fortnight later. This is most annoying, because the last thing I wanted was to cause a delay in our builder’s schedule – he is just finishing a very large job, and taking a fortnight’s holiday, after which he would have been free to start on ours. I was afraid that any delay would mean he would take on other work, as we could hardly expect him to hang around waiting for us, but when I spoke to him, he immediately put my mind at rest and said that no way would he take on another large job, as ours was next on the list; however, he was glad of a bit of a breather, and it would give him a chance to catch up on a few smaller jobs, and to work on his own place. This is a great relief! He says our work will take about 8 weeks, so I don’t anticipate our being in before the beginning of August at the earliest.

My whole ARTHaven is packed up in banana boxes waiting for our move. I am now positively itching to get into the new house and have my new room, and get all my stuff unpacked and sorted, and all the fun I am going to have planning my new creative space! I shall be taking lots of photos of before, during and after, and also of the rest of the building work.

We have our kitchen CAD drawings now, from Howden’s kitchens. We have chosen Burford Light Oak, which is a lovely plain and clean-looking design, nice and light, with Alaska White Honed worktops, and simple steel bar handles. All the cupboards and drawers will be soft-closing. This is what it is going to look like. The first picture shows the door from the hall on the left, with the fridge-freezer and a full-height unit with wall units above, and LEDs shining down. Plenty of storage space here.

Moving clockwise around the room, we have the door into the utility room and the reduced-height units which I can sit at, using my wheelchair. For the past couple of years I have found it impossible to cook in our normal kitchen, even with my perching stool – I cannot stand for more than a few minutes without severe discomfort, and sitting on the perching stool, I can’t get my legs under the worktop, and I end up with pain in my legs, back and arms. As a result of this, my hubby has been doing all the cooking lately, and while he has done extremely well, he is also working full-time and we’ve been existing on a lot of ready meals and takeaways, and we’ve both put on quite a bit of weight. With an adapted kitchen I am looking forward very much to cooking again. Cooking is something I enjoy greatly, being a creative activity, and to be able to do it in as much comfort as I did when I was able-bodied will be a great joy! It will also be nice to be more in control of what we eat, and to have more variety.

In this picture you can see the sink in the reduced-height unit, with space for my legs underneath. We are having a 1.5 bowl and a tap with a hose, and to the right of the sink, mounted on the work surface, will be the Quooker boiling water tap which I bought a few months ago from Ebay. The cupboard under the drawer will not be installed in the actual kitchen, as I need to be able to sit at the worktop to the right of the sink, and I am hoping there will be some storage space to the right of this, under the extended worktop to the right. I have also asked for a light under the wall unit, and further LEDs in the ceiling over the window, and I am hoping we will also have loads of power points! We all have so many gadgets and machines these days…

Moving on around the room, in the corner is the first of two alcoves, which I have decided to leave without units. The kitchen designer’s original drawing had a tall unit here, and also one to the immediate left of the oven tower, but to my mind this gave the kitchen a cluttered look, so I asked that they be omitted. My microwave will fit in this alcove. To the right is the reduced-height ceramic hob. I had thought of getting the latest induction hob, but after researching online how these work, discovered that because they work by inducing a magnetic field, only my modern steel pans would work on it, and I do need to be able to use my old aluminium ones too, especially my heavy-based preserving pan, so I’ve opted for a normal ceramic hob. Over this is a chimney extractor with glass hood, and to the right is a tower unit incorporating a double fan oven with storage over and under. To the right, in the second alcove, is an existing wooden cupboard which we think has probably been there since the house was built in 1925, and I want to retain this as it will be most useful as my larder, and it seems a shame to remove all of the original features!

