Jeudi Journal - An Acquired Taste

This week the quote is "I am an acquired taste, if you don't like me acquire some taste" and I almost used the figure in the bathing suit.  In fact I had the figure in the bathing suit with her hand held out, the one with her legs bent and one other but I decided to use this clothed figure, below, because I liked the stance she was taking.  

Hands on hips and the arrogant look on that head seemed to fit perfectly with the words for this week.  As her head is quite large compared to her body she certainly has the look of someone who would be an acquired taste.  Her glittery eyelashes and the decorations in her hair along with the outfit she is wearing all adds to the picture in my mind.  

She has to have someone to be addressing and so I chose two of my small figures.  One normally has a telephone to stand on and the receiver for his head so I cut as much as I could off but after I had stuck it down I realised I could have cut the phone dial from the bottom and covered it up with the Indigo ink of the trousers.  Ah well, I must remember next time.

The background was, again, an inked one which I had done previously and I added my favourite 'Diamonds in the Rough' stencil with Indigo Blue to make a stark contrast.  I hardly ever use Indigo but I am becoming fond of it so watch out I think it will feature again.

Well, that is October over, it seems to have come and gone so quickly.  I think I had better get some "C" cards done before it is too late.  First of all though, what is the next quote?

WOYWW 543

Another week closer to Christmas and I am getting a bit panicky.  Wonder how many WOYWW'ers are showing what they have done in readiness for the festive season - pop along with me to Ms Julia's blog to see.

Well, I did some "C"cards last January but can I find them, can I heck!  Nor can I find the cards that were cut and the frames I was using on them.  That will teach me not to try to get ahead.  I did find ONE today so that means there is a lot of work ahead to get some bits ready to put together as cards.  You can see it - it is made of Kraft card and is on the left of my desk.  I hoped to get some done over the next few days.

The only thing I have ready for the next lot is the Kraft card underneath the card (you can only see my 'handmade by' stamp.  What else is on the desk?  The purple wallet contains all my "crazy" stamps and one or two similar but not crazy stamps.  Then we have some little white envelopes which contain cut out shapes that I am using on the "C" cards followed by the actual stamps.

Next we have my Journal with a page just inked up ready for decoration for a future challenge.  There are one or two figures on top of the page and the facing page is an old one.  Then you can just see one of Maxine's postcards which Twiglet sent to me the other day, isn't it lovely!

Health Update:

The chiropractor managed to go deeper than she had gone before on my last visit on Friday and that seemed to be paying dividends with only two periods of pain each day since then which Chas managed to massage out in next to no time (compared to the past).  Before you think I am on a winning streak yesterday went haywire!  Chas was out on his monthly dinner date with the guys, I had had a good morning and fell asleep around 11.30 sat in my chair. Woke up at just gone noon with the pain in my back and it refused to go.  I needed Chas!  

As what I did I could not get any relief.  I tried everything I could possibly think of but it was horrible and I was almost in tears.  Four hours later I fell asleep, still hurting but somehow must have had a minute or two to go to sleep.  By the time he arrived home I was much better but took it easy for the rest of the evening, hence this being scheduled.  Roll on Thursday for my next visit - let's hope tomorrow is a good day again.

Still nothing on the Meckle's but he did say it would be November before I got an appointment.  Got a Pacemaker check on Tuesday and should get the results from my blood test on Monday by today.  Lots going on.

Jeudi Journal - At My Age

"At my age one must ration one's excitement" is the quote for this week and once again I had a prepainted page.  Well, it was a page that I had folded over another one to transfer some colour.  It still needed something else on it so I used a Dylusion border stencil to go around the edges in a lightly deeper blue and then I used the same stencil with a different shape randomly in green on the centre of the page.

I chose the lady who I think looks as if she is dressed to go to the WI or somewhere similar because of the expression on her face.  To me it says it all, she is tempted but is trying to curb her desire to have a G&T.  I think the way she is holding her hands also adds to the expression if you can understand what I mean.

Gin is a very popular spirit these days with lots of different ones for sale whenever you go in the supermarket - or have you been in an airport duty free lounge - it is like a gin paradise!  So I decided that she was saying she must ration her excitement ie ration her gin intake. I searched and searched for a picture of a bottle of Gordon's Gin and a Fevertree Tonic in the magazines we had but none were to be found so in the end I copied them from the Google images on the internet.  Just to make sure I added the lettering G & T.

So that is my interpretation of the quote for this week.  Some of these quotes are fun but difficult to portray pictorially and it certainly taxes my little grey cells to make sense of the quote at times.

WOYWW 542

It's Tuesday night and I am getting my blog ready for tomorrow's WOYWW because otherwise I will not have any photographs at all to show you.  Can't say I have been doing much again this week but today my new stamps arrived so I had to get an impression of them all.  Here's my desk:

Sorry about the light bouncing back.  I was trying to show you my new stamps.  You can see my Misti on the left, I love my Misti and would not have any of the copies as this is definitely (imho) the best.  You get good results every time with it.  Plus it is so easy to use and there are lots of videos out there to show you how adaptable it is.  Behind it you can see a crumpled up piece of tissue that I was using to wipe off any blobs of ink from the platform and to the right of it is my rather ink stained cloth that I think is marvellous for removing ink from stamps.  Especially clear ones.  Then we have the Versafine Black inkpad with the clear stamps in front - you can hardly see them for the flash - and to the right of that the index sheet kind of half on and half off my glass mat.

