All at Sea - with a bucket and spade!

The sun was shining. It was all very chilled at home. Squares of patterned paper - large and small. Perfect day

I made a few boxes in various sizes. Easier and quicker than they look once you’ve done a couple. The second picture is a ‘lazy susan’ - easy to fold but they last little bit of pressing into shape was a bit tricky.

And the origami crane - which I love. I made millions in all different sizes and with various kinds of paper - giftwrap, napkins, wallpaper samples, scrapbooking papers, origami papers and odd scraps of mulberry paper. My newly-cleaned-and-tidied craft room didn’t stand a chance!

And this is a present I really need to get to the recipient quick. I’m already very late. It’s a terracotta pot spraypainted and stencilled, a branch, spraypainted, 18 tiny origami cranes (a symbol of friendship) hung in place and all finished off with a variety of glitters and sprays. I really like the finished look. Hopefully they will too!

Saturday afternoon. Recovered from Jeanette and Ian’s housewarming party (Great, them living over the road, I walked home in my pyjamas!) . Me and Leah got a couple of pots from B&Q - 50p for the big ones; 35p for the small ones - and a couple of cans of spray paint - threw in a twig from the garden and a paper punch to make a stencil. Great fun. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a ‘finished’ photo. Silly me. Will have to go round and take a snapshot of her windowsill She wore my mismatched pyjamas to protect her lovely new trousers!

(And I got some new ‘new’ shoes. The ones I bought last week got watermarked at the caribbean festival. So Emma very kindly raced to Tesco to get me some more before they sold out.I love them a lot!)

They got the keys on Wednesday, moved in Thursday. These pics were took on Wednesday!

Front and Back of the House:

Upstairs. Leah’s room is blogged here:

Downstairs:

Outbuildings:

Garden (note Leah and her invisible dancing partner):

Vegetable Patch - Onions, Potatoes, Rhubarb:

Emma’s grandad died eleven days ago. The funeral was yesterday. It was all very sad. I didn’t want to give Emma’s mum a shop card. This was the card I made. Emma looked very smart in a sort-of dress. It suited her a lot.

Emma came home from church with a scrappy diagram of the armour of God - what goes where, what does it all do etc etc. I used that as inspiration for this card for her. I used my own stripey paper/card, some printed ‘armour of God’ passages from bible gateway and sticky tape/pritt stick.

I used a pic of Emma and some odds and ends from google images to do the Emma bit. That took ages in paintshop pro - making sure all the elements worked sizewise. I printed a few out onto card, stuck one to the front and decoupaged just a second layer. I stuck a small eph 6 passage so half was on the front and the other half was inside the card. The badge was made with ’super badge it’ (fantastic contraption). Then I made the bigger card with each of the armour items and some brief notes. I like it. It’s funky!

My pregnant doll got put on someone’s site:

http://myhalfofthebrain.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/pregnant-doll/

I haven’t had a good look around the site but it looks interesting

Abbie is pregnant for another couple of weeks or so then out will pop baby blunt number 2. I wanted to make a funny pregnant doll but I didn’t have a pattern to follow or a lot of time - about half a day. So I adapted a basic rag doll idea. I cut the pieces for the rag doll - just a front and back in this case - then added a front section to stuff a baby in. I made a little baby and thought it would be funny to add an umbilical cord - and it would probably stop the baby getting lost if Lauren played with it. I used very cheap fabric I bought recently for £1 a metre from Tahim Drapers. The best bit was making and stitching on breasts with press-stud nipples then sewing a press stud mouth on the baby - so it can ‘feed’. It was a laugh giving it to Abbie last night while the girls (Abbie, Mary, Lorraine, Ellie, Jeanette, Me and Em) were round for a chinese. All good fun! I did make a basic pattern before I started - available here at my flickr group - free patterns: http://www.flickr.com/groups/393711@N24/

Busy reading.

This afternoon I attended personality disorder training. It was an interesting experience because I know life with a personality disorder and now, thankfully, without. I also know life as a worker who tries day by day to support and accommodate people who could be, and often have been, diagnosed with a personality disorder.

Words are inadequate to accurately describe the internal world on one side of the fence – the side of ‘service user’. Somewhere inside is a ‘treasure chest’ of memories that are far too precious to begin to share especially when the risk of being misunderstood is so high. When I stop to open the lid and have a little look around, I know I could write a book which would sell at least enough copies to make the exercise worthwhile. I don’t open the lid that often anymore.

A room full of colleagues who didn’t know the old ‘me’, the ‘me’ that was bewildered and distressed the majority of the time, the ‘me’ on the other side of the fence. In terms of mental health services, a room full of people who know me as the worker, the giver, the supporter, the one with the resources, the one who’s okay. Reassuringly confident of my ability to open the lid on my history and be reminded of some of the ‘dark years’ whilst staying in the present and in role.

Yay me