OUT SPOT

As you can read, I am a bit upset. I visited my dermatologist about a few spots on my skin. One turned out to be a small cyst which he removed. The other is on my nose and he has looked at it in the past and said it was nothing to worry about! Well, I felt it was growing and said I wanted it off...no matter what it was! So he cut off a chunk and sent it to be tested and low and behold...it is a basal cell carcinoma! Now I need to go back and let him cut some more until he gets "clean" skin. Not sure how big it has become inside my skin. And I am not sure who will be trying to sew me up and make it look as good as possible. What I am most upset about is his cavalier attitude and almost non-interest in it for the past few years. Had he taken a piece last year, maybe we would have caught it sooner. Not sure how to feel about it and if I should go to a plastic surgeon to have them do the work of the removal and repair. I only have tomorrow to decide and call someone else if I decide to go that route. So there will be NO pictures or cards with this posting. I am just venting!

Sept 8,20011
I wrote the above and did not call the plastic surgeon to see what I should do. I decided just to go with the dermatologist and hope and pray it won"t look too crooked and ugly after he is done. I even made a joke about "listing to the left" because my nose will be bigger and heavier on that side. LOL

Surgery is in an hour, and I will write when I get back home.

It is early evening and I sit here writing with a BIG white bandage on my nose. It took them two tries to get it all and 2 1/2 hours all total. He was going to sew me up but I looked at it, and it is a "crater" 1/4inch deep and about 1/2inch across. It is really big looking and I told him I wanted a plastic surgeon to fix it. So they booked an appointment for me tomorrow. At least it is not hurting yet. Not sure what tomorrow will bring.

So guys and gals, if you see a spot of anything growing on your skin...be sure to get someone to check it out. You never know! I just hope my nose is decent looking when all is finished.

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.