Final Two Lavender Sachet Boxes

Warning: LOTS of pictures!

Today I had a lovely morning meeting up with my two friends whom I met while we were all in hospital together. We were all very pleasantly surprised to see how well we each looked! Only one of them is undergoing chemo as I am – the other’s cancer was sufficiently confined for her not to need it. The one who is having chemo has the same oncologist as me, and she has her treatments on the Mondays following my Fridays; we are receiving the same infusion and are at the same stage on our journey, so we can compare notes and support each other along the way. Like me, she has had her dose reduced, and is feeling the benefit of that. We had such a lovely chat and laugh together over a cup of coffee, and I gave them the little gifts I had made for them.

I had two lavender sachets remaining from when I made them for my fellow chemo-ites on the day unit, and decided they would be for my two friends, so I needed to make little boxes for them. I am so pleased to be feeling so much better this week, and yesterday I spent the evening in my ARTHaven working on the two boxes, and managed to complete them in time.

Both are made from watercolour paper which is great when you are likely to be using a lot of water, because it is designed to take this level of punishment without disintegrating. It is also heavy enough to make a nice sturdy little box. For both, I used clear embossing as a resist, and different Distress Inks, with a combination of blending with Inkylicious Ink Dusters, blending pads, and smooshing with water, to give a nice random effect.

The Green One

I smooshed the outside and inside of the box using Evergreen Bough distress ink on my non-stick craft sheet, spritzed with water, and pulling the piece through the ink to get a good random effect, drying in between and repeating until I got the result I wanted.

Then I heat-embossed the pieces, using a stamp from my new Chocolate Baroque set called “Harlequin Fragments” using clear embossing powder. I did not put the stamp on an acrylic block but used it unmounted because I didn’t mind it having a less defined look. I stamped once on each of the four flaps.

To bring out the resist, I inked the piece using Pine Needles distress ink.

For the inside, I repeated the process, but this time used silver embossing powder. I chose a stamp from my Floral Doodle Dallions set by Stamp attack for a motif for the centre of the box.

The final step was to distress the edges of the inside and outside of the box, using Forest Moss distress ink and a blending pad. This added a slightly yellower green to the mix because it was too blue and didn’t match the lavender sachet so well.

The finished green box.

The green sachet.

The Blue One

I began by covering the entire surface of the outside with Tumbled Glass distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

The stamps for this were from the Stampin’ Up Papillon Potpourri set. I chose a larger and a smaller butterfly, and again, stamped with Versamark and clear-embossed the images to create a resist. I chose another stamp from the Floral Doodle Dallions set for the centre.

The next colour of ink to be added, again with the Inkylicious Ink Duster, was Salty Ocean.

The final colour was Faded Jeans.

Once this was done, I wasn’t entirely happy with the result, which looked a little flat and boring, so I decided to have some fun with it, and experiment with coarse sea salt. I spritzed the surface well with water until it was very wet, and sprinkled the coarse grains of salt randomly over the surface and left it to stand for a few minutes.

Then I dried it gently with my heat gun, holding it well back so as not to re-melt the embossing, and so that the piece did not curl up and dislodge all the salt grains. I spritzed it again, and repeated the process. This was the result. A lot more interesting, I think you will agree.

For the inside, I again began with Tumbled Glass distress ink, covering the entire surface but not going for too even an effect.

This was followed by patches of Salty Ocean distress ink.

Finally, Faded Jeans. Again, keeping it fairly blotchy.

I then repeated the process with the sea salt.

You get gorgeous swirls and patterns with it, and darker spots around the place where the salt grain was.

To complete the inside of the box, I added some silver gilding flakes, being careful not to cover up all the patterns from the sea salt.

As a finishing touch, I went around the edges of both the inside and the outside of the box with a silver gel marker.

The finished blue box.

The blue sachet. On both sachets I have used little embellishments recycled from other things. In this case, the two little discs of abalone shell came from a cannibalised necklace I bought once at a village fete.

The Two Boxes, Complete

Both my friends were very thrilled with their little gift! For the one having chemo, I slipped one of my lavender chemo cards inside.

WOYWW 319

I’m feeling quite a bit better now, as the second week advances after chemo treatment #3, so I’ve been a bit more active on the creative front.

