Update on J****

I just wanted to let you know that J**** (the boy I hit with my car) is fine and went to school on Monday, full of the story of how he was hit by a car and survived. He only has some minor cuts and scrapes.

My windscreen has been replaced and I take my car in for a quote tomorrow. I'm back driving, but still a little jittery; especially when I drive through the section of road where the accident happened.

As I thought, the story of how a boy from school was hit by a car while jaywalking is all over the school, but only a few actually know I was the "culprit".  :)

Anyway, bye for now. I'll be back soon with some more cards.

Love,
Janelle   :)

OMG! I thought I killed a kid yesterday!

Yesterday was both the worst day of my life as well as the luckiest! 

I was driving to pick up my son, Alex, from school, when a Grade 12 student ran out from between a line of stalled traffic - right in front of me! I slammed on my brakes, but wasn't able to stop in time before I hit him with my car. He hit the front passenger side of the car before being bounced up into the windscreen. He then bounced off onto the road in front of me. By this time the car was stopped, so I put it into Park and got out and ran to the boy. He was up on his feet and standing there, holding his head, and said to me, "Am I hurt?"

I remember thinking to myself "Thank God he's not dead", but at the same time I'm thinking, "Of course you're hurt, you bloody idiot, you've just been hit by my car!" But I told him he was hurt and he had to stay still while I phoned the ambulance. He then tried to move away, saying, "No I'm alright. I've got to go." Talk about a "hit and run" incident. (Please don't think I'm being flippant - it's just a reaction to the fact that he didn't appear to be seriously injured and, even now, more than 12 hours later, I feel like crying and still have the shakes.)

Next I know people have come from everywhere to take the boy to safety in one of the shops across from where he was hit, another man came and phoned the police and ambulance for me, another helped me move my car to a safer park, someone else gave me a cup of lovely cold water and found a seat for me to sit in, some girls from the school phoned the school to tell them what had happened, someone else had phoned the boy's mother, one of the girls from the barber shop came out with a wad of toilet paper for me to wipe my tears (because she didn't have any tissues) and then the ambos came and started looking after the boy. I'm blown away by the selfless actions of so many. They were all wonderful.

Next came along the principal and one of the deputies from the boy's school. (Did I mention it is also the school where Alex goes to school and where I taught for many years before I left to have Alex?) The principal asked the deputy if he knew who belonged to the car, and I told him it was mine. His eyes just about popped out of his head. I wonder why he didn't guess just from looking at me, from my red face, swollen eyes and tears streaming down my face?

Anyway, the police came next and were also the most lovely men possible. After getting my statement and talking to the witnesses, they told me that there's nothing that I could have done to prevent the accident and they wouldn't be charging me with anything. The paramedic in charge then came to tell me that they were taking the boy to hospital to be checked out, but as far as they could see he only had minor abrasions and bruising. (I hope they didn't find anything more serious once they did the xrays etc.)

After everyone left and I was left waiting for my husband to come and get me (Mind you, Alex was still at the school waiting for me to pick him up) and I finally went to have a look at the damage to the car (I hadn't paid any attention to it before - I had been more concerned with the damage to the boy), the enormity of the situation finally hit me and I really started crying. Once again some ladies from the hairdressing salon came to my rescue and took me inside, gave me some more water and made me wait with them until Darryl arrived.

I won't go into all of the rigmarole that followed concerning moving the car to a safer place, phoning the insurance company and the windscreen repairer etc. Suffice to say, we went to pick up Alex who had been cared for by the deputy (even to the extent that when we arrived they were on the hunt for something for Alex to snack on!) and then went home.

As I said it was the worst day (I can't stop feeling guilty for hurting someone, even though it was an accident) as well as the luckiest day. Lucky that he wasn't hurt too seriously (he so easily could have died), but also lucky to realise that there are so many lovely people in the world ready and willing to help in times of difficulty, and that they work and live in my area. How lucky is that???

Anyway, bye for now.

All of my love.

Janelle  :)

P.S. I thought about showing you a photo of my damaged car, but thought it was just a little gratuitous, but also luckily for me, there's really not that much damage to see. Just the smashed windscreen and some damage to the bonnet.

PPS. This is gratuitous, but I totally freaked out when I found tufts of hair stuck in the smashed windscreen. It still makes me feel sick to think of it.

Inlaid Die-cutting

Over the two weeks or so I've been trying out ideas to do with inlaid die-cutting. I'm working on a commission for Practical Publishing and I've been investigating cutting dies as well as assorted techniques. I'm posting a couple of cards I've made (but these won't be going to print).  :)

The first card uses a die from the Couture Creations Floral Lace Collection called "Bold Bouquet". I applied tape over the back of the areas where the very small flower pieces were and left them gold. It would have been too tiresome to replace all of those pieces. As it was, the replacement of a lot of the pieces was as frustrating and difficult as hunting for nits. Some of the pieces were so small that I couldn't even pick them up with a pair of tweezers. Thanks for my QuickStik. :) The sentiment is from a Stampers Anonymous/Tim Holtz set called Crazy Talk.

I'm pleased with how it turned out, but it is certainly a die for the stout-at-heart with plenty of patience. An easier way of achieving this same look is to cut it out of white cardstock, keep all of the pieces in place and then just colour the pieces as wanted - like a Faux-inlaid die-cutting.

The second card uses a couple of dies; the "Balloons" from Couture Creations Kalini Collection; and the other, the "Birthday Girl Die" from Echo Park Paper. The die cut background also uses a set from Lawn Fawn called "Puffy Cloud Borders".

