Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you are all having a lovely Saturday,  have you got anything planned?  

We are full on busy today, playing catch up with holiday organising and packing.  Paul will do pretty much everything,  i just have to make sure we have everything in the right bags etc.  

I had a lovely OT lady visit me yesterday morning, she asked what was the one thing she could do to make my life easier.  I said 'The Stair lift"  she sat and went through all the assessment forms and measurements were done.  She wanted me to go up stairs and get in and out of the shower and on the bed,  but I really didn't have the energy to go up the stairs again,  so I said would she mind if I didn't,  I was in pain and didn't want to take any ŕisks before leaving for holiday on Sunday, I explained how I managed the stairs etc,  so she went up on her own and took all the measurements.  She listed the bathroom bits that would help me, a grab rail in the bathroom,  another toilet raise for upstairs loo, the most exciting bit of kit she is going to get me is a thing that goes in the bath, you sit on it, lift your legs in and it lowers you down into the water,  when your done it raises back up to the edge of the bath and you lift your legs over and stand up, how amazing is that,  I can't wait for it so I can have a bath!   The most frustrating thing is that she doesn't the stair lift will work,  there isn't room enough for seat to land, I am so gutted, I really wanted one of thone of those more than anything else, to have a little independence 😢 

Paul got home mid afternoon,  got a few jobs done,  then Becca invited us out for dinner for Paul's birthday,  we had a lovely dinner, it was lovely to spend time with her too.  She dropped the bombshell that she is having her elbow surgery on Monday, she said 'Mumma you will come with me won't you'  oh Ladies I felt so bad telling her that would be on our way to france by then,  if it was a week earlier I could have changed our dates but they won't do it so close to our arrival,  its 3 hotels and channel tunnel too, Adam has the day off on Monday so he can stay with her, I said I will be at the end of the phone.  I hope and pray it all goes smoothly,  she is having all of the arthritic debris scraped out of her elbow, so that she can straighten it a little,  she will have her arm in a sling for a few weeks. 

Karen

Karen's Description: 

I’ve been crocheting poppies (10 already given) for John Lewis at their Knit and Natter and some pink ribbons for October for breast cancer

Whilst out shopping I got the chance to go to Hobbycraft and picked up these Sizzix layering stencils £12 each reduced from £22

Karen your Crochet Poppies and Breast Cancer Ribbons look amazing,  you are so incredibly skilled,  I love seeing what you make,  it must be such a lovely feeling knowing that you have been able to raise money for charities of all kinds.           Thank you so much for allowing me to share them with our friends.  

Karen's Description:  

Whilst out shopping I got the chance to go to Hobbycraft and picked up these Sizzix layering stencils £12 each reduced from £22

Ooh don't you love a bargain ladies!!! 😊  these stencils were a great bargain too being half price!!  I really like both designs, the bird one is a really popular design in all the different craft tools, stamps and  dies as well, I can't wait to see how you get on with them, the flowers with that lovely background are great too, very 'on trend'.

Thank you so much for allowing me to share your craft goodies my lovely XXX 

I hope that you all have a great day,

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra xxx

Something Embossed & Festive for Friday

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies, 

Well this week has 100% run away with me, I needed to achieve so much but in reality I have acheived very little, I wanted to get more cards made but the last two days its been almost 6pm when we have got home and by that time I am done for the day.  But we are just going to have to get by with what we have.  

Yesterday started with my Bladder Clinic,  of all the days that I needed it to go straight forward, 2 days before travelling this was it,  my usual lady was there but the lady that does the notes was doing it today,  she made 3 attempts,  no joy, which has never happened,  lord only knows where she was sticking it, I politely asked if my usual nurse could do it,  which she did and was in first time!  I am praying I don't pay the price, she did apologise and said she was having a bad day!  We ended up having a good laugh anyway.  We got home,  had about an hour and then had to go to Soph's hair appointment,  Shane did an amazing job and Soph loves her new grey highlights. 

I am sharing some different types of embossed Christmas cards from 2018, how was that 6 years ago! We have a combination of dry embossing and embossing with powders. I still like these cards, especially the first one! 

Anyway I must go, I have so much to do ! 

