AECP Card 5 – Altenew All About Layering 3 Lesson 5
I used an Altenew zero waste die with ink blending stencils to colour and die cut the flowers. The background die is a Concord & 9th set from an SCT Crop and Create workshop. I opted to leave most of the leaf and heart stitched shapes showing and covered up the balloon portion because I didn’t think it went with the floral theme. I made an extra background using the coordinating die cuts which I’ll use for a future card.
I thought the ink blending went fairly well, although I didn’t love the centres of some of the flowers, but fortuntely there were some bright yellow starbursts / tiny flowers to go into the centres. I wasn’t quite sure how to place the sentiment. I liked it lower but didn’t love a bit of open white under the big flower in the centre so I opted to move the sentiment higher and to add in some half pearl embellishments.
I would have liked to have had a bit more greenery so I could have added more near the bottom of the card; I find the current greenery arrangement a bit top heavy.
The card example from All About Layering 3 course – Lesson 5 from which I took the inspiration for using a background die. The die I used just had stitching with no cutouts. It will be nice to try a white diecut image on a white background as well, particularly a soft, curvy, lace-like pattern like the one in this sample card; most if not all of my coverplate dies are more graphic in design. Given the coverplate I used I opted for a centred single floral spray rather than having two sprays with the sentiment in the middle which is quite a nice look in this example card. The rounded coverplate die helps seems ground the floral sprays very well. I may try to create two floral sprays on the other background I made.
Maintenance on Monday
I was awoken this morning to the intermittent beeping of the smoke detector. Luckily the battery lasted through to today so it just disturbed my sleep rather than the sleep of 5 more people who were staying up at the cottage with me on Friday or Saturday night for our ladies weekend.
It was definitely a very chilly morning. Thankfully there was no wind. A preview of how I’ll look when my hair and eyelashes turn grey!
And so, on this morning’s walk I reflected on the need for regular maintenance of the things around us. And, like the beeping to signify the low battery, that there are warning signs for many of those things when maintenance is required; that the batteries need to be charged or replaced. Or if there is not a warning sign, there are maintenance schedules that we follow. We bring our cars in for oil changes and scheduled maintenance. The little stickers that they put up on our windshields with the approximate date and kilometres of your next maintenance are very helpful. Sometimes we need to get a new car battery so that it will start on frosty mornings because the routine recharging as we drive isn’t quite enough to get the battery to turn over on those really cold days even if we plug the car’s block heater in overnight. We change our furnace filters and have them inspected. I try to book our dog Luna’s next mani-pedi while her nails are being clipped and dremelled.
And we should be doing regular maintenance on ourselves. What self-care habits to you currently have? Might it be time to add a few more into your repretoire? Might it be time to block some time off on your calendar to maintain your own body, mind or spirit. I am so glad that I’m really focusing on reestablishing some regular maintenance habits like swimming, morning walks, one&done workouts. I consider this recent weekend with some girlfriends a wonderful way to recharge my batteries. And, I am already working on scheduling another short getaway with some girlfriends.
AECP Card 4: Altenew All About Layering 3 Lesson 4
I was very happy with how this card came out. I had done the ink blending over the embossed image a few days ago. Then fussy cut it out another day as well as pondered how I would like to lay it out. So, all I had to do tonight was to actually trim and glue the flowers onto the card front and add a sentiment. And, of course, I like to add an inner layer with a stamped image to the inside of the card, to stamp the back of the card and to decorate the envelope. The stamping involved creating masks for the flower and leaf images. I opted to use some removable doublesided tape on the back of the masking paper rather than to peel off the backing. It seems to mask well and I think makes the masked image more sturdy and reusable.
The first placement on the card front. Then I trimmed off the extra to be used on the other side of the card.I tried the sentiment on the right side, but opted for the left side to enable some of the flowers trimmed off from the top to be added to the side.I preferred the sentiment on the right-hand side because it allowed me to add move flowers down the left-hand side of the card.I had to create some masks to make it easier to add leaves to the stamped images on the back of the card as well as the inside of the card and onto the front and the back of the envelope.I ‘cheated’ and just stamped one image on the envelope. It’s big enough that some of it was on the front of the envelope and the rest of it was on the back.The inspiration card from All About Layering 3 Lesson 4. I do like the bigger, bolder sentiment as well as the black outline on the staamped images. It definitely looks different than the card that I made. It has a different type of dimension created by layering die cut leaves behind the die cut flowers whereas the card I made gets its dimension from the 3D embossing folder.
