My girlfriend convinced me that today was a great day to try to go outside and attend a church rummage sale that we’ve always liked going to.  It’s a church that’s primarily older people, and they always have a really great bake sale, so you know where I spent my time.  My girlfriend buys clothes for all of her grandkids, so she spent her time looking at clothes.  My ankle was starting to swell from standing on concrete, so I put my time into baked goods, where I would get the most bang for my buck (so to speak.)  Rich always loves it when I come home with a bunch of sweets, and this was no exception.

There were stacks of stamping magazines from 1998-2004, and if I had felt better, I might have spent some time looking at them to see if there were any techniques that would be fun to resurrect.  Sadly though, the baked goods won this battle.  My girlfriend shopped and I sat with my foot propped up eating cookies.  It sounds ugly, and it probably was, but I was bored and cookies always make me happy.

When I got home, I decided to learn about mixing watercolors.  I have a set of 24 Koi watercolors, but I think any would do.  I wanted to know if I mix two colors, what will I get.  I know certain colors give me mud, but I thought it would be fun to see what other mixes will make.  So I made a grid and started swatching.  I’m only about half way through the project, and got tired of doing it and was trying to do it with my foot propped, so it was a slow and tedious project.  I think tomorrow will be the perfect day to finish it.

I found a watercolor picture in a consignment store and would like to try the technique, but in a much smaller version.  It was a bird, but the bird is only a pen outline, then inside, the artist watercolored small flowers, leaves, berries, to fill in the bird.  It was really lovely and even if I can’t watercolor it, I should be able to use my peg stamps for the same technique.  The only really difficult part will be drawing the outline of the bird.  I’m not sure if I can make it small enough to turn it into a card, but it would be nifty if I could.  I have stamp set called “A Little Birdie Told Me” that has some cute bird sentiments and they would work perfectly with the drawing.  Let’s hope I can make it.

Cross your fingers, we could be in for a bumpy ride.

I finally started to walk again today.  It’s been a long few days because I couldn’t put any weight on my foot, so no walking.  Rich thinks a wheelchair is something that Evil Knievil used for death defying feats.  He’s a little bit aggressive with it and I’m always glad to get out of it and move around on my own.  I fell last Friday and am only just now seeing the bruises and they are in really odd places.  I have a bruise between two toes as well as one of the bottom of my foot.  My knee has a huge bump and it’s bruised (I expected that), plus the side of my leg is bruised.  I guess my expectation was one on my knee and one on my ankle, but I guess you don’t really know where they will end up when you fall, because you never really know exactly what hit as it happens so fast.  You think you know, but you really have no idea until the bruises start.

I still can’t put my foot on the floor for very long as it starts to swell, so no craft room visits yet.  I feel bad that I haven’t been keeping up with the blog, but what can I say everyday?  I sat around and watched a bunch of videos and looked at a bunch of crafty websites thinking about things to buy that I really don’t need.  I don’t normally watch much television, but have been doing that as well.  I love watching movies that make me feel good, like Two Weeks Notice and Runaway Bride.  So I’ve been finding movies to watch and that catches you up on Life with Sandy.  I’m hoping I’ll be more active in the next few days.

 

I thought it would be fun to watercolor with Ken Oliver’s Liquid Metal.  Used W Plus 9 stamp set called Kind Soul and stamped in with Versafine Onyx Black ink and then used clear embossing powder by Ranger to heat set the image.  I used 4 3/4″ x 6 3/4″ Fabriano hot press watercolor paper for the watercoloring that I bought at A C Moore as well.
I really like how glittery the Ken Oliver Liquid Metals are and wanted to use them for the entire image, so I combined some of the inks to create other colors.  I used the Amethyst,  Verde Gris, Mandarin and Yellow Gold.  I used Royal and Langnickel brushes (that I bought at A C Moore) #1,4 and 5 and a plastic mixing palette that I bought at the Dollar Tree for mixing the inks.  I mixed the mandarin in with the amethyst and got a really interesting color for the insides of my flowers. Then mixed the gold and mandarin for another shade for the centers of my flowers.  After coloring the green leaves, I put a line of the gold through the center of the leaves to change the tone.
After coloring the image, I used the gold to color my background then used a toothbrush and flicked all of the remaining inks in my palette onto the background.  I added water to the inks to make them more flickable (is that a word?) and to lighten them so they weren’t so vibrant.  After everything was dry, I used my envelope punch board from We R Memory Keepers (mine is called a 1 2 3 board) and rounded the corners with it.  I also rounded the corners of my card base that is 10″ across by 7″ tall and scored on the 10″ side at 5″ to create a 5 x 7″ card.  I used the Amethyst Ken Oliver Liquid Metal to color the edges of my card base so once the floral layer is laid with foam tape under it, the edges of the front of the card match the flowers.  I did get some of the purple ink on the back of the card, so I cut a 65 lb piece of white cardstock to 5 x 7″ and rounded the corners then used a tape runner to put tape on the back of the card then lined up the new paper to the back and adhered it.  I used one of my stamps on the back of the card that said “Made by Sandy Parker.”
Inside the card, I found floral cloth tape that I colored with the yellow gold Ken Oliver ink diluted with some water, then heat set it and put a row of it near the bottom of the inside of the card.  I did the same to the back flap of the envelope.
I used Nuvo drops on the centers of my flowers to add some dimension and did this as one of my last steps so I didn’t get my hand in it.
I talked about the stamp show that I was going to go to in Akron, Ohio, but unfortunately, tripped and sprained my ankle so could not attend.
I think this is a very versatile card and I’m going to add a sympathy sentiment in the inside, but could be used for a thinking of you card or simply hello.

