3 X 3 and BOTTLE CAP

I did make a small Thank You and tried out the "quilling" craft, which is rolling thin 1/8th inch wide strips of paper into spirals, gluing them on the end to maintain the spiral, and then making something from multiple spirals. Archivers was demonstrating this technique and of course now I want to get the tools, the plastic template for the different sized circles, and some paper and glue to be able to add it to my cards. Lucky me Archivers has a coupon good for the next few days and I will be able to save 30% off of part of it. I love coupons!

The card has a textured blue base, 3x3. The white center is masked with a big Post-It note across the upper portion which is slightly larger than the lower. I stamped the dots using Pumice Stone Distressed Ink from Tim Holtz. Then I reversed the masking and covered up the bottom and stamped the tree branches with a Hero Arts stamp using black. They had a thin strip of paper with adhesive on it and I covered up the line between with this slightly darker blue paper piece.

To quill, you stick the end of the paper strip into the slot on the end of the tool, and holding with the thumb and fore finger of the left hand, roll the tool in a circle (rotating the right hand) until all the paper is rolled. Then you slip it off into the size of circle you want it to be, stick a dab of glue under the end and let it dry a few seconds. The bird body was made from a slightly longer in length strip than the head strip. When both are made, glued and dry, you pinch the larger one to create the tail, rub some glue on the underneath edges and place on the card. The head is glued the same and a small piece of yellow is folded in half to create the beak and glued on. Thanks was stamped in black over the dots. It really is not difficult if I can do it with one and a half arms. Pretty simple card and the quilling is easy to do.

The bottle cap is metal, and you stamp a desired image on CS, punch out with a circle punch, use the tool that encloses the stamped circle and covers it with a plastic disc which snaps together and it is pop dotted into the bottle cap. Because of the heighth of the counter and my recent shoulder surgery, I did not honestly have enough strength to push down on the tool to snap it all together. So the demonstrator had to do that part for me. But it is made and a ring added to the edge to hang from a ribbon on a card. I realized after it was done that I should have centered the image with one bird instead of trying to get all three in it. Oh well, this is not something I think I will ever repeat, but it was a learning experience and free. Archivers has been having a free project every week this month and I missed the one at the beginning of the month. This week is using the Sew Easy tool for perforating the card stock and then doing a little embroidery on it. We will see if I can make it go in a straight line since it is a "wheel" and I can see mine going all over the place. LOL

Since writing the first paragraph, I have used the Archivers coupon and bought the template for the cirles, some thin paper, and a package of two tools to do the quilling. I also bought five small books off of Amazon with many ideas for me to use to add quilling to my cards. They have patterns and one included some brightly colored paper strips, glue, googly eyes and a tool. I will be practicing the next 2 weeks and hopefully get some cards done using this new technique.

Thanks for stopping by.

CAT PHOTOS

I have not made any cards since my surgery four weeks ago,and I thought you might like to check out the antics of our three cats.

Mari, our "ewes not fat, ewes fluffy" cat, likes to sleep in the card board box with all the cat toys. She is about 16 lbs and takes up 2/3rds of the box. Because I sleep in my recliner half the night (for a variety of reasons), I am aware of the cats and they often sleep near me. Mari also likes her cat bed too in the afternoon, but I think she gets too warm. I am taking the cat food up and trying to train them all to eat at meal times only and not snack all night. I am hoping Mari will loose a little. Jack tends to throw up at night when his tummy is empty and he tries to eat a little. There has to be a good solution somewhere.


Jack will usually be on the loveseat about 2 ft away sometime during the night, Mari will be in the toy box or sometimes on the back of the loveseat, and Luci likes my lap. She is our "heat seeker". In Oshkosh, she will get up on the back of the couch under the goose neck lamp. Her newest place is on top of my laptop on the kitchen counter. It too is nice and warm since I leave it plugged in all the time. Jack will often get up on the chair next to me as I type on the laptop, or he likes the top of the stair landing. He also likes the top level of our cat tower over in WI, so he is our height seeker. Amazing how different they all are.

SECOND IMPLANT

Well,

I survived the shoulder implant! I have a new man-made shoulder joint and I am almost pain/discomfort free! Woohoo! It is worth it all, believe me. I have spent the better part of the last two years not being able to lift my arm above the bust line. I have had to wash my hair using only the left hand/arm and even now, the left is screaming at me when I wash my hair. So #3 implant will be in the future for me. I begin out-patient therapy for the right shoulder this week and believe I will regain my range-of-motion and the use of this arm above my bust. I have a positive attitude and God seems to have blessed me with a strong body that can handle the surgeries (I do help by eating lots of good foods.) This is so much better than what so many people have to deal with in their later years.

