A Christening card, worries for Fluffy.......and off to Lincoln we go!

My second stitched card.......


I didn't expect it to be half as difficult as it was; it took a whole evening!
I made it for one of the girls next door to us. She is 12, and had been asking to be baptised, and so she was, last Sunday.

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Falling over in public...!!

I'm still battling the labrynthitis! It's getting better. Sort of. I have fewer dizzy spells but they are longer and 'stronger' when they come.

On Friday I actually fell over in town when one took me completely by surprise. I was VERY low afterwards, in tears, because no one came to help or to see if I was ok. It was market day in Colchester, so very busy. There were people standing by and others walking along. I was tutted at because I was obviously in someone's way, down there on the pavement, slumped next to the bin that I'd just hit my head on. But not one person asked if I was ok. Even if it was because they thought I was drunk or something, surely they could have asked from a 'safe distance'???? It hurts because I know that I would help, and have done in the past.

This sort of incident makes me feel like 98% of people in the world are ignorant bastards. It makes me feel like it isn't a world I want to be in. I had shaken it off by this morning, luckily. There have been times when the downer would have lingered much longer.

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Off to Lincoln, and meeting a blogger...

We're off to Lincoln tomorrow. My partner has bought a franchise and we're off to the company's head office Monday to Wednesday. Because it is 3 1/2 hours' drive away, we're staying Sunday and Wednesday night, too.

I've been to Lincoln a few times before, as my dad lived in a nearby village, Metheringham, for a while. I shall enjoy walking round the cathedral again- apparently our hotel is very near to it, so I hope the weather stays mild so that we can have a few evening walks there.

There is a shop there called Omnipuss Art- the clue as to why I want to go there is in the name! It's also a stockist of artwork by Lea Goldberg- click on the link and have a look at her gallery!
And of course, I have already searched online to see where Lincoln's craft shops are :)

The big highlight of the trip for me, though, will be stopping off in Grantham on the way, to meet Julie!!!! It isn't very often you get to meet a blogger friend in 3D!! I am excited, happy and a bag of nerves, all in equal quantities!

We're taking the laptop but I'm not sure if I'll be able to blog. Maybe! I'm going to take my pencils and watercolours with me and see if I can do a picture or two in the evenings.


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Fluffy at the vets again :(

On Tuesday, please think good thoughts for Fluffy, as she will be going under a general anaesthetic again. This time she'll be having X-Rays to see if she has any tumours.... her calcium levels are high, and sometimes a tumour is the cause. I had a horrible dream recently in which the X-Ray revealed not one tumour, but lots of little ones, which were inoperable. I woke up heartbroken and the feeling lingered for ages....

Fluffy on Saturday, in her new birthday bed! Can you tell which end is where????

Whilst sedated she is going to have her fur de-matted, which will involve some shaving too. In all her 16 years her fur has been beautiful, silky soft and knot free. Over the last month it has gone matted and dry. We've no idea why....

At the same time, she has become suddenly even more friendly than usual and seeks out laps and cuddles. This will make it even harder for us if the news is bad on Tuesday.

Please keep things crossed for her...

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Have a good week, and see you when we get back!!

A card for Gill, and memories of working in London...

A quicky for Gill, someone I worked with in the early 1990's. She commuted to London all the way to Worthing. Actually, she still does it! We keep in touch via Xmas and birthday cards, and the odd email. Some of them very odd indeed :)

Inside...

....and the envelope:

We were at an investment bank called CIBC, near London Bridge.
We were in the stockbroking bit, doing settlements. This section had previously been an independent broker, but like many other small firms, it swallowed by a big bank.

There was an enormous gap between how broker staff worked and how bank staff worked. For example, we had always done unpaid overtime- if you needed to get it done, you stayed and did it. It was expected, in fact, it was written into your contract. It lead to a 'work ethic', if you like, but even under pressure the cameraderie was second to none :)

To the bank, though, if you did overtime this meant that you had messed about all day. Overtime meant you were doing something wrong. Having outlooks that were poles apart like this meant that brokers dreaded being taken over by banks, as we had very little respect for them! The saying was, that 'banker' was Cockney rhyming slang ;)

Some of us rode in the London to Brighton Bike Ride each year. The bank insisted that T-Shirts with 'CIBC' on them were worn. So we told people that it stood for "Canvey Island Bike Club" (rather than Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce).

