Thursday, December 29, 2016

From 2016 woes to 2017 whoo hoo's

MY HEALTH

Well, here we are almost at the end of 2016, another year shot.  It has not been a good year for many, myself included.  I have been facing a decline in my health for some time now, and I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I am only 52 and face many health issues that I am more frustrated with than you even care to know.  Starting with Diabetes, it has taken 3 General Physicians, (GP's), 2 endocrinologists, a Nurse Practitioner,  a specialist and about 7 years to finally get my sugar level below 10.  Not to mention a plethora of medication equalling to the frightening amount of about $2000.00 per month in medication.  Can you say holy crap?  

Now if this stupid diabetes isn't enough, lets add a few other illnesses.  I had an MRI done just before we moved up to beautiful Northern Ontario.  The only thing that it came up with was that I have Osteo-Arthritis.  So, of course over time, pain has been building up from that.  In the last few years there has been more development of issues.   I went to see a physiatrist who found out that the base of my pain in my hips have been caused by severe bursitis on both sides.  I have also recently been to see a Neurologist who had discovered that I have severe carpel tunnel in both of my wrists.  

And if all of this isn't enough, I recently found a legal document that claims me to have a mild right sided learning disability.  Which I have found out that me going for certain types of jobs, ie. a cashier, or anything that involves money, its just setting me up for failure.  It also explains many, many, other things that have happened over the years.  I have always been able to find a job, never had a problem in that area, but keeping the job was a different story.  I would get bored and for one reason or another, I always found myself at the unemployment centre looking for another job.  For years this has been an unexplained mystery but now, there has been a pattern through the eyes of this document from 2008 that was never properly followed up on. 

The final thing is that I will be going to a sleep clinic in the middle of January.  When I went to my first appointment there, I had to fill out this 30 page form that took me almost 2 hours to fill out.  Just from that alone, (before doing the test) they already know that I have sleep apnea and insomnia...whew...So, do I really don't want to know what any other synopsis' are going to come up from this test?  I will go anyway...just to see what else goes down.  The best part is, that I won't have to go through this alone, my Abby will be with me for the whole night and next day.

The very worst thing of all of the above is that I do not remember ever waking up refreshed, I am tired and groggy and dopey a lot of the time, 

So having said all of this, the time has come for me to be seriously considering ODSP which means I will not be working at this point in time for a while.   So I will have time on my hands.  I have been so caught up in the "woe is me" dilemma that, now its time to do something about it.  2017 is going to be a better, and healthier year, since I am such a wimp at being sick.

MY INTENTIONS & GOALS

It was interesting that I just happened to open up Facebook to take a bit of a break from writing and I saw the above and it made me smile, thank you for that Karen, its so very inspiring for me because this is my main goal for 2017 and beyond.  I could not have said this better.  So here is what she posted:

My beautiful friend and sister-in-art Karen Lukens, said it the best, as quoted "I'm seeing so many posts about how bad 2016 was. I think it was pretty good. I woke up above ground everyday, I had food in my refrigerator and clothes on my back. Running water in my cabin, electricity, I had a roof over my head. I didn't live in a war torn country. I had the Internet, a cellphone, a computer. I have awesome friends, family and a great husband. Oh and my dog loves me unconditionally. Sure, there was some stress, a few illnesses, people died. The elections were no fun, I didn't like either candidate but I was still free to vote. It's called life and I'm just thrilled to still be alive and living it."  (Karen Lukens is a fabulous artist, she creates adult colouring pages that do nothing but make me smile, you can take a look and purchase her pages if you want here, https://www.etsy.com/people/KarenLukensArtist

Health aspects:

It is my intention to move around more this year.  The mail box is a tad too far away (takes 1 hour there and back) to walk to in my condition at the moment but I want to do some snow shoeing, and go to places like Arrowhead Park to check out their snow tubing...sounds like amazing fun.  

I also want to start exercising and seriously watching my food intake, more now than ever to keep my sugar levels below 10 first and below 6 in a perfect world.

And one of the biggest things I would like to even dare consider making a commitment to other than the above is to create something different every single day.  Whether it be an ATC, a post card, a greeting card or a journal page....