Shovelling on Sunday
Many hands make light work. Although it may have seemed like it was a lot of work to shovel out one of the non-4WD cars that had parked out by the mailboxes on the municipal road, it actually went very quickly and didn’t really feel like work with all of us chipping in. A few of us walked the few kilometres out on the cottage road while 2 drove out with the shovels. And, before we knew it the car was cleared and all evidence of the snowplow snowbanks that had surrounded the car had been tossed into the snowbanks and it looked as if we hadn’t even parked a car there.
The beautiful snow is definitely worth the effort it takes to clear off vehicles, shovel off driveways and dig out from around cars when necessary; especially when working as a team together. In addition to some walking, shovelling and snowshoeing we also did a bit of yoga and made a bit of progress on the jigsaw puzzle. And had a delicious breakfast and a late lunch before everyone except me heading home. I opted to stay up at the cottage and did a bit of cardmaking and will soon to heading straight to bed.
Many hands makes light work!I didn’t get into the photo with enough time to get into the right position. It was fun to do a class YouTube yoga class together.Of course there were flowers to celebrate our friends’ recent retirement!
It is always so amazing to wake up on a snowy morning at the cottage. The view from the sliding door of our bedroom is always wonderful but it is particularly beautiful when the trees are all snow covered and there is still some snow gently falling.
We had a great breakfast then set out for some snowshoeing. 4 of us stuck with the trails through the woods which were terrific and 2 headed down to the lake. Another friend arrived about 3:00 and we shuttled one car out (it wasn’t 4 wheel drive as I had thought so we figured we might as well drive it out to leave at the mailboxes today rather than tomorrow. We made some reasonable progress on the puzzle and had a few fun games of Bananagrams and Codenames after our delicious fondue dinner.
This was a card I made about a month ago for a friend whose husband passed away quite after a very short illness. Her daughter is a good friend of my daughter. So Heidi and I did a bit of baking and I made this card for them. I don’t quite remember the techniques that I used. But I do like the stamp set and I will definitely be making more cards with it as I work my way through the AECP program during this years 100dayproject. I believe I used black versafine ink for the outline image which I heat embossed with clear embossing powder. I think it was a layering stencil rather than a layering stamp. Before making that card I had experimented using some watercolour markers to colour in the outline stamped image.
Streak Freeze Friday
I decided pretty early this morning that DuoLingo’s streak freeze idea was a good one. Rather than throw a streak totally out the window when you miss a day or two, give yourself some grace and just use a streak freeze to carry you through until you can pick it up again.
I had opted for a 7:30 swim before heading up to the cottage. So no morning walk with Luna, no no chance to write any words in my 750words website account in the morning, no time to draft a blog post, no time for crafting in the day. But plenty of time for grocery shopping and a few other errands on the way up. And some time for some basic cottage cleaning before 5 friends started to arrive. Then it was time for a leisurely charcuterie dinner and to start a puzzle before heading to bed. I am so glad I declared it streak freeze Friday very early on. No 1 km run. No one&done. No card making (although I may do a wee bit of planning of which stamp sets, stencils and other supplies I will use for some of my upcoming projects). But, best of all, no fretting about trying to cram too much into my day, no fretting about missing a day or two of my ‘daily’ habits. Just lots of time to enjoy getting ready for the weekend and enjoying the weekend. And, most importantly of all, hopefully an easy resumption of those habits after my girls weekend. But I will do a quick DuoLingo lesson before turning off the lights, just so I don’t have to use a Streak Freeze for every habit streak today.
AECP Card 3 | Spellbinders Door 23 | For my Best Pal
Below is my AECP card 3 (All About Layering Three – lesson 3) which I combined with using the dies from the 23th door of my Spellbinders Advent Calendar. Just one more card to make using the cute die that came in Door 24. This has been such a fun project to do along with my friend, Shelli.
AECP Card 3 (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 3) | Spellbinders Advent Calendar Door 23The inspiration for my Day 3 (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 3) card
In an ideal world, I’d have a finished Day 4 and Day 5 to share as well today, but that’s not the case. And I would already have typed up my thoughts about this Day 3 card, but that’s not the case either. I did make pretty good progress on my Day 4 (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 4) card and may be able to finish it over the weekend. But I’m leaving early tomorrow to head to the cottage for a girls weekend and don’t expect I’ll have much, if any, time to craft.
A good start to my Day 4 card (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 4)Barely a start, but still a start to my Day 5 card (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 5)
Thrown Off Thursday
I didn’t get up until about 7:00 this morning because I was up later than ideal last night. And somehow that has thrown off my day. I did get out for a walk with Luna which I enjoyed. It was really nice to run into a friend who was out with her dog whom I hadn’t seen for quite some time. So we had a quick catchup chat for a bit while our routes overlapped.
