Decoupage

A try at decoupage:
I found it really relaxing and I might have a go at some more!

Looks like a Thelwell to me!

This is my latest card. I really like this one. I made it for my partner's brother; it's his birthday next week. I don't think he's likely to be popping in here, though, so it's ok!

He's into horse racing so I found a horsey pic. Had to have a hedgehog in it too, obviously.

• 
• The image is a Penny Black rubber stamp.
  
• I watercoloured the picture then mounted onto paper that I'd rubbed and scraped with Distress Inks, then attached a thin sticky gold line round the edges to finish off.
• The oval is made of some paper that came free with a magazine, stuck onto card and mounted on foam pads so that it stands forward of the picture like a frame.
• The plaque is just white card, again with Distress Inks, then a few ribbons.
• The leaves are rub-on transfers.

Yep, definitely one of my favourites, this one.


I made this next one quickly as a notecard to put in with a parcel to someone. I like the effect of tearing paper. I think things can get too fussy sometimes.


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Well I spoke up too soon about the weather! We had storms and we've been left with fresher days now, about 65 - 70 F. Much more comfortable for me!

I am hobbling about with a bad hip, my left one. It's been hurting for about 2 months and I didn't bother with the doctor as they would only have told me to take Ibuprofen, so I've been taking it anyway, -plus codeine when it's very bad, heat patches, cold patches, warm baths, you name it I've probably tried it. It isn't going away (I often get wonky joints for a phase, then they go ok again and it's another joint's turn). In fact it seems to be getting worse so I better make an appointment. Hey ho! Better dig out my decent pants. HAHAHA!

It's a burning sort pain, which is a bit of a concern as I always associate that kind with arthritis.

Too hot, even for raccoons!

Their name escapes me.... I knew it when I loaded up the photo, then it ran off... Seruti?? Senetti??? Hey ho. Those purple things in my garden, anyway. They're doing rather well.

Thank you for all your kind messages after my last post.

I am still quite lethargic of late, and it's hard to have some get up and go, but I'm trying :)
The bright days help, though it's getting very hot here! In London it's 90 degrees F. and it's almost that here, too, London being about 50 miles away. Very humid.

Today I read on the BBC news website that they are feeding the raccoons ice lollies at Drusillas, a wildlife centre in East Sussex that I once visited. Ha! Here's a link to the report, with photo's, and a short video of the raccoons! Hope it makes you smile!

-They are also rubbing suncream onto the tapirs, apparently!
I once read that if you have a white cat you need to apply it to their ears or they'll burn, so if any of you have snowy moggies, get your sunblock out and start sharing!

Figs, and why I can't believe I'll see her again.

Please don't read this post if you're down.

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Today is Figgy's anniversary. I had to let her go 4 years ago today, because of a vicious cancer. We had the tumour removed twice, but it came back faster and faster each time. Once I had decided that I couldn't go on putting her through more removals, we had just a small operation to reduce the tumour, then hang on, hoping that she would get one more summer, as she loved being out in the sun so much.

Figs loved to climb up the stepladder so in the end, we put it up especially for her, in the back garden. Sometimes she'd be running up it before we'd put it up properly!

This last week of hers, the summer finally arrived. She spent it mostly in the garden, in the sun, or lounging between flowerbeds. By the end of the week I spotted -to my horror- that the tumour had suddenly got worse. I rang the vet; the next morning was goodbye. Couldn't bear to let her go through any more, not once I'd seen that it had worsened.

Fluffy wants out, Figs wants in! I can't remember who linched whom!

I sometimes berate myself that I was selfish, and that I should have let her go earlier. I know some people feel guilty about the euthanasia part, but I don't, because I think it's kinder not to let her go through actually dying of cancer. What I twist myself up in knots about is whether she was in pain that last week. She was slower, not interested in playing. I wish I had been braver.

Figs and me, 2003

I still can't think about her without getting upset. I was crying in the night, once I remembered what day it now was. I've lost other pets, other cats, but never had the pain of loss last so long afterwards. Belly-up in the sun. She flipped to this position a lot.

She would let me cuddle her tummy, and even blow raspberries on it!!!!

I wonder if the grief is lasting longer simply because my mother made me bury her while she was still warm, whereas I just wanted to stroke her, watch her. I know she was thinking of Figgy's sibling cats, Fluffy and Scooter, and was concerned that they not get upset. But I thought of that too, and wanted to put Figs in her box and put her in the shed for an hour, alone, "resting".

Figs had a 'baggy belly'. She wasn't fat, but it wobbled as though she had had kittens, but she never had. Here she is displaying said belly, as well as her wallpaper art.

I reluctantly agreed to bury her straight away. I was in no fit state to argue and didn't want the other cats to detect my being upset.

And so there she lays: in mum's back garden, alongside Mama Cat who preceded her by 2 years (also because of cancer). I planted carnations, sweet pinks, on her spot. I brought some home to my garden at the time and they came into flower again last week.

Figs giving her mum, Snowy-Mama-Cat, a wash.

I struggle with the subject of mum moving house, as I have nightmarish visions of someone digging up my cats. Some sicko playing with whatever is left of them. Or just throwing them on the bonfire.

I just want her back. Just want to hold her again and hear her chortle.

By far the worst thing about living without religion or spirituality is the glaring end that it means death is. The ultimate comfort would be to believe that I could hold her again one day. Please don't be offended if you still hold that faith. But I can't. When your medication has proven to you that things, sensations, horrible feelings, disturbing sounds, whispers, all these that you thought were real, were in fact hallucinations, it is terribly hard to believe in things, even if you can hear and see them, let alone the invisible.

