Crafty As L

Since Mikey Mouse put in appearance here , I’ve been having a great time with the Spellbinders Say Cheese Classic Mouse sets.   I made this card for another friend who is sadly starting treatment for cancer.   I rearranged the arms, attempting to make it look like Mr Mouse is flexing his bicep!   The background was decorated with Arden’s Maker’s Marks. There is also a lady Mouse in the set so I’ve been combining the two to make wedding and anniversary cards.   The anniversary card was just a straight die-cutting exercise – the most challenging bit was getting all the letters onto the card front!   For the wedding cards, I made her skirt from real silk by using double sided adhesive sheet to adhere the fabric to thin card.    It needed a few passes through the Big Shot but worked fine.   The adhesive sheet also helped prevent the fabric fraying at the cut edges.   To get the mice to hold hands, I had to chop and change the arms a bit. ...

When Spellbinders recently released the Say Cheese Classic Mouse collection and I watched Tim Holtz having a play with them, I decided I needed them in my stash.   They are so cute!   Disney are very strict about copyright so I was surprised to see these until I discovered that they are based upon the Steamboat Willie characters, which were released from copyright into the public domain  worldwide earlier this year. I was making this card for a male friend’s birthday – it’s great to have another set that I can easily use for bloke’s cards.   There are several arm variations and a couple of tail options so I selected which to use and did all my die-cutting first. The dies cut really well and have debossed areas to indicate where to line up the various parts.   The section to make the tongue is marked ‘mouth’ which is very handy too.   That would have had me scratching my head for a while! Assembly was very straightforward and within a couple of minutes...

A major contributing factor to my recent arm problems have been using a computer mouse at work.  Admittedly, my mouse technique may have some room for improvement but a quick Google search for “computer elbow pain” reveals that ‘computer elbow’ is a thing.  Symptoms are the same as tennis or golfer’s elbow, or if you’re really unfortunate, both simultaneously.  I’m really unfortunate!  I had heard of these two conditions but had no idea how painful they are – until now.  The problem is typically caused by the repeated small, gripping movements needed when holding the mouse coupled with holding the arm in a fixed position for extended periods, often quite unconsciously.  Adding to the problem is that using a conventional mouse twists the arm 90° from its natural resting position which puts further strain on the muscles and tendons in the forearm.  I am in no way a medical professional but I have read a lot recently in an attempt to help myself to a) u...