Being in the Nursing Home/Care Center for 11 days was a reminder that I am truly blessed. So there will be no cards posted yet. I am not sure when my shoulder can crank the old Cuttlebug and such. I am just taking it one day at-a-time.

God bless you and thanks for stopping by.

LAST DAY

Today is the last day before my complete right shoulder joint replacement surgery! (Try saying that 5 times quickly!) The doctors scheduling nurse called this morning and adjusted my arrival time from 9am to 11am. So Bill can sleep in a bit longer.

I have been trying to complete a few things before tomorrow. I have a card for the grand daughters to go in their package, I made the card for Becky who is having another surgery Thursday, and I made a card for Mom and included the pictures from her BD celebration. The rest of the family has computers and will get the pictures that way.

Moms card is of a cat with daisies. The stamp is a Penny Black and was stamped in Momento Tuxedo Black ink. That ink does not bleed when using the Copics to color. Yippee! My cards for mom are usually blues, pinks, and purples which are her favorite colors. I chose to make this a little bit different. I did make some small blue flowers on it, but the background paper is a brown shade with green flowers and matted in green. Her cat, Joey, is white and orange and has half of an orange mustache by his nose. So even though this cat had black strips on it, I included the "stache" I also tied on two rows of bakers twine and added some white rhinestones in the corners. As I was laying this out, I felt it needed some curves, so I cut along the upper edge of the white to give it something easy since I was trying to hurry and get finished. Plus my punches are in the bottom bin of the 6 that are stacked, and I did not want to stress my shoulders digging in there and lifting bins. So a quick scissor cut and then I stuck it all down and have it ready to mail with the others today.

The next posting will be sometime from now after surgery and rehab for sure! Not sure when I will be able to make any cards. Say a little prayer for me! Thanks

FRIENDS

God knew what he was doing when he gave us good friends. Friends lift us up just with being there for us, with a kind word or action, and they wrap themselves around our hearts and hurts to protect us and encourage us. THANK YOU HEAVENLY FATHER for giving us friends.

This card is for my friend Becky who is undergoing some horrific experiences with the removal of a tiny skin cancer on her lower eyelid edge between the lashes and the edge. I will not relate the details but my heart goes out to her. And in the middle of her own ordeal, she always has a kind word of encouragement for me. Thanks Becky.

My card is a tile card. I found this butterfly silhouette stamp in the sale items at Michaels last week. It is by Hampton Arts and they call it "window pane monarch". I call it "pretty"! I would have used Versa Mark and my heat gun but they are in WI. I used Momento Tuxedo Black ink, and I stamped it four times on a separate piece of CS. I cut them apart and fit them together to cover the card front. I had wanted to go with a more pastel "look" to the card, but I am not familiar with all the colors of my new Copics yet. One turquoise that I thought was much lighter turned out to be fairly dark. So there went THAT idea out the window. I tested the remainder and only had one surprise. The reddish butterfly was originally meant to be a light shade of orange but it turned out to be kind of mustard, and I have colored over it three times trying to brighten it up. It is "rust" and that is what it will be! I added the magenta jewels to further brighten it and colored some of the swirls a teal and a turquoise. Because some of the grout lines were white and some the mat color, I colored the grout and the mat edges with the teal. Not too bad for an experiment. Isn't that what art is anyway...a big experiment of expression of the inner self? Maybe that is where I got the title of my blog...hummmm!

Ya'll come back 'gin! Ya hear!

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

This has been a great week for me. I finally broke down and bought myself something I had been wanting for over 2 years!!! I now own ALL of the Copic colored markers except the florescent colors and about 14 of the neutrals (I picked some light, some medium and some dark of each of the Cool Grays, the Warm Grays, and the Toner shading markers.) That makes about 310 markers in all and today I colored a cute image of two little girls sitting on a wooden bench reading books together. I wonder who that card will be for? Hmmm!

The Copics will be going up in price from the manufacturer, and by getting them now, I saved over $300. So then, I had to figure out how to store them in an easy to use fashion, and also how to transport them between Mn and WI. I found these black cloth wallets that hold 72 markers in each in a little pocket for each, and you can see the end of each marker clearly with the color number and name. They have not arrived so my markers are in a box for the moment but when the wallets arrive, I will take a photo and show you the system. They are super fun to use and do such a wonderful coloring job. I still need to practice as my skills are kind of mediocre, but I like them a lot.

