Crafty As L

  Still no real improvement in my arm this week so, yet again, no crafting but here's a little project I did a few weeks ago.  Romantic themes aren’t usually my crafting style but I seem to have inadvertently gone all romantic with these tags this week! The Botanical Bliss tags dies consist of 3 tag toppers, 2 edge cutters and a leafy branch.  There’s also a coordinating stamp set which has some useful sentiments.  I was immediately drawn to the birds, thinking they’d look great silhouetted against an inked sky.  However, since I’ve done a lot of silhouettes lately, I decided to challenge myself with the flower instead. Rather than a straight forward strung tag, I wanted to try a folded tag.  The dies are designed to be used on 2” wide strips of card for tags or bookmarks.  As I wanted my card to fold, I needed the card to extend either side of the die so my card was 3” x 5½” in Bushing Bride.  I marked a pencil line at 2¾” and also marked the edges of the cutting lines on the di

  My right arm has continued to be troublesome and achy so I’ve still been unable to craft this week.  It has been driving me crazy not being able to create!!  The physio has given me different exercises this week and I think they are slowly starting to make a difference. Instead of crafting, I’ve been focused on ‘eating clean’ and getting at least 30 minutes of exercise every day (spurred on by my latest read, The Exercise Cure by Jordan Metzl, MD).  I have an auto-immune based arthritis and changing to a Paleo diet a few years ago put my symptoms into remission.  You know what it’s like though – I started to feel better so being as strict with my diet slipped a little…. then a little more.  The physio has determined that the pain in my wrist is arthritic so that’s made me focus on what I can do to help myself again.  We’ve upped our fruit and vegetable intake to about 8-9 portions a day and I’ve been very strict about no dairy as I know that my body doesn’t tolerate it very well.  Mr

I’m happy to report that I’m out of the sling this week although nowhere near back to normal yet 😞 The few days in the sling allowed my muscles to calm down enough so that the weight of my arm was bearable again.  This week I’ve had some physio and acupuncture and I’ve got this really jazzy strapping helping me out. However, I still can’t use my right hand for very long until my arm starts to hurt so I thought I’d challenge my left hand to some everyday tasks!  The first was writing.  Well, I struggled to even hold the pen to begin with! My pages of alphabet look like they were written by a 6-year old but at least they look like letters.  My blog posts and photo editing is also all being done left handed, albeit slowly, but I have learned some useful keyboard shortcuts. So, then I turned my attention to crafting and what I could make that would be simple, forgiving and hopefully not too frustrating.  I had some 2” strips of card left over from another project that I’d saved for tag

  Unfortunately, this week I have found myself needing a sling.  I’ve had pain in my wrist for some time but now have pain in my elbow and muscle soreness in my upper arm too.  The arm in question is my right which my dominant side so it’s quite a challenge to rest it.  Whilst I await further medical treatment, I figured the best way to stop me using the arm and causing more pain was to put it in a sling.  I tried the basic triangle sling out of the first aid kit but it was very uncomfortable so I decided to make my own.  Fingers crossed you won’t need this but should you ever be in need of a sling, here’s how I made mine. Disclaimer: I have no medical training – use at your own discretion! First, I measured from the outside of my bent elbow to the middle of my little finger and added 4” onto this measurement.  I don’t think there’s any rule about how high to have the sling so I went for about 6½”  and added on 1½” for seam allowance and boxing the elbow area. I cut out 2 rectangles

  Brusho is a watercolour pigment which is supplied in small drums of crystalline powder.  The powder is very vivid and a little goes a long way – often beyond your project and half way across your desk!!  The powder can be mixed with water to use as a traditional watercolour medium or can be used with sprayers and brushes to create a unique mix of hues and patterns.  This second use interested me for making backgrounds for my cards. Warning! It’s quite a messy business.  Cover your desk with some scrap paper and if you don’t want multi-coloured fingers for a few hours, wear gloves. I had chosen mainly blues with a purple and black as I wanted to create night sky inspired works.  The pots arrived and were identical in their anonymity!  The colour names were written on the pots but I thought it would make life easier if the actual colours were displayed on the pots.  I mixed up a tiny amount of each powder with a little cold water and painted a patch of each colour onto some sticky la