My desk today.

Annotated for your delectation and delight! You will be glad to hear that true to her cheapskate character, Shoshi has rescued some little twists of wool from the back of the settee – these obviously got down through the recliner mechanism to the floor since I completed my knitting project! Not one to throw anything away, however manky if it can still be used, these now sit in all their glory on my desk waiting to be cleaned up! You can see also that my paint water remains suspiciously clean.

Moving on, I have two lavender sachets remaining from that project, and as tomorrow I am seeing the two ladies I became friends with in hospital, I thought I would make up two more boxes to put these in. One of them will have the little chemo card inserted – she and I are neck-and-neck in our treatments, mine being every 3 weeks on Fridays and hers every three weeks the following Mondays (sad that the hospital is so badly organised that they couldn’t do us both together lol!!). The other one’s cancer was so well confined to her bowel that she didn’t need chemo (don’t I envy her!!).

You can see one of the box pieces waiting to be embellished. I am in the middle of sorting out which rubber stamps I want to use for this, and have got a selection out. The set on the right is a new Chocolate Baroque set that I haven’t used yet.

As always, there is stuff lurking around (usually carefully hidden out of shot!) waiting to be put away, and underneath the desk are a couple of Really Useful Boxes (RUBs) waiting for a home to be found for them, and the top one now contains various bits and pieces for art doll making.

Last week someone asked what I was using a screwdriver for! I was a bit mystified about this till I realised she must mean my Bosch hot glue gun which is a bit of a monster, I admit… It lives at the back of the desk on its charger.

Moving downstairs to Desk #2 (!! – my table in front of the recliner) I have got my doll making stuff out.

I downloaded a Tilda doll template from Pinterest last week, and sized it to what I thought would be suitable. It’s coming out quite small so I’ll probably redo it a bit larger, but I think it will be OK. You can see I’ve started stitching the pieces together. I know this would be a lot quicker on the machine but I am not able to sit in my studio for extended lengths of time yet and quite enjoy being in the zone with tiny back-stitching on the comfort of the recliner. On the left is a collection of cut out pieces of card comprising another angel template, this one a multi-layered felt one, inspired by an image I found on Pinterest. I’ve got a big bag of felt scraps and will cut it from these, and add some embroidery to embellish it. At the back of the table is the fabric I’m making the current Tilda doll from (the body is made from a beautiful old Egyptian cotton sheet which is so fine that I am having to use longer pins than my usual ones because they are slightly thinner, but they are still leaving marks which have to be smoothed out. I am using a fine Betweens needle to sew the pieces.

My tools and other bits and pieces are in a tray taken from one of my RUBs. Useful little compartments.

And now for those of you who haven’t visited me since the last WOYWW, I’ll put you out of your misery. Here is the “sneak peek”:

You can see the “funny stuff” as part of the embellishment. Here it is in all its glory.

It was part of some pot-pourri we had years ago and I saved it for art stuff. You can read all about it here. Nothing to do with angels!!

Finally, I thought you might like to see how the brainless knitting is coming along.

Progress is slow, but at least I’ve made some! It’s good to work on while having the chemo (till I start to feel too poorly to do it) and also if I feel up to doing something, but nothing too involved. In addition to this, this week I have revived Inkscape (free, open-source, very powerful vector drawing software) and have been designing some things to cut once I eventually get my Cougar cutting machine up and running again. (Long overdue…) I can do this on the computer with very little effort and it’s highly creative.

I am hoping to have the rest of this week, and all next week, feeling a lot better and managing to work on projects again. My angel project is moving ahead extremely slowly but I am still not putting pressure on myself to complete it by any given date. I’ll keep you posted.

Happy WOYWW everybody. I’m joining pretty late in the day so I hope you are all still there!

Edit – I have just signed up for WOYWW, only to read of the devastating news of the sudden death of Eliza, one of our regular members. It makes my last sentence take on a whole new meaning. I shall miss her posts, and the regular news of her beautiful cat Yoda who always made me smile week by week.

Anniversary Card for Marlene

Today is my friend Marlene’s wedding anniversary so I have made her and her hubby a card. I wrote this post on Wednesday but had to hold it in reserve until I knew she’d received it so I didn’t spoil it for her! This is the sneak peek on my previous post, and I can also reveal what the “funny stuff” is too!