On the ride to Brighton our team took the train from London Bridge and were on the beach setting up a barbecue long before anyone else arrived :)

When the Stock Exchange arranged for a rounders league, our team turned up in jeans with a crate of Becks Beer, while the banking section came along in team-liveried shorts and tops, doing group warm-ups. Ugh! They make me gringe just to think of it. LOL!!!!

It was fun for a while but once CIBC had our business and our training and procedures, the entire department was made redundant en masse.
-A pattern repeated many times.

In 1992 I had three redundancies. I had 5 over the course of my time in the city, 1986-1997. Hence I feel for those being affected this time around. Kind of ironic that it's the big banks who are feeling it bad this time. I can't say 'good!' because some of the brokers swallowed up are still in there, somewhere.

It's a shame that the big banks were ever allowed to take over the small brokers. One that I had worked for, Kitkat & Aitken, had been trading since the early 19th century. Then along came the Royal Bank of Canada and snapped us up..... within 4 years no sign of Kitkat remained. No notice was ever given for redundancy. I began work on a Friday as normal, and got my P45 at lunchtime. Some people found their redundancy notices on the doormat when they got home from holiday.

Banks got too big and therefore too powerful. A lot of people suffered along the way, and look what it led to.....

Thanks to people like Gill though, I still have good memories of those days :)

Another new stamp from Switzerland!

..... yeah I know, but I couldn't resist him. He's called Draco and he's a Whiff Of Joy dragon!!

In the above photo, the one made into a card was water-coloured, the other was done with my new Letraset ProMarkers. I did the scales on this one by colouring him pastel green, then going over this with the blender, then splodging dots in a darker green quickly before it dried. The effect looks like fuzzy felt. Click on the pic's and enlarge, to see what I mean.

I made that second one into an Easter card!
"Please can I have an Easter card with a dragon on it" wasn't the easiest request ever made but I really like the result!
I've trimmed the wings with a clear Sakura sparkle pen so that they shimmer. Pity it doesn't come out in the photo...

I think he's very cute! I'm glad I found him as I know so many people who like dragons!!

Easter is coming...

My first batch of Easter cards is ready for sending. I know it's early, but some are going abroad...
Close ups:

Still more images on the conveyor belt.....
...some cutie Whiff Of Joy images, too....
Basically, if I have your address (e.g., from the Xmas card swap- goodness, that seems an age away now!) then you'll be getting one. I hope you like it. If you'd like one but know I've never had your address, email me and I'll put one in the post to you too :)
(Emily, this includes you!! I'll be sending one to my sister, who lives near Adelaide, so I can always send another one to Oz at the same time!!!)

Is it someone else's turn yet?

Just a wee update in case you think I've disappeared :)

Sorry for lack of posts. I feel so tired and grotty!

I still have the labrynthitis- 4th week of it.
And 3rd week of a bad cold and cough, too.
But also, I now have an infection in my OTHER ear, so I have anti-biotic & steroid drops for that.
Oh! And the little matter of a chest infection, which is making my asthma worse, so I have anti-biotics for that.

I am constantly tired and dizzy, and my chest hurts from coughing. Surely it is someone else's turn by now?!!!! -Not that I would wish this on anyone, I'm sure. Hmmm.... or am I.... a bully or two from my past, perhaps?!!!! LOL! Oh don't laugh, it hurts!

Hope you are faring better. Take care!!!

A troublesome stamp.....

This stamp was a freebie but I really love the image and was determined to make a card with it.
Unfortunately it was one of those troublesome ones that I just couldn't get to stamp properly. Here are some attempts....(!)Doesn't really show in the photo's - or perhaps it will if you click on them and enlarge them- but there was always a section that didn't come out, no matter what I did!

Also, I really wanted to use my new ProMarkers :) but found out the hard way that these make the ink run, even if it says it's permanent, waterproof ink, because they are alcohol pens, Helena, and that's what they do- D'OH!!! So I have now ordered a Stazon ink pad, which should be ok with them.... meanwhile, I stamped and embossed the image (above photo) and coloured over the embossed lines. I used a ProMarker Blender to make the grass fade away a bit at its edge, then rubbed an inkpad round the edge of the card.

-(PAH! The woman in the craft shop in town said that you don't get blender-pens for ProMarkers and her chirpy-boy sidekick said I wouldn't need them PAH! When I went online to seek out colours they didn't have, I found the blender!)

I made this one into a card, but I'm not too sure about it. So it remains in my box, unused and not listed in the shop. I don't think it's good enough to sell - bit patchy on the girl's hair- but it would be nice to write a note to someone on, accompanying a pressie, say. So this is in my 'mine' box. LOL!