I hope that you all have a good Friday, 

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

A beautiful card by Karen

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

We had a very wet and gloomy day yesterday,  I was relieved it wasn't too hot though as the girls wanted to go to Costco,  I can't do 2 busy days in a row so wasn't keen on the idea,  thankfully it wasn't too bad, thank heavens for my wheelchair!  It's always a fun day out with those too, I was nodding off in the car on the way home though.   The busy days continue today with Bladder Clinic this morning and Soph's hairdresser appointment this afternoon.

Lilian I was sorry to read your sad and frustrating news on yesterday's blog,  it's not going to be much comfort for you but I will say it anyway,  after I had the botched surgery on my hip we were going back and forth to hospital to try and get answers and find out how they were going to put things right, it went on for months , I never once got to see the consultant that messed up my life, he was clearly too cowardly!! Anyway my mental health was rock bottom and I was literally questioning my existence,  I felt there was no point, i was nothing but a burden.  Well my GP ended up calling my consultant to find out the situation and what his plans were to put things right.  His response was that there was nothing they could do, having two huge pelvic reconstructions within 6 weeks and then fighting to get the stem out of my femur and hammering a second stem in 6 weeks (3 stems in total) had severely weakened the bones in my pelvis and femur.  So it was way too risky to do anything more.  GP was furious that they had been fobbing me off for months.  She just said "as hard as it is to hear, this is as good as you will be, as you go on the site of surgeries will deteriorate (which has definitely happened), so try and adjust your mindset into thinking 'just make the best of life while you can", she was sympathetic and explained what would likely happen.  But trying to accept that living with chronic debilitating pain every day was going to be the best my life can get was incredibly hard, it still makes me cry today.  When you are told that devastating news it just haunts you daily but it kind of does get easier to live with, you already know what your limits are as far as what you can manage.  Just take one day at a time, embrace life on the easier days and make the most of it.                Sending you a huge hug xxx

Today's beautiful card is one that Karen's latest makes,  its for a friends 70th Birthday,  the image of the roses is so pretty it looks like you could reach out and touch them, the colours are so soft too.  I bet she absolutely loved it.                                              Thank you so much for allowing me to share it today XXX

I hope that you all have a lovely day 

Love and hugs to all 

Sandra xxx

Kraft Embossed Christmas card

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies, 

I hope today finds you all as well as can be expected, sending gentle hugs to those of you struggling. 🤗 

I had a lovely day yesterday,  Sonia came over and we went out to lunch and Becca and Lucy came too,  we had yummy pizzas at the Terrace at Bull Burford,  it was lovely to eat out in the sun.   It was lovely to catch up with Becca too, I haven't seen her for weeks.  We had a browse in a couple shops, they have a traditional old sweet shop on the high st, the sold a lot of the sweets I remember from my childhood, I bought some 'Sherbert Pips" and some 'Cinder toffee'  (honeycomb), I ask the lady if people still asked for 'a quarter' of sweets, like we used too, she said yes they do!  

Today's card is the one that is a 'Happy Accident',  it has the blue on the other side that I used for yesterdays card.  I put the card in the folder the wrong  way around,  it turned into todays card and I quite like it.

After the kraft card was embossed I very lightly went over the raised areas with a White ink pad, you only want to hit the vey highest embossed area, so its highlighted. I then added some white embossing powder and heat set,  this made the white whiter and adds a little shine too.  The detail is incredible on this Spellbinders folder.  For the sentiment I chose to stamp the sentiment on vellum so that most of the detail was still visible.  The final finishing touch was some little gems. 

I hope that you have a lovely day,

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx

Embossing on Kraft Core card

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

How did you all manage in yesterday's heat?  We had a cloudy start to the day,  with about an hour of Thunder and a quick shower, it cleared up at lunchtime and was 28 degrees when I popped out  with Paul at 4 ish.  I didn't need to go but I went just to sit in air conditioned care for a while, I will say that I got a bit of a hot bottom when I got in the car (I had a dress on that rode up as I got in) our leather seats really do retain the heat.  It was lovely to sit in the cold air for an hour.   I couldn't get out and show my face anywhere though as I had washed my hair early morning and left it up in towel wrap all day, I went to dry it but my goodness it was way too hot to have the dryer blowing on me, so I abandoned that idea and just combed it through,  well when I looked in the mirror in the car I looked like I'd stuck my finger in electric socket!  Why do grey hairs go so unruly, mine are all where the show up  most, along part line and although my hair is poker straight my grey hairs are anything but straight,  sticking up at all angles! 🤣😂