This card is made from part of the masterboard I made recently with the gold embossed seahorses on it.

The layout of the card and its basic design were inspired by a gorgeous birthday card I received from my friend Shaz a couple of months ago – she had made a fabulous background using the new dragonfly stamps we both recently got, with a fresh green colour scheme, also using the water droplets stamp from Designs by Ryn which I have used in my masterboard. (I love this stamp!) She stuck the stamped strip onto the base card and ran a scored line down either side of it which really set it off, and placed her stamped sentiment on the bottom right of the card. I thought this was a really cool layout.

I cut my base card from two-thirds of a sheet of A4 white cardstock folded in half vertically. Before sticking down the strip of masterboard, I scored my lines from behind and then inked the base card with Peacock Feathers distress ink which exactly matched the colour of the masterboard. I like the way the scored lines pick up the colour more boldly.

These are my two sets of shell stamps that I used for the masterboard and for this card.

I stamped the seahorse to the right of the design using sepia archival ink.

Here is a detail of the embellishments on the card.

I lightly coloured a scrap of white cardstock with Tea Dye distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, and stamped several shells on it, using sepia archival ink. Using my glue pen I picked out the highlights on these shells and heat embossed them with gold. After fussy-cutting them out, I hand-embossed them from behind into a piece of fun foam, using a ball embossing tool, to give them a bit of dimension.

Now for the “funny stuff.” Despite what one or two people may have thought, this has nothing to do with angels! Years ago we were given some pot-pourri which used to be in a large bowl on our sitting room table. It consisted of quite large lumps of stuff (shell fragments, bark, pumice, wooden fish etc.) and once the smell had gone, I recycled some of it for other purposes, and included in it was this tangle of red dyed twiggy stuff which I thought was too good to throw away and could be used for embellishments.

I teased out a small quantity of this to represent either coral or red seaweed on my card.

Last Christmas my hubby bought me several small panettone loaves from Lidl. Each one came in a box with a little ribbon handle and I saved all these ribbons! (I do love recycling stuff to use in my projects.)

They are not very long, but ideal for embellishing once the plastic tags are cut off. I stuck this down around the masterboard strip with double sided tape, using it to anchor the funny stuff, and was delighted that the two colours in the ribbon co-ordinated so well with my card design. The sentiment was from the Memorable Moments set by Stampin’ Up, stamped onto a small oval die-cut from my stash that somebody had sent to me. I embellished the edge of this by rubbing it with my Versamark pad and gold heat-embossing it.

To cover the lump in the ribbon over the funny stuff, I stuck down the embossed shells using Pinflair gel glue.

Here is a digital montage of the card resting on the masterboard.

Happy Anniversary Marlene! I am glad you like your card!!

WOYWW 318

Not a lot going on on my workdesk at the moment. After my third chemo treatment last Friday, when they reduced the dose by 10%, I wasn’t feeling too bad at all over the weekend, and managed to complete a card I needed to make, but on Monday I started to feel progressively worse, and yesterday and today I haven’t managed to do a thing – feeling completely flattened, nauseous on and off (despite the meds for that), weird sensations in my hands and a horrible taste constantly in my mouth. Also I can’t keep awake and keep dropping off on the settee while I’m trying to watch DVDs. This is NOT FUN. I know I’ve got to get through it, and I will… but it’s getting a bit frustrating not being able to do things when I’m on fire to be creative at the moment! I can’t even draw or knit. At least I’ve been able to get some inspiration from Pinterest and Youtube etc. for my various projects once I’m able to do them again. After the next treatment, on 24th July, I will be half way through and that should make me feel a bit better about my progress, hopefully.

Anyway, I can show you my desk – it has been posed a bit because I can’t show you the card until it’s been sent off in a few days’ time so all you get is a sneak peek!

You’ll also have to wait and see what the “funny stuff” is and what’s under the masterboard! At least my paint water is clean. So it should be. It hasn’t been used. Duh.

Happy WOYWW everybody.

