Happy Birthday, Helen Ruth Davies

Today would have been my sister's 40th birthday.

I've found today really hard. When Helen was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 31, and we read that the survival statistics were that only 20% survived beyond 5 years, she was determined that she was going to be one of that 20%. When, after pre-op chemotherapy, full hysterectomy and oophorectomy and partial removal of the omentum, and post-op chemotherapy, the cancer came back after only a year, she realised that they weren't going to be able to cure this cancer and she was definitely going to die younger than she should. It was at that point that she told me that her goal was to make it to 40. She knew that the cancer was going to keep coming back and needing more treatment and that eventually the chemo etc would cease to be effective, but she never lost hope that if she could just keep going, in time a cure, or a more effective treatment, might be found.

It's been nearly 4 years since she died and I still miss her so much. I wanted to commemorate her birthday, the birthday that she so wanted to reach, so I took my daughters (who she never got to meet) for tea and cake to celebrate Helen's birthday. And I made a page in my art journal.

I've cried a lot of tears today, especially when writing the journalling on this page.

Happy Birthday, Helen. I miss you.

Irish Mermaids? ;)

I think it's fair to say that I've become a wee bit addicted to making screens. I loved loved loved Linda E's screen project in Craft Stamper and I made my first screen for the UKS screen swap and was so pleased with it that I could barely bring myself to give it away to my swappee! :lol:

So for the latest challenge at Sweet Pea Stampers, I decided that, instead of making a card, I'd make another screen - one I could keep this time! :) Of course, the other advantage to making a screen was that I could get to play with more than one scrummy Sweet Pea image at a time. ;)

The challenge theme is "Luck of the Irish" and I decided to take my inspiration from that and use the colour green prominently in my project. With that in mind, I started thinking about greens and blues and the sea and mermaids... can you see where this is heading? ;) I seem to have a bit of a thing for mermaids and watery colours in my crafting lately. :lol:

So I had a rummage through my ever-growing collection of Sweet Pea stamps and chose four Ching Chou Kuik mermaids (I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing that I have enough Sweet Pea stamps that I have a range of mermaids from which to select four! :lol:) and this is what I made:

Not the best lighting in this photo - will try and take a daylight photo tomorrow... *looks at clock*... ooops, erm... later today! :lol: Here's what the individual panels look like:

I used Dylusions sprays inks to make the backgrounds, along with some stencils and some spritzed water, and also used the Dylusions sprays with a wet paintbrush to colour in my stamped images, all in shades of green and blue. I matted the painted images onto shimmery blue paper and attached to the screen panels which I bound together using blue chiffon ribbon. To finish I added some blue and green paper flowers and some blue and green gems. Oh and the reverse side of the screen is covered in this gorgeous, shimmery/foiledy K&Co paper:

This screen has now taken pride of place in my windowsill gallery of completed work. Ching Chou Kuik's images are just so gorgeous and having four of them displayed together like this in a screen is just fabulous. I'm definitely going to be making more screens. Quite possibly more Sweet Pea ones. :)

I am of course entering this for the Sweet Pea Stampers challenge and am also putting myself forward for their DT call. :)

WOYWW - 27 March 2012

I think it's time to admit that my good intentions of keeping my craft room tidy have... erm... shall we say, been allowed to let slide a little.

Yup. Just a little. ;)

I've not managed to keep up with my rule of clearing tools and products from the desk after finishing a project and have again resorted to the "push back/aside" method of desk tidying. As a consequence, my craft desk this morning looks like this:

Projects - and associated products - littering the desk include my tags from today's Creative Chemistry 101 class and some images and bits for a new project I'm playing with.

And as for the rest of the room... well, it's not as bad as it was but.... the "spare desk" has once again become a dumping ground for things needed to be "pushed aside" from the main desk:

I'm once again in danger of being left with only a narrow path from the doorway to the chair:

And every surface is once again piled high!

I think I need to find time for another, mini, tidying blitz. Not sure when I'll find the time though as I've got Timmy's class to work on, some project deadlines coming up, DD1's 3rd birthday next week and houseguests the weekend after! Ack!! Oh well. The tidying can wait a little longer... right? ;D

What's the time Mister Wolf?

