christmas

Mail It Monday

It’s 10:30 and I’m just getting started with writing some words for today. I haven’t even yet written my cards that I’m going to mail, but I have picked the cards and recipients out. In addition to working on my 100DayProject to create cards, I am also trying hard to get cards sent out into the world, too.

I skipped Pickleball this morning to try to put a bit of order into all the crafting supplies and tools that I haul between home, the cottage and my different crafting classes. It is very out of control; I am always loading too much into the car and bringing it into the house, cottage and carrying it up and down the stairs from my craft room. I really do want to get some more duplicates of some tools to lessen how much I move around and how much time I spend packing and unpacking. But mostly I need to get my projects more organized so that I’m only bringing the supplies that I need for each project.

We had 3 participants in our in-person Card Crew program at the Dementia society with 2 volunteers. Everything went well making cards similar to ones that I had made with my Spellbinders Advent calendar supplies. The husband of one of the participants gave me a card that his wife made last week to take home in which he had generously included a gift card. It was so lovely to see his wife’s shaky signature; I remember how my mom’s handwriting gradually deteriorated until she was no longer able to sign her name. It’s not easy aging, and living with Dementia adds an extra level of challenge and caring for a person with for Dementia is even more daunting. I love seeing how much the husbands of two of my participants are so patient and loving with their wives and hearing from the wives in class how much love and appreciation they have for their husbands.

I stopped on the way home at a participant of my online Creative Cards and Crafts program to bring her the most recent kits for her and her sister. She gave me some homemade Chinese dumplings which were perfect for my dinner after I had a nap. I was feeling quite tired and knew that if I didn’t have a nap it would be a real struggle to stay away heading out to Orleans for Heidi’s 7:30 ringette game and back home again. I get very sleepy in cars, even when driving; I’ve been known to pull over into a parking lot for a 10-15 minute nap on the hour drive to the cottage.

Then Luna got her second solo walk of the day with me after my dinner. Roland had an early morning shift at the ringette Nationals tournament and has another one tomorrow.

One of the sample cards I had to show my program participants. I made this during my Spellbinders Advent Calendar project.

The other sample card I had to show my program participants. I also made this during my Spellbinders Advent Calendar project.

I made my Card 27 based on the first lesson in the Altenew For the Guys course entitled Geometrics. But seemed to not find the time to post about any of the recent cards that I’ve made.

It’s now 11:17 and I am still struggling with my Google drive not synching properly to my laptop so I’ve done a bit of a workaround to get a few photos included in the post. But I need to get to bed so I can go swimming at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I’ll update this post tomorrow to add in some more photos.

A fairly busy day. A quick walk with Luna before 8:00-10:00 Pickleball. It’s a good thing I deferred an originally planned walk with a friend I used to work with because I just had time to get myself organized for my afternoon Card Crew class at the Dementia Society. I arrive there for 1:00 although the program officially runs from 1:30-3:30 I like to there for when there are some early arrivals. There were 3 participants today and a good number of volunteers. Now that we are getting more regular volunteers the program coordinators may promote the program a bit more. I’ll include a few photos of the participants cards. One of the volunteers stayed after the program until 4:30 to help me prepare kits for the class that I’m doing at the Canadian Mental Health Association tomorrow; I thought that the design we did today worked quite well so we’ll be making more cards like that tomorrow.

I had a quick stop at Michael’s to pick up some more watercolour paper then just had time to each some of the soup I made yesterday for supper and walk over to the curling club for our 6:00 6-end game which finished just after 7:30 then drinks and here I am now at almost 9:00 with about 200 words written.

No theme for the day yet, but maybe it will come to me as I create a blog post by copying my daily writing from the 750words website into a post and add a few photos. I rarely get to 750 words but it’s nice to have it as a target. Update at 10:00 as I finalize this post: Mail it Monday is (and always should be) my theme for Mondays. I dug out 4 cards from my stash, addressed them and wrote a note in each one. They’ll get into the mail on Tuesday, but I’m counting them for this week’s Mail it Monday since I did get them all ready to go in the mail today. I hope you’re considering taking up the Mail it Monday challenge – and it doesn’t have to be a card that you mail – you could simply send an email or text message. The point is to reach out to someone. I’m sure that they will appreciate it.

Card Crew

Here are some of the cards that were made at the Dementia Society today during our Card Crew session.

This one was coloured with water colour crayons which were then blended with a wet brush.

The volunteers help guide participants in where they should add some colour and likely prompted this participant to match the centres colours on the card front and on the envelope.

The bright green card base looked very cheerful and coordinated well with the green leaves.

It’s nice when the envelope coordinates with the card.

This one was coloured with watercolour crayons which were then wet to spread around the colour. The same technique was used to create the background layer.

The inner layer adds a nice pop of colour to the inside of the card when the participants colour in the image.

I love how this participant made a water colour drawing for her card front background rather than just making a random blended style of background. The watercolour markers give such fun, vibrant colours.

The watercolour markers seem to work very well for some of the program participants.

Arts for All Program Preparation

This is part of the kits that I’m putting together for the monthly cardmaking class that I do at the Canadian Mental Health Association during their weekly Arts for All program.