I thought Rich would have my latest video uploaded today, but we had a bad thunderstorm, and he lost everything he uploaded, so he promises that tomorrow the new video will be live.

I’m starting to get a little bit stir crazy from inactivity, so gave myself a project today.  I took the journal I made for my new Touch 5 markers and put them in color order and then swatched each color in the journal.  I think it will help me to know what colors to pull when I decide I want to do a certain color scheme.  It’s definitely a lot easier than trying to determine what’s what when looking at the caps of the pens.  Whoever came up with that plan didn’t have the eyes of an older lady, that’s for sure.  (Older lady, ha, only physically…mentally I’m about twelve!)

The swatching took hours and I discovered I had two duplicate colors, so my 168 markers are really only 166, but still a good price for that many markers.

I really want to get out of this chair and start walking, but my ankle won’t hold my body weight, and I’m not sure how long it will take until it does.  Tomorrow, I think I’ll have Rich roll the wheelchair into the craft room and see if it’s possible to play there.  If it’s not, at least I’ll have given it a try and won’t feel like I do right now…like a total slug.  I guess I could read, but I’m not really in the mood to do that either.  Maybe I should try to move some of my partially completed projects into the room I’m currently occupying, and see if I can finish things that are in mid-production.  Oh who am I kidding, if I can’t get the wheelchair to my desk, I’m not doing anything crafty…so let’s all cross our fingers that I can fit the chair through the doorway and past my hoarded mess to get to my desk.

You’d think that by now I would be great at just sitting around and doing almost nothing.  Not the case.  I’m bored and frustrated and it’s only been three days.  I can’t wait to get back on my feet again and get into the craft room and make some cards or play with the oxide inks.  I am going to master them, it’s just a matter of time.

I was going to read all day yesterday, but then got hooked on looking at aliexpress.com and all of the different things they sell there.  It’s unbelievable how inexpensively they sell dies.  I realize that there is a long wait period for the things I buy from them, but it will be like a little surprise when I finally start getting things.  I just have to make sure I don’t buy the same things twice (which I have a tendency to do.)

Rich has another video that he’s going to edit today and will go live tomorrow.  I almost forgot that I made the card (even though I made it on Thursday)–that’s how my memory works.  He mentioned the video he was going to edit and I didn’t even remember making that card.  How crazy am I?

The dogs have really been enjoying holding me captive in one spot.  They know exactly where to find me and lay on the floor or on the loveseat (beside me) that I cover with a blanket so their hair isn’t everywhere.  Honey believes she is the queen of the house and that she’s allowed on all furniture, even though she has to get down when she chooses unwisely.

The weather has been rainy since my fall, so I haven’t really been tempted to go outside.  I do wish I could find more things to keep me entertained.  It could be so much worse, and I think I was really fortunate that my ankles’ only sprained and the knot on my knee has gone down.  Life is good, just a little bit boring.

It wasn’t a very good night last night, as I couldn’t put any weight on my foot, so this morning, we decided I better have things X-rayed.  The doctor said that my ankle was sprained and my knee had a bad bruise, but I would live to fight another day.  Of course he didn’t say that, but don’t you wish they would?

They put a gel brace on my ankle and an ace bandage on my knee and sent me on my way.  They also threw in that I shouldn’t put any weight on it until at least Tuesday.  Now for other people it’s not as big of a deal as it is for me, because I can’t use crutches.  So I have to use a wheelchair and some weird space age crutches that have handles on them that look like they can be used with a rocket pack on my back.  Now that would be a much better system..a rocket pack instead of trying to hold onto a handle that Velcro’s to my forearms.  These crutches aren’t exactly safe, but then again, they were made for me in 1987, so they weren’t really made with safety in mind.