I will be tracking my success right here...posting photos of what I make and do....

thanks for reading and HAPPY NEW YEAR
















Friday, August 19, 2016

The Wonderful World of Adult Colouring

ADULT COLOURING


Never in my wildest dreams would it ever have entered my head to spend a single bit of my adult hood colouring...But they are so very good at marketing these colouring books for adults...they make you want to stop and skim through all of the beautiful images they want you to colour.  You can buy colouring books of all different sizes and prices, and now they have monthly colouring magazines, I have seen them at my work, and on the shelves of every where else I go!

I wonder if the person who even thought of bringing back colouring for adults is even making any money out there for all of the books being designed and sold at not just Michaels Craft Stores, but there are other stores like DeSerras Art Stores, and not to mention all of the scrap book stores that might sell them online or have classes to teach colouring, even all of the different art stores in the USA...and not just art stores, what about Art Designers alike and selling their creations on their own websites, or even on Etsy or other sites like it?  

I have to admit though, I had taken some rubber stamping classes with my Mentor, back when I first got involved in making ATCs...(Artist Trading Cards...if you don't know that acronym by now and your an Artist, learn it...lol) I am now celebrating 7 years of being creative.  Anyway.  She is a Art Designer/Teacher who originally taught me how to use Copics.  I LOVED the classes and acquired enough of these amazing pens to get me by for a while.  I took a class with her whenever I could but she taught more than Copics, she also taught multi media altering ATCs, like embossing, etc.

Last Christmas when my parents were up, we went to the local Walmart store in Huntsville for some shopping and my Mom and I actually sat and coloured together.  That was weird, I tell you.  I coloured a few but never really got into it, and never really finished any pages.  It took me a while to decide that I really enjoy colouring, i bought a few books and a couple of magazines and even got a christmassy one from Abby, (my spouse)  However it was never these particular books that mage me get interested in colouring, it was a new Sister in Art friend, Karen Lukens who got me into colouring.  Her pages just make me smile, and I am sure that when I was a little girl and colouring there were absolutely NO colouring pages even close to Karen's wonderful work.   It was actually one of her pages that she very generously forwarded to me.  And it was a very Whimsical type of drawing.  In fact, here she is.....Steampunk Girl, I am very proud of this one because its the very first official page I have ever finished colouring in its full entirety!  She is who got me to get serious about colouring.

I met Karen in an ATC Trading group, and we have actually traded ATCs, I am proud to say that I even have a couple of her originals on an ATC!  I am also very proud to say that she has been officially a member of my extended sister in art family!  She has since changed her focus and has been spending her time putting together her own Adult Colouring Book to sell.  Thank you Karen for the amazing inspiration!!!  

My friend Nat who is an amazingly talented artist, and I call her my art mentor; asked me to check out her post over at High Hopes Stamps.  They currently have a colouring contest going on, so I thought I would put in an entry or two.  Here is the first one I coloured, this one is using good old fashioned wax crayons, I think they are slightly different, well maybe more than slightly from when I was a kid. They not only seem to have a different feel in the hand but the wax even feels quite weird on the paper.  Go ahead, try it, and tell me I am not imagining this.  Anyway, it was fun to try this again which was actually the very first time I picked up a crayon to use it for what it was initially intended to be used for.

This was actually the last one I coloured out of 7...as you can see I grew a bit tired after while so I got so that I couldn't just go one way.  The green in the top I used was quite a smooth crayon.the rest of them were ok, but the purple background was very difficult to manoeuvre on the page because it was kind of sticky or something....it just didn't seem to have the same texture throughout. I think with crayons, its wise to use crayons all from the same box, as opposed to having them all mixed up.  I am going to have to try using crayons again on something a bit bigger and see what happens.


I just couldn't stop colouring this adorable little love bug guy.  Isn't he sweet?  He is a free digi stamp at the moment over at the High Hopes Stamps blog.  With this one, i used cheap crayola markers. They bleed like heck all over the place.  I almost just entered this one, and then I thought well, why not do a few of them and in different colouring tools and then post a blog about it?