The final picture shows the remaining wall, where we will have our pine table from our present kitchen (a bit larger than the one illustrated) with two glass-fronted units above, with an open-fronted shelf unit between where I shall keep my recipe books. We have some lovely oak dining chairs which my parents had in their first home just after the War, original Utility design, and excellent quality – when we first moved to where we live now, we had these restored and the dark varnish stripped to reveal the natural oak, and we’ll keep a couple of these at the table in the kitchen, bringing in the others as needed if we have visitors. To the right of the table you can see the door into the hall. This completes the virtual tour of our proposed new kitchen! As the work progresses, I will be posting photos of before, during and after. It will be interesting to compare back to these CAD drawings. We are not going for the blue walls! I am thinking of a pale olive green, as one of the illustrations in the Howden’s catalogue had our units with this, and it looked lovely.

As soon as we have exchanged contracts, our builder will be able to start ordering the things he needs. The kitchen designer said most of what we want is in stock, so there shouldn’t be any delay.

My ARTHaven will be made up of cheap white kitchen unit carcases without plinths, with a continuous work surface connecting them, and open-fronted wall units above, so that I can have different work zones for different tasks, with storage below and above. I will be posting more about this in the future, and also about the building work adapting the currently unsuitable utility room and annexe kitchen, and my en-suite bathroom. The roof also has to be done, which is a whole adventure in itself! It’s all soooo exciting! I just can’t wait to get in now.

We’ve got less than a week to finish sorting Mum’s house before the sale is completed next week. She went up to my sister’s in Dorset a week ago, and this makes it easier for us to get on. The removal men came on Thursday and cleared the house – some to go for house clearance and the rest going into store until we are ready to move to the new house. Today we went over and blitzed the kitchen (me mostly) and my hubby mowed the lawn and did a few odd jobs. I had no idea Mum’s kitchen had got so dirty, and I wanted to leave it in a good state so that the new owners can simply unpack their stuff straight into the cupboards without the worry of having to clean up first. Now that the house is completely empty it’s a lot easier, and easier still now that Mum is away and we can get on without her getting under our feet!! I was hoping that today would be the only day I’d have to work there, but the kitchen took so much longer than I thought that I am going to have to go back to have a go at the bathroom, and make sure the rest is all OK. On our way home, we called in to see Dad in the residential home, happy in his own confused little world, and he was very pleased to see us. With everything that’s been going on, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to see him, although my hubby calls in quite regularly when he is passing.

After next Thursday, we can concentrate on packing up the rest of the stuff here. There’s still a great deal to do, but I have made major inroads into most of the rooms now, and recently I’ve been tackling our kitchen cupboards (horrendous! Don’t ask…) and packing up stuff we don’t use every day. What a job it all is, and how much stuff one accumulates over the years!

I hope to be posting regularly once we have completed the purchase of the new house, as my hubby says we will be going over quite often, taking stuff with us, and I shall take lots of photos of everything that’s going on. I am now super excited!!!

Waves Mechanical Pop-up Card–Review and Template

On 8th May 2011 I uploaded the following post about the mechanical/pop-up card I made for my hubby. I have recently been contacted by Kent of http://paperartmaster.com/ which is a review site for all things paper-folding, pop up etc. He has done a review of this card, and has also gone to a lot of trouble to design a .pdf template that can be downloaded, printed and cut out in order to construct a simplified version of my design. It obviously has a flatter, more computer-generated look than my original hand-painted artwork, but as I said to him in a recent email, if this means that someone actually makes my design rather than passing over it as being too complex, then I am well pleased! The template could be printed out on plain white paper and inked and hand-painted as I did on my original, if anyone wanted a more hand-done effect.

I have decided to republish my original post here in its entirety, to keep things simple, and to bring things up to date. Obviously since I first posted it, I am now using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine in preference to the Cricut, and I am now designing cut files in Inkscape rather than Serif DrawPlus.

I have not made the template up, and neither have I seen a video of Kent’s finished result to see how well the mechanism works, but thought I would post details here for your information.

Kent has a download link for the template on his review, but he has given me permission to upload the template to my Skydrive for free download, if you prefer.

Have fun with it!

Original blog post, first published 8th May 2011:

I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been terribly busy with all my projects, but I can now report on a big project that’s taken all my time recently.

It’s been on my mind for some time to make a mechanical card, with a lever to make a mechanism work, which causes movement in the card. I was never very good at physics at school and used to find it hard to grasp the principle of levers and gears, but was determined to give it a try!

