October Pumpkin Rubber Stamps

Gift bags

You'll need to go back to the beginning of today's posts to find out what we're doing. There's a real assortment of images and purposes today!

The above are from last year but are just as current this year. They are papergoods treat bags made of paper items like notecards, bookmarks, tags, etc. All use October Pumpkin rubber stamps. One bag has a Halloween theme and the other is a beach grouping. It's hard to see the cello bags they're gathered in, but they are there doing their wonderful cellophane trick of containing stuff!

Surprise!

Surprise, we've jumped track from rubber stamps to cachets! How many of you know what cachets (of the philatelic genre...) are? They are illustrations relating to the subject of a stamp and painted or printed into an empty envelope called a First Day Cover. For several decades I worked in cachetmaking full time, and the above is one of the very few covers I kept for myself. I saw a copy of it in my photo files and thought you might enjoy seeing it too.

Little paper goods

This is a grouping of little paper goods - two tiny notecards and a tag or bookmark. All are made with current October Pumpkin rubber stamps. Somehow it's very fun to have wee handmade items to share as a friendly surprise with nearly anyone. I have gone so far as to deliberately "lose" a cute bookmark in a library book, just to give someone a cheery treat.

Two more little sketches

Animals are particularly fun to sketch as they are each constructed so differently. These also were going to be rubber stamp designs, and perhaps they still will be.

Historic artwork

Here it is a week or so later and I am still not normal after recent health setbacks. I do know most of my viewers enjoy looking at my artwork (thank you, thank you! You are too kind!) and I had hoped to have some fresh stuff ready to share. Instead I'm going to share some old stuff. Oops, instead of calling it old stuff I should say "classic" or "historic"!

Anyway, I fished around in my files and found some old sketches and drawings. The first one I'm posting is a batch of cat stamps I designed but have not yet had made into stamps. I don't know if I will do that or not, but it was fun to make the little designs and I hope will be fun for you to look at! So, herewith, four cats in crazy costumes!

The plot thickens...

Hello to all my patient and longsuffering blogreaders!

When I last posted, I was incapacitated by a pulmonary embolism. I'm happy to report that this situation is resolving well and quickly. But. A complication developed. (Don't they always?) On my last day in the hospital I awoke at 4:30 a.m. in some sort of panic, began to jump out of bed fighting both the bedrailing and twisted sheets, and suddenly felt a terrible pain in my hip. I self-diagnosed it as a muscle tear. Okay, no big deal, but it was pretty painful. A nurse brought me a big pink pill and I was able to proceed through my dismissal and travel home.

Soon the pain grew worse...and worse. . . Finally a visit to my PCP and one quick test showed I had sprained my sacroiliac joint. Now I had a whole bottle of Darvocet prescribed. My doctor said this would all clear up in 10 to 15 days.

Meantime, I am loopy and super-drowsy from the pills. 

So again I ask you to please bear with me until I get back to the drawing board. I'mlonely for my studio, which is unfortunately located on the second floor of our home and hard to access at the moment.
I enclose a photo of a little park we sometimes visit in Rosemary Beach FL. I like to remember the serenity of walking through this park, and I am definitely planning to do it again. A pleasing memory can be just as refreshing as a pain pill, because it gives us hope.

Please keep checking back! I hope to be normal again very soon!

When a word is worth a thousand pictures

When a word carries the suggestion of catastrophe, it brings up all kinds of vivid images that none of us want to see.

One word like that is "embolism".

The afternoon of August 18 I was going about my business as usual when suddenly I could not breathe.

There was no pain heralding this disaster. It was different from anything I ever experienced. Unlike an asthma attack, the breathlessness would not resolve with inhalers.

I have always been a healthy person with no serious chronic illness except asthma, which is very off and on as ailments go. I have not had any hospitalisations except for two routine childbirths many years ago.

The emergency room was scary but I was glad to be there. All the medical folks were competant and knew what to do, and took time to reassure my husband and me. Oxygen helped a little. I had a great many tests, some scary, then we would wait forever for the test results. Finally a doctor burst into our cubicle and announced to me, "You have a great big blood clot in your lung!"

Since I am healthy and my tests revealed no cardiovascular problems, it's assumed that the embolism evolved from too much sitting. My husband had been hospitalised for pneumonia a week earlier, and I had sat at his bedside upwards of 11-12 hours each day on a straight chair, pooling blood in my lower legs.

Pay attention to all of this, because it might help you avoid the same kind of thing!

A blood clot was found behind my knee, and it was probably part of that one which eventually calved off and flew to my bronchial tree, blocking off oxygen to both lungs.

All the drs kept telling me how lucky I was. It could have been so much worse. But I survived, and amazingly I never did have any pain. Most people do.

I spent the next 6 days in ICU, then 2 more in the telemetry unit. I received big injections of anticoagulant in my belly, which is still interestingly black and blue, and more by mouth.

Our son in St. Louis jumped in his car and got here 7 hours after his Dad called with the news that I was hospitalised. Our daughter near Cincinnati got here sooner as we are only about 80 miles apart. Both of them took over the homefront and assisting their Dad who has some serious health problems. I didn't have to worry about anything at home.

I finally got out of the hospital to recuperate at home. Right now I feel like I'm a long way from being my regular self - maybe it's all the meds I've been given, who knows, but I'm extremely weak and tired. The drs did say I won't be fully recovered for weeks or months, but I'm hoping to be back to low-key normal by the end of next week.

In case you wondered where I went and what happened when this blog went silent, now you know!

My big message to you is, don't sit for long periods, especially with  your legs crossed. Make sure you get up and walk about every 45 mins to an hour. With any luck you can then avoid the miserable experience I just had!  And don't give up on the blog. I promise, I'll be back soon!

Real art altered

 

A few days ago I was sorting through a desk drawer and came upon a small drawing made by a former student several years ago. He gave it to me saying I could do whatever I wanted to with it, might as well pitch it out. Here was my dilemma. It had some flaws but overall it was so good I didn't want to pitch it. What do you do with something like that? I stuck it in a drawer!

When I found it recently I decided to breathe some life into this old bird. One of the flaws was that the bird's eye did not look realistic and the lack of a good eye can ruin anybody's face!  Remember, this individual was a student. He is quite capable of making his own finished images now, but was not back then,

Using that wonderful acrylic paint that covers everything, I blanked out the "evil" eye on this critter and made a credible one, then altered the wing feathers and added a bit of texture to the breast feathers and a touch of ink on the legs and water. Voila!  This bird was repurposed!

It seemed like he'd make a wonderful card. I used kraft cardstock because it's sand colored, then added a paper with some glitter to it to represent the sunlight on the sand.

I think I'll send it to my former student.

If you have your own or other people's artwork lying around doing nothing, you might think of altering it. It's fun to do, fun to see what two artists have ended up with, and definitely better than having it lie fallow in a dark desk drawer!

Neighborhood haunts

How gruesome is it when ghosts invade your neighborhood and disturb your sleep by wafting and wailing from house to house?

The jack-o-lantern on the wee tag is likely saying, "You can't escape. We're going to haunt you this Halloween night!"

The chunk of sandpaper on the card goes along with the message: "We're going to GRATE on your nerves!"

Using the versatile October Pumpkin scarecrow stamp colored and cut out, then adhered to a tag, I threw together this quick and cheery Halloween card. It's colorful instead of scary!