This one here, I used a plethora of pencil crayons.  Again, they were all mixed up and just in a bundle in my basket.  There were some erasable pencil crayons, and some old old pencil crayons that never got al used up or thrown out. These were all a lot smoother than using a crayon, or even a cheap marker.

For this one, I used a mix of Gellie Roll Pens and gel pens and metallic pens.  This one doesn't look too bad, but again, many of my collection of these are drying up.  I am going to have to see if there is a trick to get them working again because some of them have stopped and are not fully empty.



Now for this one, I used my Recollection Triangle markers from Michael's.  There were quite a few of these in the package for only 7.99, I am thinking there were maybe 36 makers, some of the colours were duplicates but thats ok, because there were a lot of markers in the package and it was a good price.  Its amazing at how much one can spend on pencil crayons or markers...you have to use these ones kind of lightly or else your going to end up having some major bleeding of the ink going on.


I have purchased a set of Bic pens, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them as much as I love my copics. They are fine, but they are awesome on the page and in your fingers to hold.  It does take a while to fill in each of the spaces but they cheap and they are quite a step up from using the crayola or dollar store markers.


Now for my final and most favourite colouring tools the Copics.  If you a colourist at heart, and have never ever even held a copic in your hands, this is a must add to your bucket list.  Sure these markers are expensive but if your taught how to use them properly they will last you forever.  I absolutely LOVE how you can blend blend blend these colours together, they are alcohol based and if used correctly they will not bleed...unless you want them to.

Many thanks to my mentor Nat, and Karen Lukens for giving my creativity a boost.  I look forward to many more hours of colouring in the future.....


cheers to all and thank you for reading.

All of the above mentioned are strictly my thoughts, and experience on the topic.  If anything has been considered a copyright breech, it was certainly not intended...

Dar Bassie-Cripps.



















Saturday, May 28, 2016

Posting what I make and what I have received

Hmmm, I have absolutely NO CLUE why I have never thought of doing this before.  But I think its high time that I start.  I think I have posted a big Halloween swap once here, but it should be on going!

So here, goes, I have recently participated in a one on one Halloween themed pocket letter swap with Celeste Bernardin.  Here are photos of what she has sent me.  And all I can say s that WOW WOW WOW, Celeste you are one talented artist!  I am sure that mine is only half as good as yours!


Above is the cover page she put together and it absolutely blew me away!  


Above is the front side of the Pocket Letter...which nearly frightened me to death!!!  It gave me a heart attack almost....lol...the zombie actually literally pops out of the page on an accordion-like strip. The pockets are all chock full of yummy goodies, like a teabag, borders, a tag, and ribbons!  Wow wow wow!  Thank you so much Celeste for everything, I LOVE LOVE LOVE everything!!!


Even the back looks quite exquisite!!!   LOVING the zombie theme...Again thank you so much.  I can only hope that you will enjoy yours from me, as much as I love yours from you....

I did not get photos of my pocket letter to her as yet, so please stay tuned for photos once I get them.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Getting Caught Up


     Its been a long while since I have blogged any thing; but since I don't have any real excuses I will just go ahead and write about the last few weeks of what has been going on.   

     February 16, 2016 was my first day of work at Hope's Foodland in Novar.  I was there for maybe 3 weeks and then I got bombarded with the most nastiest respiratory infection I have ever had.  In fact, I don't think I have even ever had one before because I don't ever recall having been told that is what I had.  I kid you not, it last for at least a month, I lost two weeks of work because of it.  And believe it or not, I am STILL coughing my head off.  I have never ever had such a cough last for so long. however, before I quit smoking in June 2005, I was always only ever told that I had chronic bronchitis.  

     I have now been working at Foodland as a cashier now for exactly 2 months and loving it.  My co-workers are awesome, as are the customers who shop there.  Customers were even already starting to call me Dar, and I only just got my name tag about a week ago.  I am thoroughly enjoying working for a small family run business, where we are serving mostly country folk...I am loving the "small talk" with my customers, everyone is just absolutely awesome!

     As you all may recall, that I have recently started my own Artist Trading Card (ATC) swap group on Facebook.  This all began on July 7 2015...and we have been going strong.  I try to have a minimum of at least 6 swaps a month.  I can't believe we are coming up to our very FIRST anniversary!  Wow....I absolutely love everyone on in the group...everyone is so kind and sweet to each other.  

