Lovely afternoon ...

... today.  Youngest grandchildren's school Christmas concert.  First year that 2 have been in the same production - and the last as there will only be the youngest left at this school next year.  It was a singing concert, rather than an acted performance.  Youngest managed to sing a bit and that's a novelty as he normally doesn't sing, or take part, much at all *lol!*  Photos taken, to be reviewed, but not holding breath that they're any good.  Light was bad for photos and they were too far away really.  We'll see.

Holiday to Norfolk in October.  Photos edited, rubbish ones deleted, suspect ones kept along with the good.  A photo book is going to be done!  A lovely week.

We spent our anniversary afternoon on a Broads Tour.  After that there was a decidedly animal theme to the week.  We visited Africa Alive safari park, just outside Lowestoft.  A change of continent and we went to Thrigby Hall Animal Park ... Asian animals.  We had a day in Great Yarmouth.  Totally dead and not impressed but while there we went to the Sealife Centre and then had a stroll around Merrivale Model Village.  That was a quaint, old fashioned attraction but pretty good.  Weather was very changeable, sunny, warm and shirt sleeve order one day to wet, miserable and wintry cold another.  Photos?  When the photo book is done *grin* .... except -

- 2016 finishes with 3 'super moons' - one in October, the best in November (the closest it's been to earth in many a year) and the last in December.  The October one was the night of our anniversary.  I played with the OH's camera.  October 2016's Hunter super moon .....

In November I did quite a number of workshops.
The weekend before a "very special weekend" there was another Christmas card workshop with Helen of Crafty Bunnies.  Cally and I made a day of it and visited Hobbycraft before lunch and then, after lunch, on to Helen's.  A lovely day and not a bad selection of cards made *grin*

Again, with Helen, all products used were Stampin' Up ones ... papers, stamps, inks and cardstock - everything.

The day before the "very special weekend" I did Linda's last workshop of the year.  I think what we did that day has to be my most favourite card of the year.  An 8x8 card, the snowman is a retired (I think 'cos can't find it anywhere) Penny Black, coloured with Promarkers/copics (can't remember now) after he'd been masked and the background put in. The sky was done with distress inks and ink duster brushes.  Love the soft effect these brushes give, and with no risk of those lines that you can get with the blender foam.  Finished with fluffy stuff and glitter glue for the berries   I love, love, love this card!  It's stunning and the photos just don't do it any justice at all.  I'm planning on finding a nice frame ...

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Clair's Thursday ...

...workshop this week - foiling.  I've done gilding before but not foiling.  As it turns out there's not a lot of difference except the foil isn't as delicate as gilding sheets or flakes which makes it 'cleaner' to use.  No chasing bits of fine pieces as it doesn't need cleaning and burnishing like gilding sheets or flakes do.  We used WOW products for the foiling - a bonding powder and the sheets.  The bonding powder is used like embossing powder.  The image stamped with versamark, the powder sprinkled on and then it's heat set until it looks 'plasticky' and has a sort of shimmer to it.  The foil sheet is then laid over, sandwiched between a couple of sheets of copy paper and fed through a laminator to reheat the bonding powder and make it sticky enough for the foil to stick to (I wonder if an hot iron would work as well???).  It's then allowed to cool for a while and, when completely cold, the sheet is lifted off, leaving the image foiled and the residue is left on the sheet for use on something else.

My thoughts on this are that a) the bonding powder may not be necessary and b) if it's not then the laminator probably isn't either (or iron).  My thinking is that any glue, left to go 'tacky', would have the same effect so you could stamp an image and then, possibly using a glue pen, put the glue where you want the foil, allow to go tacky as opposed to wet and then use the foil - pretty much as you do to gild things.  Probably the bonding powder and laminator would be better if the image being used was a solid one but a glue pen would be better for highlights.  How about triple stamped flowers .... either highlight or do one of the layers with bonding powder ..... ??? Lots of potential methinks.  Not sure I'd be too interested in doing sentiments, although that's a possibility.

Anyways ... my card from the workshop.  Pretty obvious what was foiled. Sentiment was stamped in black versafine and then clear embossing powder was used.  The only embossing powder ever really needed if truth be told - if you've lots of different ink colours.  Possibly a clear sparkly one as well for when a touch of sparkle may be needed but then a touch of glitter sprinkled on could work just as well.

Greeting stamp was from MFT Chalkboard Greetings set.  The 'leaves' are supposed to be feathers but think they actually make better leaves - WOW Flights of Fancy.  A leaf die, 8x8 texture embossing folder and a 6x6 frame embossing folder was also used.

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Just back from ...