I try not to use the crutches if I can avoid them, so the next few days I’ll be hanging around, reading, watching videos and uploading ones that have already been finished.  Luckily I have a couple of videos ready to upload, so there shouldn’t be a big gap between them.

I looked at my ankle today and although I don’t have any bruises on it, I do have a big bruise between two toes.  Isn’t is weird when you have absolutely no idea where a bruise might have originated from…I’m finding it odd that the ankle is the only thing that really hurts, but the bruise is nowhere near it.  The best thing is I now have my own private nurse.  Honey thinks she should lick my foot every time she walks by.  She doesn’t normally lick my foot, but then again, I don’t normally have an ice pack on it.  I think she’s taking stock of the situation and deciding what needs done.  The one thing that I will really benefit from, is if she decides to stop trying to lay on my bad ankle when I’m laying in bed.  She’s a real character.

I went to a bunch of garage and rummage sales today and didn’t really find much that I loved.  An elderly man was serious about selling us anything in his garage. Actually, he wanted to give most of it to me.  In the end, I bought a small garbage can that was completely full and had boxes of Velcro on top, as well as a big bag of safety pins, and he only wanted a quarter for it.  I felt so bad for him and his quest to empty his garage, that I bought the garbage can.  On the way home, I went through the can with my girlfriend making fun of the bunion pads, moleskin, ankle braces, patches for clothes, fake pockets (that I’d never heard of) and the list goes on and on.  Up to and including a new 46D bra of which I found no use for, but did giggle that he thought someone else would want a bra.  Needless to say, the can had a few things that were of value, but I didn’t discover it’s true value until I got home.

I had carried most of my purchases in the house–dog toys and some Chai tea that I needed to get myself through a day of garage sales.  I decided to go back to the garage for the garbage can full of goodies, and tripped on a hose, ran my head into the wall, my elbow into a car, bounced my knee off the cement floor and twisted my ankle.  The absolute worst part of the experience was seeing the look on Rich’s face when he saw what I had done.  He looked like he was about ready to have a heart attack, it’s just horrible to witness.

He picked me up off the floor and I knew I had sprained my ankle in the hose, but honestly, didn’t know what to expect, as I’ve never sprained my ankles in 57 years.  Odd right?

We decided the first order of business was to put ice packs everywhere, so Rich went into doctor mode.  He needed an ace bandage, and guess which Girl Scout was prepared?  Oh yeah, there was a brand new Ace bandage in my little garbage can.  Problem solved.  Apparently there was a good reason I bought the garbage can full of goodies, and I just didn’t know what it was.

The reason for this story is that I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to go to the stamp show tomorrow and I am SO disappointed.  I was really looking forward to going.  Rich did offer to go and push me around in the wheelchair (because he is that good to me), but I’m anticipating that the knot on my knee will be worse tomorrow and my ankle will probably not be pretty either.  Sometimes it’s extremely frustrating being clumsy.  Darn it.

 

I have a really nifty stamp set from Hero Arts called Sea Life that also includes dies and I wanted to use the sentiment that references jelly fish, so I stamped a jelly fish in Cameo Coral Stampin’ Up ink and  Dusty Durango Stampin’ Up ink on the second layer of stamping.  I used the Vagabond to cut the jelly fish out and stamped some coral with the same colors and cut them out as well with the Vagabond to embellish the front of the card.  I used a plastic bag and cut it to fit inside my 5 x 7″ card (it’s 10″ scored at 5″ x 7″).
I have a big fish background stamp from Whipper Snapper called Under the Sea and stamped it side by side so it was wide enough to show through the oval of the card.  I used a Creative Memories cutting system to trim out the oval, but you could use dies, or trace an oval shape and then cut it out with scissors.  I colored my underwater background with my new Touch 5 markers and listed the colors in the video and on the video screen.  After I was finished coloring the fish, I used my 1″ chip brush to add a blue background with Stampin’ Up Pool Party ink.  The gel is LA Colors and is from the Dollar Tree and I like it because it has bubbles in it and they show up on the card.  I used a machine that seals the plastic bag called a Magic Sealer that you can buy anywhere, but here’s a link on ebay to view the options.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xmagic+sealer.TRS0&_nkw=magic+sealer&_sacat=0