Not giving much away am I?  Well, I sent for these stamps against my better judgement from one of the cheap copy places.  Don't think I will be having many more as they don't have great stickability against the acrylic block/platform lid.  Or did I just get unlucky?  Here are the images stamped and embossed in black

So now it is time to cut them out.  I want to put them in my tiny journal so need to get some backgrounds done in readiness.  Guess it will be 'cut out time' first.  In the meantime I will head over to Julia's blog and see what she has been up to - then get ready for her posting in the morning.  See you there!

Health Update
Last night was a bad one when going to bed.  Didn't seem to get any relief from the back pain as how we tried BUT on the whole a much better week.  Longer periods of no pain and shorter periods when the pain was there with either rubbing it or using the hot water bottle.  Fingers crossed the chiropractor is working again.  Pain management this afternoon - we'll see what happens there!  Open mind, Open mind.

Jeudi Journal - I'm Not ...

Wendy's choice this week - "I'm not an early bird, or a night owl, I'm some form of permanently exhausted pigeon" - this had me completely stumped so I am looking forward to seeing what Wendy has done for hers.  Ideally I should have had a bird, an owl (which I do have) and a pigeon - or at least the heads of them to put on my figures.

So how do I explain what I have done?  Starting with a blue inked background I divided the page into three and put some lightening streaks to show the divisions with a black pen.  Then I put some different shapes with a blending tool through a stencil to give me different backgrounds in each section.  What next!

Next came the figures.  I chose to use my tiniest figures and thought back to the one I had done once with someone exercising - that would do for the early morning person.  Not like me, a cuppa and a sit down trying to remember what day it is but someone up and at 'em with a bit of cycling on their back.  The next figure was a bit of a challenge - how do you do a night owl - ideally I needed the figure who is strutting her stuff in her leotard, dressed to the nines and living it up - but as I had nothing suitable I decided to put her head in her hat to signify darkness - ie night time!

I knew exactly what I wanted for the last figure but sadly I did not have any stamps to portray a figure with legs splayed out at either side of them, hands on head and a dizzy look about the face so I went with a sitting figure with a skeleton head.  Why a skeleton?  Well, I cannot think of anyone more permanently exhausted than that.

So that is me and my interpretation of this quote.  Not happy with it but I did the best I could think of in the circumstances.

Let's hope next week does not pose such a problem.

WOYWW 541

Well, here we are, another Wednesday and time to meet up with all of our friends who bare their desks each week.  I've not really done anything for the whole week but did do a page of my black and white journal that I started years and years ago - well ok last year.

It is something that can be done anywhere because all you need is a white pen and a book with black pages.  Must say that if I was to do it again I would use a white book and a black pen. The only problem I have with what I am doing is the white pen - I have tried loads.  In fact I am so "off them" at the moment because the one I was using "blobbed" on my jeans.  In an attempt to get it off I wet a piece of tissue and rubbed it off.  Result:  my best grey jeans now have a white streak on them - yes the colour has come out of the jeans (now about 3" x 1") - and I knew that was what happens as it did it before on my others.  M & S too, so not cheap ones!

Pens I have tried: Gel, Posca, Sharpies, Dylusions, Pen Touch, One4All and maybe others in the past.

Health Update:

Blister is well, back pain is still here but the consultation last Thursday with Mr Singh went really well.  I don't want to discuss it on here as it is something I don't like talking about but he does not think it is a polyp in fact he thinks that all the procedures in the past have been barking up the wrong tree an that I have Meckle's Diverticulum.  Not to be confused with diverticulitis it is something that 2% of the population are born with.

So in November (and that is Mr Singh rushing it through) I will swallow a capsule which is a camera and which will travel around my bowel taking data and passing it to a belt I am wearing.  That will be the decider on what happens next.  My haemoglobin levels are only 8.3 which I think is pretty low and accounts for the tiredness etc but now with iron tablets doubled up and another blood test in two weeks we can hope for an increase there.

This afternoon I attend my first Pain Management Class - still not sure what I am going to get from them but I am signed up for 6 weeks and not allowed to miss one or you start all over again.  We will just have to wait and see - maybe a brief account next week.

Jeudi Journal - Figure me Out

I am so befuddled I have not a clue who chose the quote this week but again it is a Dylusion one and is "If you figure me out I want an explanation".

I had a blue painted page with some paler blue stencilling on top so I decided to go with that.  The figure I chose has the stance of someone with attitude and I can just imagine her saying to her chicks (yes, she is a poultry farmer) "If you figure me out I want an explanation".  