... a week away with the OH.  We went on a Haven holiday in Norfolk, staying in a caravan.  Not an area we've visited before and can't say as we've visited much of it now although we did visit a few attractions.  What we've seen of the area has been mainly by getting from a to b.  We did do a day in Great Yarmouth but I'll go into it all in a bit more depth when I've sorted some photos out.  Still managed to take a fair few of them - ROFL!

The day before we went away there was another Clair workshop *grin*  I loved the card we made this time round.  I adapted it slightly from the planned one but not by much.  We did a bit of distressing.  Funny how I never used to like the distressed look and now I love it and doing it.  Clair had designed the card with wide, lime'ish green grosgrain ribbon as an embellishment.  I wasn't so keen on the green as it didn't tie in with anything on the rest of the card.  I was wearing a navy sweater that had hanging ribbon ... well, not for long did it 'cos I cut it off to use on the card *LOL*

The butterfly stamps were a Papermania Urban collection stamp set - 3 butterflies on the stamp, coloured with distress inks and fussy cut.  The script background was a retired Stampin' Up one.  The other stamps were JustRite and dies were matching Spellbinders label dies of various types..  Cardstock was Stampin' Up.  Not obvious in the photos but the butterfly wings were coated in Wink of Stella.

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Last workshop ...

... with Clair was 2 Christmas cards using the Stampin' Up Pretty Pines thinlet dies, MFT Holiday Greeting stamps and Spellbinders oval dies.  Card stock was also SU - emerald envy for the pine leaves, pool party for the matt, chocolate chip and crumb cake for the pine cones, real red and white.  Matching ink pads as needed and red & white pearls.  Lovely cards and easy to put together.  Not so easy to cut, as it turned out as the machine used wasn't playing nicely.  We had a bonus - an upper body workout - ROFL!

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Workshop cards ...

... from last week.  The die used for the white matt is from the Avery Elle, Finished Frames set.  The stamp set is Avery Elle Berry Good, stamped and heat embossed then hand cut.  I borrowed Clair's Tim Holtz Distress Crayons to try.  So glad I didn't 'go with the flow' when the rest of the workshop ladies were buying these - while we were in the US and over here.  I don't like them at all.  Difficult to blend, even using a baby wipe to moisten the finger.  They didn't blend well at all, having a definite line between some colours.  Reckon I've saved myself a bit there - lol!  Love the simpleness of these cards though and, using a different colouring method they could be very useful.

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I feel ...

... pooped!  It's been a very emotionally draining week, one way or another.  Very tired.  I've had little ones around more than I'm used to nowadays.  Loved having them though and it looks as though it's going to be ongoing, for a while at least.  Youngest is still with me, hence little kiddlies being around more.  It's going to be quite a long road for the couple, sorting out what's gone wrong and the myriad of reasons.  Space and time should see them right, one way or another.

OH had an afternoon out of the hospice today.  Nephew was 21 in the week and had a celebratory lunch at a Chinese restaurant (Dragon Rustington) near where brother and sister-in-law live.  Extremely good value for money with an 'all you can eat' lunch and a lovely afternoon has been had.  OH managed 5 hours away so a good change of scene for him.  The medics gave me the meds he needed for the afternoon.  Just wish they were more effective.  Despite what some people would have you believe people do suffer pain, no matter how much palliative care they receive.  We're told by the anti euthanasia brigade hat nobody need suffer.  Somebody should try telling OH that right now (light the touch paper and stand well clear!) 'cos nobody yet has found anything to relieve him of the pain he's in, despite 3 weeks of trying and keeping him so dosed up he can't think straight and doesn't know whether he's arthur or martha - and that is on top of the pain he's suffered constantly over the past 30 odd years but has learnt to live with.  He's told them he's had enough and he's tired.  They're not letting him home yet, even if they manage, by some miracle, to deal with the pain.  Not unless his mindset changes!  I hope they can find something that will work, eventually, and that will give him his mind back because, as he is at the moment, he'll not return to driving or his sport and we did have high hopes that he'd be getting his life back this year after all the other problems he's had to deal with over the last 5.  This problem could be the one that will finally put the nails in that particular coffin.  I hope not as he'll really feel that his life has no further meaning

On to happier things.  Several crafty card workshops have been had so far this year.  There's been 3 lead by Vickie, whose workshops I started going to last year.  They're very different to Clair's but just as good in a very different way.  These are the makings so far from these workshops .....