I am grateful to Carol of the Extreme Cards and Papercrafting blog: http://extremecards.blogspot.com/ for all the help she gave me when I first started thinking about this card, and contacted her for advice. She is very experienced with all sorts of pop-ups, and 3-D projects etc. and her brain works a lot better than mine when it comes to working out how to actually do it!

It may be the first mechanical card I’ve done, but not the first pop-up.

Last year, much to the consternation of his whole family, my hubby was foolish enough to go out on the River Dart on his own in his little boat – this river has a reputation for being treacherous – it’s fast flowing with dangerous currents, and most years somebody comes to grief in it. While out on his own, he fell in, and he was fortunate that he was able to get out before he was swept away. I was very, very glad to get my soggy and extremely cold hubby back that day – we were off to get my new wheelchair and it took a pint of beer and a sizzling steak in a pub on our way to Exeter to put the roses back into his cheeks and warm him up! He was very fed up because he lost one of his wellies in the river and we have subsequently joked that it’s probably half way to America by now! (My mum and dad gave him a new pair for Christmas!)

I had it in mind to make a card to commemorate this momentous event, and this is the result.

The front of the card has two static waves and two moving ones. These moving waves, and the boat, are attached to a disc concealed underneath, and the disc has a tab which projects through a slit at the side of the card, which when moved up and down, rotates the disc, moving the arms attached to the waves and the boat, causing them to rise and fall.

I drew the shapes in Serif DrawPlus and converted them to svg files in order to cut them on my Cricut machine using Make The Cut software. These have now all been uploaded to my Skydrive (see details on the right-hand side of my blog) and can be freely downloaded if anyone wants to give this project a try.  Here are the images of the cut files I created:

This is the back piece of the mechanism, which incorporates the back static wave.

This is the front piece, the front static wave, and also the part where I printed the text and the fish images. Sorry it’s a bit faint, but I think you can see the shape of the waves. There’s a tab on the left hand side which folds round the back of the mechanism.

This is the upper moving wave, incorporating the arm which attaches to the disc and makes the wave move as you work the tab at the side of the card.

This is the lower moving wave, complete with its arm. You will notice that the second wave from the left is different from the rest. This is because on the mock-up, with all the waves the same, this one tended to catch on the boat when the mechanism was working.

This is the boat piece, complete with its arm for attaching to the disc.

The text, and the shapes of the fish on the front of the card, were printed on the computer, and then I did a considerable amount of inking using Tim Holtz Distress Inks, mostly in Faded Jeans, and the darker parts in Chipped Sapphire.

I recently acquired some Ink Dusters from Inkylicious – these are like old-fashioned shaving brushes on sticks, with a brush on each end. You get 3 in the set, so you end up with 6 brushes, and you can use a different one for each colour, i.e. one brush for the blues, one for yellows, etc. etc. I am very, very impressed with them. Holding the brush like a pen or paintbrush is a lot more natural than holding a foam applicator, and it’s a lot less tiring. Also, because the brushes are so gentle, you can build up the colour in a very controlled way, and you can ink the edges of quite thin paper without the danger of it snagging, as so often happens with foam applicators.

 

Looking on Youtube, I couldn’t find any videos about them, so as soon as I get time, I intend to do one, to show how lovely they are for masking, stencils, working with resists, colour blending etc. etc.

After inking, I accented the waves, and the ripples surrounding the pop-up, with silver stickles.

There’s also quite a bit of painting on this card, but you could cut out the shapes of the hills, sun and clouds if you wanted. The paint I used was the fluid acrylic paint I bought when I was painting Wonderwoman’s poppies mirror – they go on beautifully smoothly and are a real pleasure to use.

This detail of the waves shows the painting on the boat and its occupant, and a touch of white acrylic paint and silver Stickles highlighting the surface of each wave, and also the hills in the background. You will see the colour variation in the painting; this was done by loading either side of a flat brush with different shades, to achieve shading with a single stroke of the brush. These paints lend themselves particularly well to this technique. I used it on Wonderwoman’s poppies mirror too.