     I wanted to start blogging my artwork so that I have a place to organize it and show it off.  I have been making ATC's for almost 7 years now, and I have a kazillion of them in my collection, of not only what I have made, but what I have received, too!  I am currently going through each and everyone of my thousands of ATCs and putting them ALL in order of artist alphabetically, and I tell you, WHAT a job its turning out to be.  I have only up to the C's completed....long way to go yet.


     After having been so sick and not being able to do anything but sleep time away, I have spent the last week or so (since I have been feeling immensely better) I finally have gotten all caught up on my swaps for April in ATC Positive.  I hope you will enjoy viewing them and reading about the techniques I've used in them.  

WINNER TAKE ALL - Musical Note Themed ATC

This is the newest swap I have posted in my Facebook group.  Its called Winner Take All.  Every player creates only 1 ATC and posts it to the WTA photo album.  This is to entice more players to join in on the fun.  On April 23, I will be having Abby video me drawing the winners name and it will be posted to the group.  I really hope this is popular enough to try again next month. This is my crazy bird coloured in with copics.   The background was made by our very own Bonnie Coursolle.


FISH ATC

I found this adult colouring page on Google, printed it, and coloured it myself.  The background its on is made using the peel off technique.  Then I scanned it, and shrunk it down to ATC size.  I really hope my partner likes it.


DIE CUT/HOLE PUNCH ATC

I used the Tim Holtz Festive Berries distress ink over top of my nothing but hearts rubber stamp.  I have no idea where I got the Eiffel Tower die but the letters were from Martha Stewarts Letter Hole punch and the teacup is a die from Memory Box.  


RUBBER STAMP ATC

For this swap, we were to make only 1 ATC but I chose to make my partner 2.  The backgrounds are just coloured in using markers, and the leaves are rubber stamps that I have in my collection.  I LOVE both of these stamps, and use them whenever I can!


CHINESE ZODIAC ATC - YEAR OF THE RABBIT

The rabbit in this ATC is a rubber stamp from my ever growing collection of these fun things to have!  Its amazing how the techniques have been growing in leaps and bounds.  I can remember when I first started that there were hardly any videos on techniques at all.  Anyway, this was created with just using my crayola markers.  I can't even remember what that dot technique is called.  


SPRING ATC

I had a lot of fun making this one.  Admittedly, I can not take credit for the idea, I can only take credit for this creation.  I used punchinello to create the effects of the sky and the grass.  The clouds and the butterflies are Memory Box dies.  The clothes line is just a piece of rope I had, and the items of clothing are cut from bits of material I have in my stash.  


DIE CUT ROLO 

Background was made with using different shades of green crayola markers.  The branches and the leaves are Tim Holtz movers and shapers dies.  The deer came from IO Dies, I have used this die many many times as they are the perfect ATC size.


FISH ROLO

This rolodex card was fun to make.  I have some paper that are in the shape of waves but they are stuck together like sticky notes.  The branches and fish cut outs are from Martha Stewart, the bubbles, are bits of ephemera called Candi dots or something like that which I  bought back in the days of Scrapbook Queens...How I miss that place.


SPRING ROLODEX

The flowers and the branches are Martha Stewart punches. When I first saw the flowers punch I HAD to have it because the shape of the flowers reminded me of lilacs which is my personal favourite flower.   I have used this punch a lot too.  Even though I find I am not overly crazy about the MS punches, I do have a lot of them, but they seem to be breaking down after a short time of use.


These ATCs I made for the fun of trading.   I belong to yet another group on Facebook called Artist Trading Card Addicts.  And what a suitable name too.  None of these have found a new home as yet.  But I am sure that once I start trading regularly again, they will be gone soon enough.



FLOWER ATC'S

I also belong to Swap-Bot I have been addicted to this site for so long now its not even funny.  I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE my ATC collection; not only the art I have made but the art I have received, too.  Thank you!



Well that is about it for today bedtime for me...I hope you enjoyed today's entry and please feel free to leave me a comment.  I have asked that all comments be approved by me before they will just show up.

Have a good night.