An Anniversary And A Love Affair

Today Lovely Man and I celebrated our 7th Anniversary!  Well I say celebrated... poor man arrived home from a 12 hour night shift, we exchanged gifts had tea and toast and then he slept (or tried to) and I kept quiet (at least I tried to!).  Anyway he bought me the perfect card and gift and we have made a date to go spend some time together just as soon as we get a day off together!!  Now I did mention a love affair too didn't I?  You see I have developed this crush on.....Modge Podge!  Yes it stinks and yes it's messy but by 'eck you can do some real cool stuff with it! 

Around 2 a.m. this morning (I forget to go to bed when L.M. isn't here) I was browsing Etsy like you do and I found some beautiful decorated light switch covers.  Now it's not that I'm cheap, the lady who makes them wasn't exactly charging a lot ( $10 each) but I am rather impatient and generally stuff takes around three weeks to get here from the U.S.  Added to that I wanted them to 'go' with stuff I had already done for the bedroom (Remember the Bird pics I did?).  So this morning I made this.....

Ta daaaaa.....

The pictures don't do them justice, the light is awful and I couldn't find my tripod but you get the idea!  So now I want to do all the light switches in the house!  But for tonight I have stopped as it seems I have gotten past myself, not exactly sure what that means but it's an expression my mother used to pull out whenever my brother or I got overtired and started making a mess of things.  So far this evening I have up ended a whole cup of water over my entire stock of red mulberry paper (the last I have) AND a set of prints that I so carefully prepared on good paper to make toppers for cards!  To try and save the day (and hasten the drying in the hope I could actually get the cards made) I tried to iron each sheet only to have it curl up.  So now it is all sandwiched between two heavy books in the hope that it will flatten out over night.  I also have a muslin 'sack' of cooked grapes for grape jelly hanging from the cupboard door draining into a pan, but for tonight I think I'm gonna leave it just in case I mess that up too!

We Have Created A Monster!

Almost a month since my last post and you could all be forgiven for thinking I haven't been doing much at all, and you would be that far from the truth as far as my personal creativity is concerned.  Life has a habit of doing a U-turn every now and then.  Last year, our first year in Canada, we had very little work between us.  Lovely Man struggled with the bureaucracy of the College of Nurses Ontario to get his registration done, I took odd jobs and tried to make a living from my art and craft.  Now suddenly I have two jobs, working six days per week and Lovely Man is getting hospital work.  To top it all suddenly everyone wants my Aprons and they want them now!  Not that I am complaining, I am so happy people like my stuff but I was starting to get very twitchy.  I wasn't getting anything done for me.  All the fall decorations I had planned didn't happen and I haven't put paintbrush to canvas for at least 3 months.
So today I did a deal with myself.  If I got one apron finished this morning then I could have the rest of the day doing stuff for me!

I have been keenly following The Graphics Fairy, especially Brag Monday, and many others all of whom seem to be a dab hand with fabric, freezer paper and an ink jet printer!  Now I bought some freezer paper nearly three years ago and I dragged it all the way over here with me but I never got around to using it!  I suddenly realised I was actually nervous to do it in case I wrecked my printer! Ha!  So after giving myself a good talking to, along the lines of "for heavens sake the world and their Uncle have been doing this successfully get on with it", I got on with it!  And just look what I made!  I took a pumpkin print from the Graphic Fairy, I made a background in Photoshop and overlaid said pumpkin, printed it on calico and with a bit of beige wool fabric made this lovely cushion.

 

And it didn't stop there!  I also found some sheet music and these pretty birds and flowers, also courtesy of the Graphics Fairy, layered them in Photoshop, printed them and put them in very cheap (but nice) frames from Dollarama.  Total cost per picture?  Around $1.50... Suzanne  would be so proud of me!  Excuse the bad lighting it was late but I was excited to share!

Ok so now I am off to make some fabric pumpkins....Happy Thanksgiving!