March 19th, 2011 -- Posted in EZ-blog Oven, knitty/stitchy, pain / disability |
This a post I have been working on for a very long time (almost a year actually!), so it seemed fitting to post it after a long “hiatus” of being unable to post (has it really been 4 months?). Let’s just say it’s been a stressful and painful holiday season and aftermath… I’ve had a difficult time coping with the pain lately, which means sitting up at the keys and having enough brain-power to be verbal is a much more rare occasion (this while already having to pick from my few waking hours of the day when not involved in eating, stretching, family care, driving, resting, icing, heating, and moving very slowly around my small little paths in the world!).
My creative methods of coping with pain have always there in the background so I really wanted to write about it… every time I create a card or bake something or work on a home decor project, it is very heavily impacted by my pain. But the message I want to send is that you can still be creative despite of your limitations. And not only that but it can help turn you around and distract you from your pain and take you away from your pain…
A compromise: using a cake mix, but still making my own icing. Taking the time to ice the cupcakes, but only a few at once, and doing it seated.
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Work within your comfort zone, go at it very slowly and cautiously, and you can still create… The projects you see here in my blog were not each created all at one time. I have a very different schedule and routine, but I’m slowly able to still piece things together. And I have found that to be very worthwhile! The life of a chronic pain patient is very much like a scarf or quilt – you may only be able to make very small rows or blocks at a time, but they eventually add up into a larger whole that is noticeable… and beautiful.
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I have always been creative, so it’s no wonder it has been something I’ve clung to, even through this difficult time of coping with new spinal injuries, chronic pain, and relentless headaches.
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October 10th, 2010 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
I guess I was warming up early for Fall… even towards the end of the summer, I was pulled towards creating cards with warm colour palettes of oranges, reds, browns, and yellows…
Front & Inside of a “Friends” card
Front & Inside of a Birthday Card for a toddler
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August 16th, 2010 -- Posted in family, pain / disability, scrappy / stampy |
Well I haven’t shared a scrapbook layout in a while but it’s mostly because I haven’t been scrapbooking as much these days! I’ve mostly been sticking with the smaller crafts like card-making because they are shorter to complete and therefore less painful. But I wanted to keep catching up with my kids’ albums, so I finally got to the layout with the photos from Harmony’s first day of grade 6 (so just about 1 year ago!).
First Day of Grade 6
Materials: Riding Hood Red card stock & ink, Chocolate Chip card stock & ink, Only Orange card stock, chocolate brown ribbon, white jumbo brads, Chocolate Chip felt flower, orange flower brad, yellow mini brads, red mini brad, fall multi-colour brad, red metal frame, white Creative Memories letter stickers, various-sizes circle punches, scallop circle punch, stamps from various Stampin’ Up sets, and several different patterned paper sheets in oranges and reds.
This is actually a good time of year to do these Back-to-School and School Album layouts because we are very much getting into the Back-to-School mood these days! With about 3 weeks left of summer, we’ve done some shopping for school supplies and I have done a lot of online shopping for the kids’ clothes. I’m glad my son doesn’t mind – too bad little miss preteen is a little fussier about that! She is far more used to getting to go shopping at the mall. It was a yearly tradition that I have really had to give up the past couple years. She says she doesn’t *mind* pushing me in a wheelchair at the mall but it’s just not the same and I just can’t go as far and as long as I used to, so we can’t get it all done in one shot like every other year. Thank goodness I have some fond memories still tucked away in my foggy brain of previous trips and also some pics in her album to show her!
Side Note:I’ve re-organized the albums in my Scrapbook Layouts Gallery to show the more current albums on Page 1 of the gallery. It also made me realize I have not yet uploaded the pictures of layouts from Avery’s First Year scrapbook (one of my fave albums!) so I’ll be sure to do that soon.
Back to this layout… I tried out a new technique for paper-piercing the “6″ on the layout and my trick worked pretty well so I wanted to share it…
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