Don't ask about the monkey nut on the coffee table, here. I have no idea what it's doing there. We buy them to take to the park and feed to the squirrels, but...????

Still wanting to play with my new Markers, I decided to flip the procedure: I scribbled colours over a piece of card (as with the background layer on the card above) and then stamped on top. I used a ColorBox Fluid Chalk inpad for this (in French Blue) and er.... it stamped the image perfectly! Oops! Ah well, I guess this proves it isn't the stamp, it's me!!! LOL!

I inked round the edge of the card with the same inkpad.
I really like this! So I used it to make a card with, and decided to write to an old friend, Mikiko, with it. She wrote to me at Christmas and I owed her something.... she is very good at Japanese paper folding so I wanted to do something special....

You can get free template downloads like this from www.byDonovan.com

I mounted the image on an A5 piece of purple card, and added some glittery bits with a clear Sakura Sparkle pen.

I made a wrap for the card by punching a strip of vellum and securing it with a shaped paperclip.
This is how the folder closes... then it went into an envelope for sending. I hope she likes it :)

Right!
I'm off for dinner now. I'm cooking chilli :)
(TIP: add a few teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa! YUM! It really helps lift it.)

Then I need to update the shop. Here's a taster of what's going in:

Thanks again for all your comments! I love reading them :)

Penny Black Saturday Challenge

Decided to join in another challenge. This is the Penny Black Saturday Challenge from Passion For Papercraft. Penny Black is a brand name in rubber stamping. The hedgehogs you see lots of around here, they're Penny Blacks. As are most of the daft cats. They do also do some nice wispy looking plants and swirly things though, it isn't all cuteness and whiskers.

Anyway! The challenge this week is "Doodling!" and on mine I took a white Sakura Souffle pen and just drew a wiggly line all over a bit of purple card in the background. Ta-darr!!! The ribbon is from my local haberdashery. Must get some more of that one. It was about 60p a metre, I think.

I like it. I think it worked! I'm going to put this one in the shop tomorrow, with about a dozen others!!!!

Up and about, just about!

Here is a photo taken of me today.
It's the first time in....erm... I don't know. Since Christmas?! That I've worn make-up.

We were going out for a drive, and possibly some shops and food along the way. So I thought I'd spare the populace, not to mention Luvbug, the sight of my pale virus-ridden bleagh. The observant among you, or possibly stalkers (LOL) wil notice the haircut. That was done a month or so ago. Layers! I actually agreed to layers, and let them clip away my long, long, straight hair. Waah!

I have put on soooo much weight.
Everything I wear is tight and my chubby cheeks have taken over my chin. Sigh...

I took this one outside of a place called The Suffolk Food Halls, which was full of lovely, luxurious foody things and we spent far too much but said, never mind, it's a one-off treat....

Here's another, from the car park;I love the way I managed to catch the bird!

Bob came too, of course. Here he is at a reservoir we visited. He's pointing to a windsurfer.
It looked like a lovely place to walk around, full of paths and trees and bird-hides. You could also hire bikes. But I was soooo dizzy and woozy, and the wind coming off the water set my bad throat off again :(

It was still great to get out though, and a lovely clear day. It's Mother's Day here today, and I wasn't able to go and see mine because I didn't want to risk giving her the bug. So I felt a bit lost. Hence, it was nice to go out, even though I now feel like I've been hit by a truck! It was nice of Luvbug to get us out of the house. Can't wait for warmer days. We live in such a great spot for exploring nice places.

Cards for the shop :)

Hullo!!!

Well, in between spins and whirls and falling over and climbing up again :) I managed to finish some cards for my shop. I've just added these:

The ballerina card from my last post is also in the shop, as well as packs of my cat portrait notelets in packs of 5, for example, these:

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Info on prices and payment (because I've been asked about this in emails!):

• The average price is about $3(US) but all postage and packing is free, anywhere in the world. I have to list prices in $ as it is a US site, but if you want to see the prices in another currency, go to the bottom of the shop's page and click on the flag of your choice.
  
• You can pay in any currency. Paypal will convert it and any charge goes to me, not you.
• You don't need a Paypal account to pay via Paypal- for me to invoice you in Paypal all I need is your email.
• Alternately you could send me a cheque. Just email me.
  

Here is a link to my shop.

Sorry for the blatant commercialism. LOL!