Now on to today's card,  I have a pad of Tim Holtz Kraft-core card that I thought I should use, so I picked the best of the blues available,  spritzed it with water and embossed it with a Spellbinders Snowflake folder, I then used my sanding block and rubbed gently to reveal the Kraft Core, I wanted to enhance it a little so used a Versamark pad to hit the very top of the embossing and added clear embossing powder to give a little extra shine.  I then die cut the sentiment from Kraft card 3 times and stacked them. I added some contrasting blue gems to the centre of some of the snowflakes to finish.  

I hope that you all have a more comfortable day today, 

Love & hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx

Another card using Saturdays Tutorial

Good Monday Morning Ladies,  

Welcome to the start of another week, a lovely warm start too, although we are expecting storms later I believe,  I was flagging by the evening yesterday and I didn't even venture outside after lunch time, it was way too hot. 

Today I am sharing another card that I made using the technique I shared with you on Saturday,   I used blue and green distress inks for this one, used a paintbrush to add the colours to a piece of watercolour card, making sure every bit of white was covered, I then spritzed again, they dried the piece.  Inked up my Embossing folder with Versafine Clair Black ink, spritzed the back of the inked piece (to help getva good emboss). Then add the coloured card to the inked folder and carefully close and run through machine 3 times.  Re-ink if necessary and run through again.                                For this one I lightly (very) glided my clear embossing ink over the very top of the embossing,  **Make sure the ink is dry before adding embossing ink and add anti-static too**                                           I then added clear embossing powder tapped off any unwanted bits and heat set, this gave me shiney little highlights on the very edges of the leaves.                                                                                  To finish the card I added a triple stacked sentiment,  nothing more needed I wanted that background to be the main focus of the card.             I love this technique!!!! 

I hope that you all manage to stay cool and comfortable,  

Love and hugs to all 

Sandra xxx

Your Christmas Cards

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you are all having a lovely weekend,  fingers crossed today will be a little brighter, the sun only showed it's face late afternoon yesterday, the sun just makes such a difference to the day. 

Have you all got anything nice planned today?  We are having another "tick jobs off of the holiday prep list" day. 

Let's have a look at some of your lovely Christmas Challenge cards....

Your Challenge cards 

Karen 

Karen's Description:

1)  Here’s a Christmas card for the challenge 

The sentiment is from the embossing kit I have do ScanNCut So it can be resized and the baubles are Memory Box dies 

I quite like how the font sort of mimics the die xx

2)  A Tim Holtz save on Pinterest I have tried

Two lovely Christmas cards Karen, one from a couple weeks ago but still a source of inspiration so definitely worth sharing again.

Thank you so much for supporting this challenge Karen XXX 

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi, here is my Christmas card for this week

An old digi stamp, I can’t remember where I bought it.

Coloured with the distress pencils and wet paint brush.

I used clear gesso to fix the printing ink, which I have had for sometime, it appears to have gone slightly yellow.

This weeks card is lovely Lilian,  I love the stamp you have used and the Distress Watercolour Pencils have coloured it perfectly.

Thank you so much for the two lovely cards that you made for this challenge 

Maria

Maria's Description:  

Hi Sandra.

Here are a few cards for Sunday. Hope they are ok.

Papers from the Works. Teddy topper, reused from an old Christmas card. The poinsettia die from Temu. 

Three lovely Christmas cards that you made for this challenge Maria, this weeks one are lovely,  the die cut poinsettia is perfect.  The cute bear card is adorable, I love that you used an old card as the focal element of your card. 

Thank you so much for supporting the challenge Maria XXX

Sonia 

Sonia's Description:

Card 1:   I used the Sweet Poppy holly frame stencil, inked with distress oxides, Iced Spruce and Tattered Rose. Stamped the Stampscapes Lakeside Cabin, and the stars from  Lavinia. The sentiment is LOTV

Card 2:  Using the same stamps, mounted in a Gummiapan rectangle die frame.

I definitely thing these cards are worth another share. 

Sonia both these cards are stunning,  that Stampscape stamp is so lovely, thank you for inspiring us XXX 

****************

I hope that you all have a lovely weekend, 

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra 

xxxxxx