Practising Doll Faces and Completing Doll Body

Doing a bit more work on my angels project. Today I practised drawing doll faces according to the instructions of Patti Medaris Culea (links provided by Judy). Not as difficult as I thought, and working from right to left, I think I am gradually improving!

I used some coloured crayons and some pens. I worked on a strip of unbleached calico ironed onto a piece of freezer paper to give it a bit more stability.

I also completed the body of the large cloth angel.

I had awful trouble stuffing this – the polyester stuffing which I have had for many years is really not very good quality and it came out all lumpy, so I had to pull most of the stuffing out of the body and tease it out again and restart the process. This filling seems to do better with narrower pieces like arms and legs than it does with larger volumes, which work better if I don’t attempt to put too much stuffing in. I’m on the look out for something of better quality but so far my online researches haven’t come up with anything definite – if there’s anybody out there (UK) who can recommend a decent polyester filling I’d be grateful.

I also spent a bit of time in my ARTHaven this morning, tidying up, and putting all my Dylusions sprays, paints and Ranger mini-blending tools together into one box, after painting a dab of paint on the top of each handle so they are readily identifiable.

The effects of my third chemo treatment are definitely not as severe as those of the second. The reduced dose has definitely helped.

Third Chemo Treatment

Yesterday I had my third chemo treatment, and on the previous day (Thursday), I had my vampire and oncology appointments. Full details on my Cancer Diary page.

Unfortunately they experienced some problems getting blood from the port this time, but on the third attempt, with me lying flat, they were successful.

Then I had my oncology appointment and saw the registrar, and I told her what a bad time I had had following my second treatment three weeks previously. She said in view of this, they would reduce the dose by 10 percent. She also doubled the dose of anti-nausea medication.

I discovered that the total number of treatments would be only eight, as opposed to the nine or ten I’d been anticipating. I have worked out that the last one should be on 16th October, and not going on into November as I had feared. This means that after the next treatment, I will be half way through the course! This makes me feel a lot better about everything.

The treatment proceeded as before, and again, despite the lower dose, I started to feel the effects during the last hour of infusion, and by the time they had finished with the final flush, I was feeling quite poorly. It wasn’t as bad as last time in that I didn’t have to take to my bed on our return home, and I managed to eat a small supper.

The effects are quite severe but not as bad as last time. This morning I rested half the morning in bed, and when I got up I felt so much better that I was able to spend an hour or two in my studio and finish the card I’d been making from part of the masterboard I made a few days ago. Photos will follow once the recipient has her card.

Towards lunch time I suddenly caved in with exhaustion and feeling shaky and nauseous, so I came down and took an anti-sickness pill. After a very light lunch I felt a lot better. I have been resting on the recliner all afternoon watching TV and DVDs.

Generally speaking, I have already started feeling a lot better than immediately after the second treatment, so hopefully I shall have a much more productive three weeks this time, which makes me feel more upbeat!

I hardly made any progress on my angel project during the last period, and I am now hoping to be able to crack on with that. I ordered a DVD on cloth art doll making and that arrived today, and I am very excited – the dolls, and especially their faces, look extremely complicated to do, but the instructions on the video are so clear and taken step by step, that I see no difficulty in managing to do it! Here’s a link to her DVD introductory video on Youtube, and I am very grateful to my blogging buddy Judy in Australia for sending me various doll-making links, including introducing me to this wonderful lady who is such an artist and such an excellent teacher too.

Stamp Mounting and a Health Update

This afternoon I mounted some unmounted rubber stamps I’ve had for a while. I got these from Chocolate Baroque – 2 A4 sheets named “Harlequin Fragments” and “Lace Fragments.”

Chocolate Baroque stamps are gorgeous – I have a few different ones. It’s always worth checking for “broken biscuits” on their site. I’ve never come across this idea anywhere else but it’s brilliant. Sometimes when they manufacture a sheet of stamps, it comes out faulty, but maybe all but one, or most of the stamps on the sheet, are perfectly fine, so it would be silly to ditch the whole sheet. They cut out the OK ones and when they’ve got all the stamps that would be on a perfect sheet, they sell them as “broken biscuits” – perfect stamps making up a complete set, but just not all in one piece! They are going to be cut up anyway, so who cares if some of them are already separate? There’s a significant price reduction and well worth getting. Of course it’s unpredictable which sets will be available as a “broken biscuits” set but if you’re prepared to wait, the set you want may come up eventually. A great idea, for both the manufacturer (no waste) and the customer (good value)!

