It's only a piece of paper

When I first had the chance to have a crafty play following my accident I knew I wanted to do two things: to lay down loads of colour (preferably very bright colour) and to use the new stamps that were to be released by Chocolate Baroque.

Glenda was assisting with my play time therapy (!) and had the brilliant idea of taping down a piece of A3 paper and then masking this off into four separate areas.  I now had several blank canvases to colour and had a wonderful time with inks, sponges, water sprays and distress stains. I had nothing planned, no firm ideas of what I wanted to achieve.  Let's face it when you are using your wrong hand and you haven't crafted for a long time you can't be structured. And I have to say that just working without definition was amazingly cathartic. 

Within a couple of hours I had four backgrounds all nicely dried out and ready for stage two - stamping. Again I had no preconceived ideas, just a little trepidation. I wasn't sure how good my stamping was going to be and I didn't want to ruin the backgrounds.  Until I told myself "it's only a piece of paper, stop being precious about it". As soon as I accepted that I stamped away with much more freedom and had four pieces of work that I was really pleased with..

Now how many of us get hung up about messing up not only our work but other areas of our life? Perhaps if we all approached things with less fear of doing it wrong we would enjoy the process more and maybe even produce something better than we thought. I am not suggesting that if you have a job that requires much precision and an eye for detail that you throw your bonnet to the wind and go at it haphazardly.  Just cut yourself some slack a little once in a while and enjoy the moment.

Here is one of the products of that day.

This was also the day I discovered how much I could achieve with my left hand.  I approve of my new found freedom.How about you?

I'll be back soon to tell you how I made this, suffice to say I used the new Chocolate Baroque Edges, and also to share another project close to my heart.
Lesley

Creating the (Im)Possible

Following on from my last post I would love to be able to tell you that everything is moving on a pace, however in reality all that has happened is that I have swopped a plaster cast for an arm brace; same form of torture just a different piece of equipment. And instead of my arm being fixed at right angles to my body it is now at 45 degrees. If you were looking at me as though I were a clock the time would be 2 o'clock - my forearm being the little hand! As I recently commented to my buddies on the Chocolate Baroque Design Team the humour of the inmates in the plaster room of the fracture clinic is not lost on me!

Anyway, still with a positive attitude, I have being pushing myself  to cope with everyday life single left handedly.  So far I can report that in the last week I have dressed myself unaided, well almost (couldn't quite manage to pull my boots on), washed my own hair (long and very wet process), cut my hubby's hair (safely and without ear loss) and...sound the trumpets TA DAH... crafted!!  The card below is testement to that; the only thing I didn't do was cut out the die cuts and the matting, layering and final assembly. I had superb assistance from Glenda in that regard. But I did do the stamping and the embossing (after Glenda had added EP that is) and all the colouring and background tinting.

The card was made using Rose Stem Script which is Chocolate Baroque's Stamp of the Week.  I stamped with Brilliance Graphite Black and embossed with clear powder - you can do this if you (or your good friend) are quick. I then coloured the image with Copics, tinted the background with PanPastels Violet Tint and the edges with Violet. This was then mounted onto coloured cardstock, with the scallops being cut from the same card using Spellbinders Blossom and Tag Accents and attached to a slim card. A small circle was punched out from white card, cut in half and added to the scalloped edges. And finally..... I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

So when you feel that things are impossible remember the advert for American Express "impossible is two letters too long" - I think I'm well on the way to agreeing with them.

Lesley