Warning: this post may be uncomfortable!

I have been caught in the throws of HIVES!!! Aaaack!! Here is the lesson that I learned: ALWAYS wash fabric before you sew with it! I was making an outdoor curtain for the playground at school, and bought heavy outdoor fabric, not realizing that I would be ALLERGIC to the sizing in the fabric! I've never been allergic to anything like this before, in fact this is my FIRST allergic reaction (with hives) to ANYTHING!

These were taken August 26, 2 days after I started treating

Hard to tell, but my hands are very swollen, and you can't even see the hives because of the swelling

It didn't show up right away either. Two days after sewing the curtains, the hives came up, and I had no idea at the time where they came from.  I had been suffering from what I thought at first were bug bites, then some kind of rash, on my ankles and under my knee. I fought with that for a week before I started to sew with the fabric. On thinking back to where these hives could have come from, I realized that I had SAT on this fabric before I began sewing with it a week later. I then spent about 2 hours over 2 days touching the fabric, and having it sit on me feet as I sewed it. Two days later I started to get the hives, which just escalated over the next few days. I think I had hives on top of hives on top of hives! Luckily I went to the doctor immediately (the 3rd time in a week) and he gave me some VERY strong cortisone cream to apply 3X a day. Two days ago I woke up with hands so swollen that I couldn't even hold a cup of coffee. Luckily I had taken my rings off.

taken today, Sunday, August 28

(yesterday)

 Thankfully, getting better! 

 But no suggestions from the doc except for Benadryl as to what to do about the ITCHING which was driving me mad.  So I came up with something that worked for me: ice.  

 This bag is full of frozen freezies and a few ice packs to help keep them frozen.

After lots of different experiments with bags of ice, and ice packs, I finally found the solution in frozen freezies. I could put them on isolated parts that were itchy, and even pop them between my toes. So I carry my insulated lunch bag with me, full of freezies, and I have more in the fridge to swap them out with when they thaw. 
      I also switched from Benadryl to another stronger antihistamine, which although I'm sure it helped, certainly didn't take away all the itching. The itching was so bad it kept me from sleeping a lot, but in the last 2 days I have finally gotten to sleep most of the night. I took my ice to bed with me, and even had my feet resting on bags of ice on those first few days. But I seem to be on the road to recovery now, yay!

Well that's my excuse for not doing much art these past two weeks (I did manage a little bit in my journal)! I'm back to the classroom tomorrow to get ready for school next week, so it may be a little while before I'm back.

Hope everyone is well, and for those of you who were/are in the path of Irene, take care and be safe!

Playtime!!

My good friend Therese came and spent a few days of playtime with me last week! It has turned into an annual event that I look forward to every year!

We played with beeswax!! I finally christened my new Ranger Melting pot I bought over a year ago. we also went to our mutual friend Marg's house for a wonderful lunch and more beeswax fun!

But we spent a lot of time talking about Art Journaling, and looking at videos, especially Gulfsprite and Journal Artista (Paula Phillips). And then we got to making stencils and our own spray ink!

 Here is the pile of stencils and things to use as stencils that is on my desk right now. 

  Therese brought me a pile of stencils that she made with her die cuts-cool!
  I sprayed these:

 

And this tree, but left the stencil on so you could see - she gave me several little baggies of these - how nice its that!

Then we went to the Dollarama and bought some plastic file folders, cut them up, and Therese started cutting out designs for me:

The "glass shards" was made by taping together all the little pieces she cut out -clever!

Some diamonds:

And this is what she did with the pieces she cut out -stuck them together with circle stickers!

Here are some stencils I made a few weeks ago:

Then we started playing with making our own sprays. I have some sprays

But of course, never enough. We did some online searching and came up with several different ways to do this, ended up with re-inkers and alcohol or water. Will also try some with Pearl Ex.

We also went to Chapters and found lots of kooky crazy fun stuff, but bought these-who can resist this typewriter font alphabet set for $12.00?? And I thought the bubbles would be fun for my journal.

At Staples, while looking for Portfolio watercolor oil pastels, we found these very cool watercolor paints, each one has paint in its reservoir. I first heard of these from Gulfsprite. So, of course, picked them up. never did find the Portfolios though.

It was a fun week! Can't wait until next year!!

Next time I will show you some Journal pages made with the stencils.

Aug 1

Get Your Art On is done - I managed to post most of the month!!


I finished CJs canvas today, entitled Keys to Happiness. CJ chose the words for her canvas:

 

CJ was visiting all weekend so I didn't have time to do much more, but here are some pictures:

Saturday the main street was closed for festivities

 and fun things like Belly Dancing!

 Sunday we went to Sandbanks in Picton and sat on the beach all day (like lots of others!)

 And we went to CJs favourite Cider Company that sells Waupous Cider and got a few fun things as well as cider to take home.

And we went home by the ferry, which is always fun!

See you soon!