Today the EZ Mount Foam I ordered arrived. This is a foam rubber sheet with an extremely sticky surface on one side, and a cling-mount surface on the other. You peel back the backing sheet and arrange your unmounted stamps onto the sticky side and then cut them out. There’s another backing sheet protecting the cling-mount surface, and once you peel this off you’ve got your stamps mounted and ready for use with an acrylic block.

This is a job I loathe doing. Even with my Tim Holtz scissors that have non-stick blades, the scissors and your fingers get extremely sticky and it’s pretty hard work! I recently discovered a Youtube video on cutting them with a hot knife, so I gave this a try today. I didn’t do quite such a good job as on the video but it did make pretty short work of a horrible job, and it also made the most horrendous smell! Here’s the equipment I used.

I used a glass heat proof kitchen cutting mat. You can see the sheet of EZ Mount Foam, some adhesive remover wipes, Tim Holtz scissors and talcum powder, and my hot knife – this has interchangeable blades.

When I’d finished, I dipped the scissors in talcum powder and trimmed off the excess around the stamps, and cleaned up with an adhesive remover wipe. Great results all round.

Here are the two sets of stamps, cut out and mounted, and ready to use.

I was interested to read yesterday that it isn’t a good idea to store EZ Mount Foam mounted stamps on an acrylic sheet because there’s a chemical reaction that happens between these two surfaces and your stamps can end up permanently fused to the acrylic! Time to sort my stamp storage, I think! They ae perfectly fine loose in the bags like these ones. I keep the original packaging and/or leaflet so I know the name and manufacturer of my stamps, and they are hung on my little rail above my work desk. I got the split rings and the conference badge clips from Ebay, and used a piece of wooden dowel slotted through the ornamental shelf brackets to hang them from. It works brilliantly and my stamps take up very little room.

 

Health Update

This morning we went to the hospital for my pre-chemo bloods to be taken, and for my oncology appointment. I have to go to the hospital for this, rather than the surgery because extracting blood from a port requires special training that the surgery nurses have not had. This morning it was pretty horrendous because although they were able to insert the needle and flush the port-a-cath, the blood simply would not flow! On the third attempt she got a reasonable sample.

We then went down to Oncology and I saw Dr. Dyke, Dr. Lo’s registrar. I reported to her how poorly I have felt throughout the three weeks since my last treatment, with all the side effects being more severe and longer lasting than after my first treatment, and after consulting with Dr. Lo, she said they would reduce tomorrow’s dose by 10 percent. The amount is calculated on body weight but every individual is different and not everybody responds in the same way, and sometimes adjustments need to be made. I also asked if she knew exactly how many treatments I would require, because all I’d been told was that it would go on for six months, and I’d worked it out at 9 or 10, depending on when they stopped, and she said it would only be 8! I am very pleased indeed to hear this, because three weeks from tomorrow, I shall be half way through!! Yaaayyy! Full details on my Cancer Diary page.

WOYWW 317

Here is my workdesk for today. Yesterday was the first time I’d been near it to do anything creative for a while, because the aftermath of my 2nd chemo treatment have been horrendous and I’ve been feeling pooped for nearly 3 weeks! Just starting to feel a bit better in time for the next one, which I hope isn’t going to pole-axe me quite as badly. I go in on Thursday for bloods to be taken, and for my appointment with the oncologist, when I shall tell her how awful it’s been this time. She may want to adjust the dose a bit.

Anyway, to my desk!

Centre stage is the masterboard I made yesterday. Dumped on top of it, to the right, are the template pieces I made for the little boxes to contain my lavender sachets a few weeks back, and the template I made for an angel’s body. Centre back on the desk: my new Dylusions paints which you can read about on the masterboard post. Also on that post, the angel wings which are in the red-topped container to the left of the picture.

As usual, my desk is a bit of a mess. What you can see doesn’t look too bad, but left and right, out of shot, it’s horrendous! I need to have a good tidy up.

Happy WOYWW everybody, and I hope you have a good week, full of creativity.