This is a detail of the sky. I painted the sun and the clouds with the same acrylic paint. I had considerable difficulty with the clouds, because the technique I usually use is a “wet on wet” technique which allows for very subtle blending, resulting in lovely fluffy clouds. In this case, I was painting onto very dry card which was also quite absorbent, and also the paint dried extremely quickly, so it was a while before I achieved results anywhere near satisfactory!

Moving on to the inside of the card: the pop-up took quite a lot of thought. Originally I thought of doing a V-shaped pop-up with the splash coming upwards, but I didn’t like the mock-up I did. I then thought of those flower pop-ups which open up as you open the card out flat, and thought I could probably adapt one of those.

I found an excellent lotus flower pop-up template online, designed by a Russian lady: http://ru-pop-up.livejournal.com/30649.html – it had been written up on an English language website: http://foldingtrees.com/2009/07/tutorial-review-lotus-blossom-card/ and I thought it would do nicely (as well as being a good one to try out in its original form).

Here is a picture of the svgs of the two pop-up pieces:

I printed out the pdf of the lotus template, and traced around the edges, adapting them to resemble splashing water rather than flower petals. I didn’t use the stamen pieces in the end, but had the wellie instead – cut from 2 pieces of black card from the cut file I made, and glued either side of a small strip of acetate which was threaded through one of the stamen holes in the base piece and glued behind once the pop-up was complete.

Inking the splash pieces gave them a dimensional feel. I also inked the concentric rings on the back piece that I’d printed on the computer, and finally added some silver Stickles for a bit of sparkle and a more realistic watery effect.

Like the text on the front of the card, the text over the pop-up was also done on Serif DrawPlus.

Constructing the card, because I’d made a few mistakes and had to make a frame, it came out quite a bit bigger than I’d intended, and I also wasted a fair bit of card. As a result, I was nearly at the end of my supply of pale blue cardstock, so I had to fudge the middle a bit, but I don’t think it matters too much.

The front of the card was many layers thick, with all the mechanism, and the layers of waves etc., and the back of the card was a single sheet, making it a bit front-heavy, so I designed and printed a back piece with a birthday greeting for my hubby, and glued it on, which added some stability.

This has been a quite ambitious project, but well worth all the effort – I’ve learned a lot, and also had a tremendous amount of fun! Before I started it, I finally managed to get the video camera set up on my marvellous new camera rig (hoping to do a video about that soon) so I have been able to film myself making the whole project. To keep the clips down to a reasonable length, it has ended up in seven parts, which I have embedded below, or you can watch them on Youtube. I hope you enjoy them.

Part 1: Introduction and Basic Construction, showing the first mock-ups.

Part 2: Inking and painting the waves.

Part 3: Constructing the mechanism to make the waves and boat move.

Part 4: Painting the boat and assembling the mechanism.

Part 5: Painting the hills and the sky onto the background piece.

Part 6: Beginning the pop-up inside the card. In this clip, I am inking the background piece, using the mock-up piece as a mask, cutting it smaller as I go, to give a dimensional effect to the ripples surrounding the water spash.

Part 7: The final part, in which I assemble and attach the water splash pop-up into the centre of the card.

It’s my hubby’s birthday on 19th May, so I’ll let you know what he thinks of my efforts!

WOYWW 197

(For an explanation of what “WOYWW” is, click on the logo in my sidebar and visit our hostess Julia’s blog, the Stamping Ground, and join in the fun!)

Well, long-time-no-appear, and I thought it would be good to pop in once more and at least show my face (metaphorically), just so you don’t all forget me.

Last time I didn’t have a photo of a messy or tidy workdesk to show you, but I thought this time I’d be brave and share some photos of what my poor old ARTHaven is looking like at the moment!! It’s been some weeks now since I’ve been able to do anything creative in there, and the desk has now reverted to its original office identity as nearly all my creative stuff has been packed away.

Manhattan Island Skyscrapers:

My desk:

What a mess! Last night I dumped a whole lot of frames and canvases on it.