Waaaaaay past my bedtime, that's what! :lol:

But hey, I just couldn't go to bed without finishing off this rather... ahem... different card. ;)

I know it's not perhaps the usual kind of image you see on cards but I just *love* Barbara Jensen's awesome digi stamps (check them out at Stitchy Bear Stamps) and I pretty much printed this image out and coloured it in with my Promarkers just for the fun of it. And then I thought, "Well, let's put it on a card then!" :D

As it happens, this week's theme at Passion for Promarkers is animals... and a wolf's an animal. Even if there's only... erm.. part of a wolf in this image! :lol: (I rather suspect this is going to be a little different from the cutesy animal images the PFP DT were expecting when they set this challenge! :D). I'm also entering this into the "anything goes" challenge at the One Stitch at a Time challenge blog. :)

And now it's time for me to rest my weary eyes... all the better to see you with, my dear! :D

Bedazzling Black and White

I was really pleased to see the Gothic Arch challenge blog up and running again cos I'd just gotten into making them when it went on hiatus. That said, I've not found time to take part in the first few challenges since it started up again but this week I have finally managed to do so. The theme for the current challenge is Bedazzled:

Lovely sunny photo for once - hasn't the weather been *gorgeous* today?! :)

I did a lot of decoration on this using Pearl Pens, in silver and pearl, and Enamel Accents, in black, and added a couple of diamante gems for a bit of "bedazzle". :)

I'm also entering this arch into this week's challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show, where the theme is Handmade Backgrounds. Of course, given that I'm doing Tim's Creative Chemistry 101 course atm, I had about a gazillion ideas for making backgrounds but I really wanted to use this Lynne Perella stamp from Paper Artsy (a recent acquisition) and I just felt like it needed to be in black and white. And I'd also recently picked up a Black Soot Distress Inkpad so I decided to have a play with that and made a monochrome back background using Tim's "spritz and flick" technique. I'll be honest... the resulting effect wasn't quite what I expected... the wicking effect is not as visible/obvious on plain black but it makes quite a nice, subtle effect and I do like it.

I hope to find time to do more of the gothic art challenges. :)

Curse you, Tim Holtz! ;)

I've had to go to my local craft shop twice in two days, thanks to you! :lol:

I bet they're loving the Creative Chemistry 101 course as much as I am, though for different reasons! :D

First I had to go buy some light-coloured Adirondack inks to complete one of the techniques from Wednesday's class, cos although I had Adirondack inks (as listed on the class supply list), I only had em in black and brown. And then I had to go back again today to get some Cut n Dry felt to do one of the techniques from Thursday's class! Thank goodness they had what I needed in stock cos I'm an impatient gal and it sets my teeth on edge when I can't complete everything from each class. ;)

So, now that I've managed to complete the missing techniques, here's a round-up of my technique tags so far:

Aren't they looking fabulous? :) I've already repurposed a big ole book ring to store all my tags - it's going to be a fabulous resource to have hanging in my craft room when the course is over.

Super Stamping

Regular readers of this blog may by now be aware that I'm a bit addicted to stamping. And, um.. stamp buying! :lol: But hey, stash shopping is half the fun of crafting, right? :D

So anyway... I just love stamping as a technique... it's so versatile and you can create such amazingly different effects depending on the surface, the ink, the stamps, the accents you use etc.

In the last couple of days I've used stamping on a couple of different projects. I have, of course, been using stamping in the course of following Tim Holtz's Creative Chemistry 101 class (but more on that later) but I've also used stamping on a card and a scrapbook page.

The card was just a quick notecard that I made to send out with a swap but I took the opportunity to play with an idea I'd been toying with:

As soon as I saw this Spiced Paisley stamp set from Stampin' Up! I had this idea in my head that it would be perfect for a) making a repeated pattern and b) embellishing with liquid accents (Pearl Drop, Stickles, whatever) to make a rich, Moroccan-stylee, brocade sort of effect.

So I stamped the border in Chocolate Chip ink and then coloured the large paisley stamp with Chocolate Chip and Bravo Burgundy Stampin' Markers and stamped it repeatedly (using my Stamp-ma-jig to get the placing right) and then added the smaller design, stamped in Bravo Burgundy. I then went over the entire design adding little dots of gold and bronze pearl accents using my Perlen Pens. Isn't it a gorgeous effect? I really think I might have to try it on a scrapbook page.

And speaking of stamping on a scrapbook page (see what I did there? ;D)... I found time last night to do Shimelle's March class for & Now For Something Completely Different over at UKS. I must say I've been loving these classes from Shimelle and have been really pleased with the LOs I've created from following her great 20-step instructions. And this is no exception:

I loved the combination here of layering stamped images and pieces of patterned paper and also the idea of having pieces of patterned paper overlapping the edges of the base card.