MN is having a few thunder storms. Dry, cooler weather is coming next week. Wish I could be here for the better weather. Lots to do before I do the surgery.

This card uses a Tina Wenke clear stamp from Stampavie. For all the coloring, I used Copics and it is wonderful to have so many colors to chose from. The matting is Bazzill papers and the print is My Mind's eye "Penny Lane". For the punched corners I used a duel-sided Fiskars punch that cuts the corner into such a lovely shape and then you can emboss it by reinserting the cut corner into the other side. My shoulders are so bad, I could not get it to punch but Bill did it for me (with no strain at all!) I sure hope the surgery fixes that and I can build up my arm strength, or I may have to have a "crafting partner" for those difficult punches. LOL

I tied a piece of bakers twine at the bottom wrapping it twice and making a double looped little bow. I tied on the small tag with the "sisters". The card is really simple and sweet for the grand daughters. I have a little package for them of some new books and hair brushes and M&M's from my mom's 90th BD celebration. SHHH! It is a surprise to let them know I miss them and am thinking of them during my time in the hospital.

Hope you enjoy my card and will come visit again.

THREE WEEKS LATER

I am not sure who reads this but I know God knows who you are. Thank you for being faithful family and friends.

It has been three weeks since I posted anything. I have made it back to MN (another THANK YOU Father , and made it down to TX for my mother's 90th BD. The flight went well and we had all three of moms adult children there plus two of the grand children to celebrate at the Olive Garden. When asked which of her birthdays she liked the best, she said, "This one!" I stayed an extra week so as to be there on her actual BD. She liked the packages of personalized M&M's I had bought for her. She likes having a sweet treat and having the small M&M's made it feel guiltless. LOL! I also got a coursage for her to wear when we went out to lunch, which made her feel special. She hasn't had very many special moments in her life...never went to prom, no white wedding dress in a church and those kinds of things to remember with a smile. I have tried to give her some good memories. I took her to Costa Rica to visit our exchange student, and my daughter went with us for a three generational trip to England, Holland, Germany, Switzerland. We also included my mom and step father in our family trip to Hawaii. So that helps fill in the memories and she has lovely pictures to look at over and over. Mom is the 90 year old gal in the blue and the other picture is of her 3 children (Ken the youngest, Gloria in the middle, and myself the oldest.)

Now I am home in MN and getting ready for my shoulder replacement surgery. I rest in the assurance that God is watching over me and the doctors, and that I will have a good outcome from it. It really is a difficult decision to decide when to replace a "God made body part" with an inferior man made one, but the hip had caused me so much pain towards the end, that I was VERY glad to get rid of the pain. After that surgery in Jan, I can now walk without pain (a bit wobbly since one leg is shorter than the other ). I just have a twinge every once-in-a-while and I can deal with that. The shoulder hasn't had that kind of pain but occasionally, but I can't raise my right arm up past my chest too easily and it is painful when it falls out of the socket a little or the bones rub. So hopefully this will be a good "fix" and I will be happy with this surgery also.

Our temps have been so hot and humid. We stay indoors in the cool as much as possible. You would think I would be cranking out cards a mile-a-minute but I need to get everything out of the bins to use and not looking forward to doing that since I will be gone from the house soon for the surgery and rehab. Here is a picture of all three cats trying to see outside. It is a rare occurrence to have them all three in such close proximity and even rarer that I was able to get a picture before they moved. Mari is the diva laying on the rug. Jack has his back to the camera and Luci is in profile. Not sure what they were looking at...maybe a bug! Smokey the little gray female cat from next door comes over to visit, looks in at them, and I give her a snack and water outside. The owners leave her out all the time, and I am not sure if she gets much to eat. She is really sweet and I wish I had caught her in this picture too. LOL

Every time I open the front door, the glass storm door fogs up with humidity on the outside. So keeping everything shut. Bill said his glasses fogged up when he went to the mail box. But we have been blessed with rain almost every other day and everything is really green and growing...like a hot house or green house. Much better than the rest of the country where everything is turning to desert. I'll put up with the winter any day to have a green summer.

Thank you to those who are praying for me/us. Bill needs it too since he will be alone fixing his own meals for awhile and taking care of the cats. He is getting pretty good at a few dishes (spaghetti, and steak fixed with big egg noodles and mushroom soup.)

God bless ...till next time.