Not sure her shoes are ideal to be going in a pen or wherever the chickens are as those bows look just ready to be unpicked by some little beak or two but I did rather like that hat she was wearing today.  Afterall if one wants to look a little bit glamorous on the chicken farm a hat sat at a jaunty angle is just the thing to wear.  Especially as it looks as if she still has her rollers in her hair.  Maybe she is going to the Poultry Farmers ball tonight?

To finish off I decided that she should have some little blue birds of happiness flying around her head but as the background was blue I used shades of lilac for them - they do look quite blue though.

Now what is on the cards for next week?

WOYWW 540

"Here we are again, happy as can be, all good friends and jolly good company" - well, it is Wednesday and time to join Julia again with her mammoth blog hunt showing our desks and what we are up to.

Not much to show on mine again, sorry - just a page started for my next Thursday Journal page with Wendy.  It started off with a painted background using my Amsterdam paints and then I closed the journal in the hope it would transfer some to the opposite page.  It did, but not enough.  Anyway, as you can see I used a stencil on top of one page and now I need to look up what the challenge is and get the figures on.

The keen eyed amongst you will observe that apart from the journal things have not changed.  Well, I have tidied up the pieces for the gingerbread house, not done any more not stuck that one together, have not put my scraps away (brown card in plastic bag with blue card behind it) so it points to it having been a very non creative week.  Should have given WOYWW a miss but I can't I enjoy the company even when I have nothing to share.  

Maybe next week!

Health Update:

The District Nurse was very pleased with the way the blister is starting to heal. Said the nurse at our surgery had done a good job getting that blood clot out.  Pain has been awful though as I cannot do much without it kicking in and unless I get back to the chiropractor I fear I will be back at square one before long.

Had another set back!  Never rains but it pours for me.  It looks as if I have another polyp.  Only had one removed in March when they said all was well, it wasn't pre-cancerous like the others had been and so they took me off the watch list.  I think that was an excuse as I have probably reached the cut off age.

I cannot face another colonoscopy as the last one was terrible.  They almost had to peel me off the ceiling.  It has never hurt like that before, and they gave me extra sedation.  I was sure I heard the word "trainee"mentioned and I certainly did not recognise anyone in Theatre, having had about four colonoscopies before.

Anyway, I know I cannot leave it, it won't go away so I have arranged to see a consultant privately.  Don't care what it costs, I have to do it this way.  So tomorrow I go to the local private hospital and see one of the surgeons I have had do the procedure on me before.  Maybe by next week's WOYWW it will have been done!

Jeudi Journal - on a Pedestal

When I chose this quote "If you require me I'll be on My Pedestal" seemed a reasonable one to work with - then late last night I still had no idea.  Not sure if Wendy will find this easy or be like me?

I already had this green background done with the eyesight test stencils on it because I just love this stencil but I had never got around to using it - it didn't fit in with any of the previous themes.  Suddenly this morning a light bulb moment occurred and I thought of using the dogs for the page and as I could find some with buttons for eyes decided they might be in need of spectacles so therefore an eye-test was in order.  It all dropped into place, with my imagination, and the page was born.

So there we have it, a pedestal later, a couple of dogs playing the part of loyal subjects and it was done.  Maybe the one on the pedestal needs a crown?

With a bit  more imagination you could probably think the dog on the pedestal was dreaming (dreams of grandeur) so therefore I am pushing this in as an entry to Art Journal Journey where the theme is Dreams or Wishes by Eileen.

Phew!  That was some last minute journal page.  Off to see what my oppo has done!

WOYWW 539

Another week has flown by.  Or should that be Whizzed by?  Again I have not much to show on my desk as crafting has taken a bit of a back seat and tv watching has taken over.  I am hooked on Celebrity Masterchef, Homes Under the Hammer and Antique Roadshow.  Not sure what the link it there.

My lovely friend Lorraine came over, all the way from Liverpool, to show me what she had made at the Eileen Hull workshop.  Well, not so much what she made but the die that was used.  She hadn't bought one but then she had entered a draw to win one and she had - first prize which included lots of other stuff too.  She brought a die for making a little Gingerbread House which you can see I have the components cut ready for assembling and she left it so I could do more along with the suitcase die you can see at the back on a pop up card which she also left.  Afraid this has been like this for a few days now and can't see any changes before weekend.

Health Update:

Well, the main reason for non-crafting is that on Thursday night I must have had my hot water bottle too hot and fallen asleep on it.  Woke up next day to find I had some fabulous blisters on my back, the largest one ended up filling with blood and measured about 2" long.  Needless to say I could not have my usual chiropractic treatment as a result and so this has been a bad week with pain and the blisters.  Tried just putting a dry dressing on to protect it and some Savlon cream (a 'no no' apparently) but had to go to the triage nurse at our surgery yesterday.  She put a dry dressing on and I am awaiting a call from the District Nurses who will dress it for me.  Hope they don't shout at me.  I know I was stupid but the pain was so intense and now I am suffering - no hot water bottle, blisters and pain!  Hopefully should be back to normal soon.  But not using a hot hot water bottle ever again.