And impossible, I've found, to believe that any feeling or experience that could once have been described as 'spiritual' isn't just another product of an ill mind. Those old feelings of being watched, or of living with hauntings, these were 'spiritual' too, but proved to be false.

When what you've seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears for decades is proven to not exist, how can what you might sense as 'spiritual' be trusted not to be false also? See what I mean? What I used to call "God's presence" I now think of as my frontal lobe.

-I don't mean any of that to sound arrogant, or like I'm refusing to believe, stubbornly, with folded arms. I used to have a deep faith. Speaking in tongues and the whole shabang. I even spent a year in a convent. So I didn't just lose a Sunday morning habit, I lost a lot. I just can't trust any of it to be true any more, not after what I've experienced with my mad head.

And so I'm left with endings. Friends, human or otherwise, gone.

My sister

I've mentioned my sister, Christina, from time to time. She emigrated to Australia in 1996 and works in computer animation there. She's 4 years older than me, and was always brilliant at art at school. I remember, when just 14, she drew a big picture of horses running through water. It was perfect- and she did the whole thing in biro! No room for false strokes there!

This cat portrait is her latest. She emailed this to me today and said she did it when she was bored because she remembered that I "strangely like cats". She has offered me the original- it measures 24 inches x 24 inches. YES! YES PLEASE!!

I wish I were as good! Practice, I suppose. But I do feel that it runs in the family from the top down- she's the eldest so she got the biggest dose, then it diluted on it's way down to me!

Robin watching.

Our garden isn't huge but I'd be lost without it. There's nothing like watching the birds here to give me a wee lift. Nature is like a free tranquilizer.

I love the dawn chorus, too. I'm usually still awake then, and it helps soothe me to sleep, helps shut my brain down and stop it racing. Last night, I heard the first bird at 2.44am. That's early, even for a blackbird!

Let me introduce you to Newton, my regular visitor and friend. I call him Newton after a teacher I had in Primary School, Mrs Newton, who usually had her head leaning over on one side. He's quite tame (which is more than can be said for Mrs Newton). I've almost got him feeding from my hand. Almost. He comes up to about a foot or so away from me, then I give in and put the food on the ground for him. I can't bear to tease him.

At this point in my spying, a second robin came to have a bath. Friend or foe? I wondered....


Then Newton came down to eat... hadn't he seen the other one on his territory?
Uh-oh.....
He took the food to her!Newton has a girlfriend!!!!
Hurray!

Cards from Australia :)

I'm doing a "Seasons" card swap with Feronia and hers arrived this morning:

"Spring" and "Summer"....

..."Autumn" & "Winter".

Aren't they great?

I really like the paper she's used on the Spring and Autumn cards. I think this is Japanese paper, or "Washi". It's a lovely, pliable paper with deep gold embossing. It's often used in origami, but in Japanese papercrafts it's used to make 'quilted' cards, where squares of it are wrapped round pieces of foam and mounted into a pattern on the card to make a 'quilt'...I'll have to get mine finished pronto! I won't show them here till she's got them.

Meanwhile, here's a "Thank you" card I made for Sharon Duncan, re. the prize she sent me. I used Tim Holtz Distress Inkpads, which I'd bought in a sale a while ago and never got round to using much. These ones are Vintage Photo (edges) and Antique Linen (background).It was nice to make my own design and background etc. I must do more of that.

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Today is officially the longest day. Sunsets get earlier and earlier after today. Poo. I prefer the first half of the year, when all the summer is up ahead, all to look forward to, nights drawing out longer and longer. This solstice sort of feels like the hump of a hill; downhill from here, tumbling towards winter. Isn't it daft to think like that? I'm trying to push such hunches away and tell myself that this is the beginning of summer, not the end!

A birthday card - & my prize arrived!!!

Remember I said I'd won a Photo Caption Competition with Sharon Duncan Crafts?
Well, my prize arrived: 3 sets of stamps and 2 ink pads. I was completely stunned! I never expected so much!
Now I need to get to work on a wee Thank You card....


Meanwhile, in the evenings, I have been colouring some more stamped images and putting them into a box, to be made up into cards or tags at another time. I like the birds on this one...
This next one developed into a birthday card for someone, although her birthday isn't till 15th July. I'm sure there are others that need doing before then, but never mind!
I'm enjoying water-colouring. I'd used water-colour pencils for so long I'd forgotten what it was like to use the actual paints. It's very relaxing.

I also cut out and sewed some paper hearts whilst watching CSI :) .....
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Head Stuff

I had a heavy session at Art Therapy yesterday. Lots of talk and very little drawing! Imagine a table in your head that's had stuff piled up on it for weeks. Then someone walks past it and brushes against it. Everything topples over. Nothing new: you already knew all the stuff there. But it looks different all spilled out like that.

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Other Stuff

I hope the storms blow themselves out soon so that I can get back out into the garden. I've bought two trays of bedding plants; marigolds and red salvia. What on earth possessed me to buy 60????

Having been in a low gear for a while, the house is now a tip. -When I'm low and/or physically unwell, jobs just don't get done. And as an untidy mess affects me badly, I need to get it all cleared up and straight.

At least the rain will keep me from getting too distracted. Today I started by writing a list....... ahhh that's enough for today :)