Even though I seal the bag with this sealer, I still go around the edges with a couple layers of scotch tape to ensure the gel doesn’t leak in shipping.  I also laid a piece of foam over the front of the card to ensure it didn’t get punctured in shipping.  I used a couple of tablespoons of hair gel in the bag as you only want enough to make sure that you see gel when you look through the window, but don’t have a puffy bag as it increases the chances for the gel to leak.  I added tear tape to the four sides of the bag and stuck it inside the oval card and then put a layer along the bottom to ensure the card is sealed closed.  Then I added my embellishments and my sentiment on the outside of the card.  I saved one of the coral for the inside of the card and stamped little jellyfish with a marker inside the card and on the envelope.  I used Peach Parfait and Poppy Parade colored Stampin’ Up water based markera to ink the stamps.  I used a Simon Says Stamp called You Matter for the inside sentiment and inked it with Versafine Onyx Black ink.  The card base was also 5 x 7″ and I added a lot of tear tape to the front of it to ensure that the gel piece stayed put.  You could make the gel layer 1/4″ smaller so you could see the white layer.  I used Recollections 110 lb. white cardstock for my base as it is a sturdy paper and would hold the heavy piece with the gel inside.

Sometimes, I just like to make a card that I know will work well.  Other times, I’m willing to experiment and risk having a major fail.  Tonight I wanted to do something that was almost certainly going to work.  I have Ken Oliver Liquid Metallics and I thought it would be really fun to use them as watercolors, so I picked a large floral image and used black ink and heat set it, then went crazy watercoloring.  I really love to watercolor and those metallics are so much fun that I decided to keep the long coloring portion of the video on regular speed.  I’ve been asking Rich to speed through coloring, but sometimes I think people want to watch the long version.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I know I like watching coloring, so maybe others do as well.

The card looked ok, but then I decided to use a toothbrush to flick the leftover inks out of my palette.  It went like I expected.  I flicked ink all over my work surface and some actually hit the card as well.  I had to laugh because when I looked at the desktop, it was covered in ink.  I’m so used to the crazy mistakes that I make, it doesn’t even faze me anymore.  Oh, I forgot one last mishap.  I used the foam tape that sticks to everything and took the backing off of it and “thought” I laid it out of the way of my work.  No, not the case.  I accidentally attached the card base to the foam tape then after retrieving that mess, I tossed the tape runner out of my way and it landed directly in the center of the exposed foam tape.  So long story short, the foam tape is now attached to not only me, but the tape runner and, oh, yeah, the envelope ended up in the Nuvo drops I put on the front of the card.  Sometimes I wonder how I accomplish anything, haha.

I’m still fretting about the oxide inks, but have decided that when the time is right and my patience is high, I’ll be ready to try them again.  In the meantime, I made a fun and pretty card that I’m pretty happy with.

I saw Jennifer McGuire make cards that were similar to these, by using her paper shredder and cutting thin strips. I thought it would be really fun to use my guillotine paper trimmer to create similar strips of paper. When you do this process, you need to remember that when you lay your paper on a diagonal, you have to be careful to ensure your strips will be long enough and that you cover all the way to the edges of the card with the strip. If you still see white, you need to either add more card stock or move your strip to cover it, or in my case, trim your front once you are finished. My card base was 4″ across and I used strips that were 5 1/2″ long. Some will not be long enough if you make your diagonals steep, so you might need to piece papers together if you make that mistake. Another option is to use longer paper strips to avoid having to piece them on the ends.

I used a Xyron machine to turn my strips into stickers, but you can use any kind of glue to attach them to your base. I started with 80 lb white card stock that was 4″ x 5 1/4″ and then laid my strips in rainbow order. Rainbow order is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, lavender and purple. The only color I did not use was orange, but stuck to the order anyway.
After attaching my strips, I turned the white paper over and trimmed all of the edges then laid the “You” from Simon Says Stamp You Matter stamp set die on the paper where I thought I would like it and then used my Vagabond to cut it out. Make sure you keep the piece of paper that cuts from the loop of the “Y”, as you’ll need to reinsert it into your project. I used additional sentiments from the same stamp set and stamped them on the card front with Versafine Onyx Black ink and then used Ranger clear embossing powder over it and heat set it.
Take a piece of scrap paper and lay it on the back of the paper where you cut out the “You” and make sure you really coat it with tape runner, so the You will attach to it and stay in place. Then die cut another You out of yellow card stock so it shows well on the background and lay it in place and take the loop from the first die cut of the Y and put it inside the yellow die cut on the card base. Then put three rows of foam tape on the back to make it stand up on the card.
I used 110 lb. Recollections white card stock that was 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ and scored on the 8 1/2″ length at 4 1/4″ and color the sides with a matching ink which in my case was Distress Oxide Fossilized Amber on the first card and regular Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink on the second card. Additionally on the second card, I cut out the Enjoy die from Hampton Arts Enjoy Stamp set and the words Happy Birthday from Stampendous Say it Today.
This is a fun and easy card to make and by changing the colors, you can make it look more masculine or feminine.