I made the background pinkish because you can't really have a blue background for a girlie card, can you? The ombre effect, hopefully, looks like a sunset sky. Sitting here, looking at the card on screen, I've just realised that I've made a mistake on one of the balloons. Can you spot it? I will be using these dies in my commission, but not exactly how I've used them here. I'll have to remember to fix up that booboo.  :)

Anyway, gotta go. Bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Daydream Dreams

Just a quick post to show you some of the photos I took recently when my family went up to Daydream Island (on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia) for a wedding. It was only a long weekend (Thursday to Sunday), but we had so much fun, especially my son when he got to feed and play with stringrays and other marine creatures as part of a program they run. You should have seen him while he was helping present the Living Reef Show. He was a real ham!

 

 My husband, Darryl, my son, Alex and me

This is a Proserpine Wallaby - a native marsupial to the island. It's not white in colour (though a light brown) just in full sunlight.

This is Daydream Island taken from the ferry going back to Hamilton Island from where we were flying home.

What's so amazing about this region is that there are hundreds of very small islands all scattered throughout this one passage of water. In fact, if you didn't know better, you could easily think you were on an island in the middle of a huge lake, as from all viewpoints around the island, you can see land in the distance across the water, but it's just a lot of islands that sort of line up together so it looks like one huge landmass. If you wanted to, you could paddle from one island to the next quite easily. The landmass you see in the background of this last photo, though, is the mainland.

Loved the colours of the water and the coral (the water was so clear, in parts, I could see it under the water). On the way back home, I was envisaging a series of cards using the marine colours I saw (esp, that blue!) unfortunately life got in the way and I haven't done them yet.

Hope you enjoyed my snapshots of Australia.

Bye for now.

Love,

Janelle

My Box of Inspiration

As part of my rehabilitation of my creative juices, I watched a video from Sandy Allnock where she talks about the creative process. I especially liked a quote by Picasso  (originally heard from Kristina Werner), that she spoke about, 

At the time it really resonated with me, so I made a tool box and festooned it with that quote. 

I used a Kaisercraft chipboard BTP Scrapping Organiser that I covered with patterned papers from the Base Coat Collection. I painted the edges and drawer front with some Airondack Copper paint. After applying the quote using some old basic grey micro mono stickers, I painted over the quote with some multi-medium matt gel to seal the letters in place. To complete it, I added some strips of Papermania's Madame Payaud's patterned craft tape across the drawer.

Not only have I now got something to contain all of my craft stuff that I can carry around the house with me; but I have something to keep me going when I'm not feeling so inspired. This is really so great as I've been trying to contain all of the stuff I regularly use. There's a section for my embossing and stamping stuff, a section for glues, etc; a section for tools, pens, etc; and at the back there's a deeper section for scissors, ruler, heat gun and rolls of adhesive strip. The drawer is going to be for the ink pads that I regularly use as well as blending sponges etc. You should see my craft bench now!  :)

Thanks to Sandy Allnock for your inspiring words. I can't fully express what they really meant to me at the time.

Anyway, bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Giant Distress Label Cards

I'm posting some more cards from the Brisbane Craft Expo in June this year. 

This lot of cards were also from a class run by Rachel Greig from Darkroom Door. These cards used huge black tags and then for the backgrounds I used a variety of techniques, including using Distress Sprays, stamping with a wet stamp pad to create a resist appearance, and smooshing with distress sprays on a craft mat.

Photo stamps were then used to add interest. The "Happy Birthday" card was just too dark in colour for the stamp to show up, so I used one of Rachel's photo chips on top instead. The ribbon was coloured to match each background.

The black tags were stamped with Picket Fence Distress Spray and then spritzed with metallic Distress Spray.

I had so much fun making these cards and totally ended up with multi-coloured fingers for the next couple of days.  :)

Anyway, bye for now.

Love,
Janelle

Well I'll be......

I never thought that my card making theory/skills would ever come in handy with my cooking, but for a recent Grandparents Day at my son's school, we had to take along a plate of food suitable for a morning tea. I made my favourite Chicken and Asparagus Rolls. (recipe below)

I was packing them up ready to go but they didn't look attractively presented. "Ah ha! Chevrons!" I said to myself, quickly changing the arrangement. I think they look quite attractively presented, because of the parallelogram shape of the rolls, the chevron placement just adds some interest. They must have been good anyway, because they all went in about the first 10 minutes.  :)

Here's the recipe. (I'm afraid it's in metric - I don't have the imperial equivalents.)

Chicken and Asparagus Rolls

1 large chicken breast

3 teaspoons mayonnaise

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

2 sheets ready rolled puff pastry

340g can asparagus spears

1 egg

salt & pepper for seasoning

2 tablespoons sesame or poppy seeds 

1. Process chopped chicken with mayonnaise, salt & pepper and breadcrumbs in a food processor until smooth.
2. Place mixture into a piping bag. Cut the pastry sheets in half lengthwise, making four long strips.
3. Drain juice from canned asparagus spears.
4. Pipe chicken mixture along the edge of each strip of pastry. Place the asparagus spears in a single row alongside the chicken.
5. Brush pastry with beaten egg. Roll pastry over filling to enclose filling completely. Place on a greased baking sheet with the seam of the pastry facing down onto the tray. Cut rolls diagonally into 3.5cm pieces, brush tops with egg and then sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds.
6. Bake in a hot oven for 10 minutes, reduce heat to moderate; bake a further 10 minutes or until golden brown.

P.S. To make it easier, I just place teaspoonfuls of the chicken mixture onto the pastry instead of piping it out. You can still achieve a tube-like appearance with it. Also, if you don't have a food processor, you can always buy chicken mince instead and then just mix it really well in a bowl.

Makes about 20

I hope you enjoy them.

Bye for now.

Love,

Janelle