Where my big shelving unit used to be:

I have given most of it away, but you can just see the remaining uprights of the single section in the far right of the picture. You can see my Ikea rails in the foreground, and the disassembled wire cube storage above.

The other corner of the room:

One of those boxes has got all the stuff for making Dad’s album in it. The rest of the stuff is waiting to be packed up properly, and I’ve got 2 tall narrow boxes with all my embroidery and batik frames, bits of dowelling, etc. etc. in them, and they will go as they are. There’s also a large roll of butcher paper from our last move, which I use for drafting out designs on.

Although this looks an awful lot of stuff packed away, there are also boxes of books mixed up in it, and several boxes of odd bits and pieces brought home from Mum’s as we continue our massive clear-out there.

We’ve been working hard over at Mum’s, with both my sister and my cousin (who has been over once, and is coming again on Sunday), clearing loads of stuff and separating it into bin/burn, house clearance, lower-grade auction, decent auction, stuff that us girls want, and stuff Mum wants to keep. The time is fast approaching for the decent stuff to be taken by the auctioneer, and then the stuff Mum wants to keep can go into storage, and Mum herself will go into storage with my sister till the new house is ready!!

Powers of attorney have now been granted for Mum and Dad so my hubby can now sell Dad’s car, and also there will be no delay in exchanging contracts on the house sale/purchase. The sale is going ahead apace, with (so far) no problems, but we’ve had some problems with the purchase of the new place as our surveyor turned up a major problem with the roof – the whole thing has to be replaced at vast expense. However, a settlement has been reached, the job will be done, and we are still going ahead, but it may take a little longer than the sale of my parents’ place. As the completion dates do not need to be linked, this is not a problem, as we are permitted to stay in our own house till May 2014.

Recently we went over to Mum’s when my sister was there, and had a massive clear-out of Dad’s workshop, and despite the pouring rain, my hubby got a vast bonfire going (he managed to singe the neighbour’s fence!!) – it was a cosmic battle of the elements between fire and water, with the flames leaping up into the sheets of rain under a dark and threatening sky, with my hubby dancing around it like a demented gorilla, and I am happy to say that fire won in the end! All very dramatic. My hubby’s back is not so good again, and we’ve all told him off for overdoing things.

I think I am being more sensible in that department. Packing two or three boxes a day (most days – some days I don’t manage to do any) I have made great headway, and once my ARTHaven is packed up, I can tackle the rest of the house. I’ve already made good progress in several of the rooms, and now that a friend of my hubby’s has removed a load of rubbish out of the box room and taken it to the recycling centre in his big trailer, I can sort through the rest of the stuff in there, and use the space to store some of the filled boxes till the actual removal.

Lots to do still, but we are certainly making progress.

Dad had another episode of extreme confusion recently, and was back in hospital for a couple of days, but it appears he didn’t have another infection. We think it was brought on by an unfortunate cocktail of drugs, but these have been changed, and when he came back to the residential home, he was like a new man, back to the best he’s been since he’s been there. My hubby saw him this afternoon and reported that his catheter has now been removed, which is extremely good news, as that particular source of infection has now gone. They reckon his kidneys are now much better. He is still not able to live independently, and never will be, but at least we can have a fairly sensible conversation, even if he does keep coming back to the same thing. He continues to be happily settled there and not asking to come home; he is being very well cared for and always looks smart and clean, with his hair washed and trimmed, so we are very pleased. Mum has been finding all the sorting at her house rather stressful (she keeps saying “there’s such a lot to do!” although she doesn’t have to do any of it!) and I think the uncertainty (as she sees it) of her future is getting to her a bit, but we keep reassuring her that everything is going fine, and soon she will never have to be on her own again. She’s just feeling vulnerable, and this can come over in a lot of complaining and being difficult, but I am quite sure that once she’s settled, she will be fine, and we will be able to enjoy our time together.

I won’t have time to visit many of you on the WOYWW circuit, but just wanted to let you know that I am still in the land of the living!