Can I start by saying thank you for stopping by and reading my blog.  I am not very prolific at the moment, either with my crafting or my blogging and I know that there are a lot of people who come here looking for inspiration and I’m not showing up an awful lot at the moment.

Right now, most of my energy is going into other things like helping Adrian sort out his parents house, being his emotional support and helping him deal with everything that comes with that.  It’s tiring stuff and one thing I learned during my few months of illness earlier this year – there has to be plenty of rest to balance that or exhaustion will set in and lead to more health problems.  Remember the Mars bar slogan – ‘work, rest and play’ – well it’s my goal in life to get those three in perfect balance.  I’m a work in progress …

I have been fitting in some journaling and using little pockets of time to play with no purpose or goal in mind. I’m not finishing much so my ‘bits box’ has spilled over from one drawer to two with lots  of unfinished projects and random experiments.  I did manage to finish a Christmas card last week – this uses the same embossing powder technique that I wrote about in October’s Craft Stamper.

I used Ruby Romance and Silver Wow embossing powders with a Prima damask mask, then used a mixture of our clear stamps for the sentiment (Best Relative Ever for the label shape and Warm Christmas Greetings).  Instead of flipping it over, I just lifted the mask off and  you can see a little fuzziness which is from the powder that spilled through as I was lifting it.

I also made a couple of tags while trying out the Vintaj Patina kit.  The paint is designed to be used on metal, but I tried it on black tags and loved the rich metallic finish they give.

I used a mix of gold and silver on both, then when dry I embossed the images from Gothic Fragments with black embossing powder and used Copic markers to add some colour.  As the markers are transparent, the metallic colour shines through and gives the colours a wonderful glow.  The patina colour is super rich and when spritzed with water or spray inks, the metallic particles dance around and break up into very interesting patterns.  It’s on my list to get to know this product a bit better and I really need to try it out on textured surfaces.

Some days when I have the time to create, but the muse has gone a-wandering, I simply paint background pages in my journal.  I have three journals on the go at the moment, so I work on all three, usually using a credit card to scrape a thin layer of paint onto the background.  By the time I’ve done the third one, the first one is dry enough to tackle another page so I can get a few done in one session.  It’s usually a good mojo-buster if you’ve got the crafting blues – just sloshing paint around randomly is good for you.  I’ll often have a stack of tags or paper to hand and if  I like the colour combinations I’ll do a few tags too.

I have a ‘journaling drawer’ full of words and images I’ve cut out from magazines, together with papers, doilies, stickers, etc so I always have lots of journal fodder to go at when I feel like making a page.  It never ceases to amaze me how the words I cut out six months ago can be so relevant just when I need them.  I also use alphabet stamps to stamp out my own phrases and words.  When I’m tired though, I don’t ‘harvest’ images or words from magazines.  I always prefer to do that when I am fresh otherwise I miss the good stuff.

Here’s a page I made recently (click on it for a larger view).

I used paint, a random collage of magazine pages, stencils, wrapping paper, hole reinforcers, stickers and an old greeting card to make this page.  The card is stuck down and sealed on three sides to create a pocket for the tag which is stamped with the words ‘PLAY IS SACRED’.

And if I need any advice on getting that ‘work, rest and play’ balance, then of course I have the perfect consultant for the rest and play part of the equation.

Cue Trillian …

Well I figured a 16 hour long video of a typical day’s napping would be a bit much – even with her infinite number of mind boggling optical illusion poses!