ALL THE ABOVE WERE FROM THE JANUARY WORKSHOP
All Stampin Up stamps, papers, inks and papers - from the Spring and Sale-abration 2016 catalogues

ALL THE ABOVE FROM THE FEBRUARY WORKSHOP
Again, all stamps, papers, inks & punches are from Stampin Up

ALL THE ABOVE FROM THE MARCH WORKSHOP
All stamps, papers, inks and the 'Celebrate' embellishment - Stampin Up.

All the cards are the Stampin Up Notelet card size.  Not large but I love the size of the cards.  I'm thinking some need to find their way into my stock pile :O

I'm hoping to find some time to do a bit more catch up from last year ... which will, partially, involve a look around the area near to where I live.  If you ignore the town city on the doorstep, which I steer clear of as much as possible, I live in a beautiful part of the world - at least, I think so.  There are probably more beautiful places but there's so many different sorts of beautiful and I've recently started looking at some of these places and trying to picture life as it would have been, way back when some of the buildings were new.  Thinking about people who may have walked these paths so many years before me.  A couple of years ago I was walking streets in an area I'd never been before but, I knew my Great-Grandfather had lived there in the late 1800s.  I was probably, literally, walking in his footsteps ....... I was walking and trying to see that area as he would have done all those years ago.  Weird ... or not???

Here's an example.  On my birthday OH and I took a 'stroll' from our home into Rottingdean - around 1½ miles.  I took this picture of OH as we were passing St Margaret's church (Saxon, early 11th century) and I realised that the house behind him was The Elms - Rudyard Kipling's home in the late 1800s/early1900s.  We were travelling paths that he and his family would have travelled over 100 years before us.  I wonder which other footprints we travelled over on that day.

Another view of The Elms, with Rottingdean pond in the foreground and the war memorial (obscured by a bush - lol!) between the pond and the house.

Getting a bit deep now ... time I went to bed *LOL!*

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A couple of ...

... weeks since the last missive and not much has changed.  OH is still in the hospice and he's still in pain. He's had a partial MRI.  Only partial because he couldn't keep still long enough to have the whole spine done.  I don't know, but I'm thinking that they never scanned the bit that would give any clue as to what's going on. I got called away from a workshop as the hospice had nobody free to go with him for the MRI so I went.  I was 'nurse' for the duration, having been given his drugs to dish out. He tells me they're looking at taking him to the pain clinic now.  We'll see.

He's quite funny at the moment.  I've never seen him drunk or really, even tipsy, in the 30+ years we've been together but whatever drugs they've got him on at the moment gives the impression he's permanently in a happy place *ROFL!*  Not only is he having oral drug therapy he also carries a syringe driver around with him (sitting on his lap in the pic) and then there's occasionally 'extra' intravenously.  It can be very difficult getting any sense out of him at times and trying to understand anything he's saying is pretty hard work.  He's speaking quite clearly - just doesn't make any sense - *lol*

He had his birthday a couple of days ago.  We never have a birthday cake but, as he wasn't home, I bought him one.  Apparently they made him one at the hospice as well, although I never got to see it as it had disappeared by the time I got there *lol*

This past weekend I went to see my nephew in his first lead role.  He's a student at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts doing a degree course.  It's his final year so it's all shows and showcases for agents and the like. He's been lucky enough to have already been signed to an agent so he can do open auditions for work.  If he gets work before the course ends, his finals will be assessed from wherever he is, whatever he's doing, otherwise it will be done in college.  Saturday matinee was virtually a full house and the show got an excellent response from the audience.  Apparently the best up to then.

I'm getting confused as to what I need to catch up on and what's been done.  I'm not organised enough to have made a list, checked it twice and then checked things off as done.  Perhaps I need to do that now before I go too far - but first ... 

The workshop I got called away from to escort OH to his MRI was for a shaker card.  I got as far as cutting the first matt and no further.  I asked Clair to stamp the image for me then I cut and ran, thinking I'd be able to finish it at home except ..... I had none of the things Clair used to make card.  I'd decided I wanted to make it for OH's birthday card so I improvised with what I had.  You can see the original card here - and a video on how it was put together here.  This is my version ....

I used Prismacolors, Zest-It (as my blending fluid) and blending stumps to colour LoTV's James with Heart.  The embossing folder was a new one from Crafter's Companion - Sunbeam and the white matt was edged with a Martha Stewart frame punch.  First time of using and I need to practise, or use it in a full light, not half light and then, perhaps, I can see how things are lining up - *lol!*  I used the punch outs in the shaker bit (coloured with Sharpies) and yes, that is a peel off Happy Birthday - stuck to the stripey paper under the acetate - so shoot me!

That's about it for this time.  Off to visit OH and think about making that list *lol*

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