Art Journal

I have friends who do art journals, so I thought maybe I'd give it a try myself. I don't do it every day, but when something catches my interest, or I want to try something new, I now have a place to play where there is no pressure to succeed. 

I didn't have a proper journal when I started, so I just took a strip of good watercolour paper, and folded it accordion style. This was my first entry. The birds were borrowed from a photograph by Chris Cochems.

When I did get a proper journal, I wasn't sure what the pages cold handle, so I started with a watercolour wash, and then switched to the water soluable pencils. 

Watercolour pencils are fun, and you can take them, and a journal anywhere.  I drew this girl in front of the TV.

Hmmmm.....the scans are showing up things that aren't as obvious in real life.  Oh well, like I said, this is just play.

I've never been very good at drawing freehand, but I took a little webinar recently that had me draw from a grid. I did much better at that.

The journal has other things in it too, like when I got some molding paste, I messed around with it to give texture to an entry. Today I tried my first acrylic transfer. I'm not sure if I succeeded or not, and I'm not sure I'm finished with it.  This Christmas I noticed that several of the envelopes were decorated with various images, so I tore them off and arranged them on a page to make a little collage. 

There is no great art here, but I'm learning lots of new techniques and I'm doing something artistic almost every day now, instead of just once a week.  That's bound to help me progress eventually.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody!

While the rest of you are celebrating this fine Christmas morning, I'm actually relaxing and enjoying a peaceful weekend. My Christmas has been postponed for two weeks this year.  That's the soonest I can gather my entire family under one roof, so I'm quite willing to wait. 

Actually, once all the rest of you get to relax, I will probably start running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  While I do have my tree up, most of my gifts aren't even wrapped yet. In fact, I just bought some needed wrapping paper yesterday. We took my oldest on out for lunch at Swiss Chalet, just so he would feel like some special event happened at Christmas. He's being so gracious about the delay, it only seemed fair.

I also finally picked up a turkey yesterday, since I saw a nice sized one at a very good price. We won't be eating that today.  We'll have a special treat of Cornish hen though, and we have some other goodies to make things a bit festivel. 

So, next week, while all of you are basking in the after Christmas glow, I'll still be wrapping, and baking and making my meat pies and getting ready.

Christmas isn't a date on the calendar, it's more of a state of mind and a feeling in your heart.  May yours be everything you wanted it to be.

Keep Your Feet on the Ground!

I've done it again. Saturday I slipped on the Post Office steps and am totally amazed I didn't break a hip, or anything else for that matter.

I have had a number of falls in the past couple of years. Thinking about it, three of them have been on that same hip so I must have good strong bones. The other two were face plants. One of those left me with road rash on my face for a couple of weeks, and the other one left me with tender knees for at least a year.  I  likely should have visited the doctor for both of those falls, but I didn't. And when you fall on a hip and don't break it, you just feel lucky and don't bother to seek medical help then either. 

But this time it's different.

The steps were cement, and my feet went out from under me, so I fell like I would have on flat land, but with the corner of each step connecting with various parts of my body.  I not only landed on my bottom on one step, but the edge of a step hit me on my backside one step higher. That's the one I would have expected to shatter the hip bone.  Another step got me across the back of both legs, so I have bruises there too. One ankle is also bruised, but I'm sure I didn't hit that unless I bounced and don't remember it.  My left arm connected with another step higher up, and my shoulder was bothering me a lot for a couple of days too.  Basically, if it was on my left side, it hurts.

The thing that's concerning me the most now though, is an internal pain. I mean, I know I took quite a jolt, and likely shook everything up inside. While the bruised areas aren't bothering me at all, this internal discomfort is likely worse than it was a couple of days ago.  It's not so bad that has me running for pain medications, but it's somewhat uncomfortable.  I've never experienced this with any of my previous falls so I decided maybe I should get checked out, just in case I did damage to some internal organ.

The weather man is calling for freezing rain.  Just what I need when I want to walk across town to the Medical Centre. (I don't drive).  It was slippery conditions that caused this fall, and I'm not ready to try my luck again quite so soon.  I decided to call Telehealth Ontario, to ask if they thought I needed to see the doctor, or if I could get away with bed rest.  The first interviewer was very nice but quickly decided I should talk to a registered nurse. The nurse was on another line, but called me back within a few minutes. She asked me a series of questions, and then gave her recommendations. She said I should see my doctor within the next 24 hours, and that if I decided to take something for the pain, Tylenol was the safest thing for someone my age. 

I called the doctor's office to make an appointment, and I think that saying Telehealth Ontario told me to actually got me in sooner. The timing means I'll have to cancel, or postpone an appointment I already had to get my hearing aid fixed tomorrow, but this is likely more important.  Now watch the pain magically disappear before I get there.