I have a lot that I want to fit in today and seem to be struggling with figuring out a suitable plan. I’d love to fit in a second swim this week – clearly 8:00 today was not the time slot for it. But perhaps 11:00 today will work or tomorrow morning. Roland wasn’t interested in running with me due to an achilles / foot issue so we walked Luna together. Then I had to eat. And so no run or one&done done yet. And no plan beyond writing a few words and spending some time my 100dayproject.
Rather than focusing on being thrown-off I’m chose to focus on a Throw Back Thursday.
So I went back into my old blog to find a post about cycling. I don’t have any posts about me cycling, but there were 4 about the children cycling. So one of those will be the focus of today’s blog post.
You may be wondering why I wanted throwback cycling post. Last night a friend asked for some suggestions about a challenge that she might do for her 60th birthday that is coming up in about 3 years. She found it inspiring that I had done a psuedo-triathlon for my 60th birthday. Day 1 was a 60 km run from the cottage to home. Day 2 was a 60 km ride from home to the cottage. Day 3 was a 6 km swim around the perimeter of our lake. Whenever I think about that birthday goal, I am always so grateful that I get to live in Ottawa and to have a cottage nearby. And that I had so many people join me on segments of that triathlon and in a celebration after each event. But I digress.
I was so lucky to have a great group of friends cycling with me for different portions of my 60 km cycle to the cottage. And some other friends who took photos.
I suggested to her that she completes sixty 60 km cycles before her 60th birthday. Which works out to 20 bike rides a year. Which works out to about one a week in the summer months. She seemed to like that goal. And, so I’m thinking about cycling. And thinking about setting a goal this year: sixty-two 62 km cycles before my 62nd birthday on 14 July. But, that seems overly ambitious. But who knows …
At the start of the 60 km birthday cycle. I’m looking forward to joining my friend, Diana, on several of her upcoming 60 km cycling adventures.
Throw Back Thursday
Day 39 – Pacific Rim, B.C – Best Cycling Ever
Tuesday July 8, 2003
This will be about our furthest point west: 3744 km from home according to the GPS. I didn’t have a good sleep – I had to get up twice to go bushy pee – I had had hot chocolate and tea to drink the night before to warm up. I’ll have to stop drinking around/past dinner. The children rode their scooters and played on the rings before breakfast eating some raisins between swings. We ate our cereal first, then Roland stayed around while the children ate theirs while I went down to the beach to poke around amongst the rocks then ran into Roland and the children along the path on my way back to the site. We stayed down on the beach for a while then set out to Radar Hill for a bit of a scenic view over the area although the views were limited due to low clouds. The children enjoyed their cardboard video cameras and didn’t like our goofing off while they videoed. From there we went into Tofino to have a look around (very busy place, seems much more developed than when I kayaked from there with Shelli many years ago). Roland took the children to the park while I bought a few groceries. We ate lunch while the children continued to play then they ate their sandwiches in the car on the way to Long Beach. It was fairly busy there – a number of surfers as well as lots of families and groups about. We spent some time on the log piles looking for a stick for Heidi to draw in the sand like Stefan had already found. Roland had the great idea to get the children’s bikes out and we all had a great time going down the beach to the Green Point part where we were camped. The children’s helmets were at the site with the scooters so they really looked wild and free with the wind blowing through their hair as they rode. We all, except Stefan, who already had very cold feet, waded in the rather cold Pacific Ocean before I set off back down the beach under a very light drizzle to get the car while Roland and the children flew Stefan’s kite. I saw them at the phones on the way back in and stopped there for a while. Colin wasn’t feeling well due to some surgery so we won’t be staying at their place in Victoria. Later in the day, I spoke to Joanne and we can stay with her instead. Roland started the campfire before dinner – cantaloupe with prosciutto as well as cucumbers for appetizers before our gourmet (but well liked) sloppy joe dinner. Since it was about 7:45 when we finished eating, Roland took the children to the theatre at the campground while I cleaned up then I joined them for an interesting program on bears and how we need to minimize them becoming accustomed to humans by keeping ‘bare’ campsites etc. The interpreter was very good so there was lots of audience participation including some new songs to familiar tunes. After the children went down about 9:30 I called Joanne then returned to the site, browsed through my magazine briefly then caught up on my journal. Overall, it was a good day, despite not terrific weather.
I am so glad that I kept a journal during our 3 month trip in June, July and August 2023. And that we took that time off work to enjoy exploring the western portion of Canada.
Creative Treats 