This was a better day

It didn't start out to be a good day. I probably should start by mentioning that DH loves to play WoW. Those of you who are WoW widows know what I'm talking about. He's also an insomniac.

Can you see where this is going?

You see, I'm making an effort to get to bed earlier, get up earlier, get more work done around the house and spend more creative time with DD every day.

DH is a tall guy. He has size 13 feet...you can imagine that the guy has never successfully tip-toed anywhere in his life.

I never know exactly what time it is when he stumbles in to the room...I do know that the usual time that I've been waking up has been about 4:30 am. I don't know if it's the noise of him moving around or the burrito spinning he does with the covers. Let me tell you I think the guy actually defies gravity with that one sometimes.

So today I just said 'to heck with it' and got up....at 5:30 am. Up before the sun. And the birds. And the snow plow....Yeah it's still snowing. Thank goodness for global warming, eh? Ha! I wish!

I've been operating on about 5 hours of sleep but the day was mostly productive. I got DD to work on a lot of worksheets for reading and writing. I called for a repairman to come see if the dishwasher will live. Imaginative low-carb cooking is easier if I don't have to mess around with doing the dishes afterward. It's the one thing I hate the most in my housework routine. My hands hurt even when I put lotion on after having them in the dishwater. *ouch* Dishpan hands in the depths of a bitter cold winter. *ouch* again

I found my boxes of oil pastels today. Gave DD her first lesson using a blending stump. Then I made a background paper out of a map of England. I drew the outline of a gothic arch stencil onto the map and then colored it in. Then I blended everything so it looked shadowy on the map where I visited a castle and an old Benedictine abbey 10 years ago. *sigh* I do hope I can make it back there someday.

I also got a set of inchies scanned in so I can show them off. While setting them up into a layout I got distracted and made a really cool paper. It doesn't go with the inchies at all so that layout is in the *crap I gotta start over* stage. It may go pretty well with a steampunk kit request that I'm working on.

So in the interest of getting the post done I reset them in a plain old background. These inchies are a bit different. Supposedly they're to be done using glass microscope slides. NOPE! I have a phobia regarding glass.

Specifically broken glass. 144 stitches will do that to you.

Anyway, I decided that I'd try using the plastic from all of the packaging from DD's Christmas presents. I had lots of that. LOL

The plastic worked like a charm. I found the foil tape *finally* at the new craft store nearby. They were also clearing out a bunch of Pearl-Ex powders so I'm playing with those a bit, too. I did the bird stamp on the left using the Pearl-Ex colors but it doesn't show up really well in the scan. If you're familiar with the pigments then you know how they shimmer.

I had fun with these little things. I'm going to make more stuff like this. Maybe not so small but definitely the sandwiching part. And DD got a lot of things that came in plastic packaging this year so I have no shortage of materials. LOL

Now it really is time for me to try to get some sleep. Wish me luck.