Alas, alack... and a Doctors Day card

Ok, so I'm already a fail on Blogmas. <facepalm>   I fell asleep last night instead of getting online to blog, so there's Day Two blown.  Well, at least the pressure is off! LOL

So, Day Three... I have started crafting, but since I'm working on some surprises, I can't even show you what I'm working on. Smooth move, huh?

Instead, I'll show you the card that derailed my plans to blog last spring....

Welcome to Doctors Day Card 2015.

We were moving to a new building this year after being in the old location for 100 years, so I found an old image of the original hospital building. It was a reproduction of an old postcard, and it had those really strange early 1900s colors and a fake canvas texture print. So I lightened it and printed in grayscale and recolored it using Tombow markers. And did I just color it all one color? Oh, no. Crazy girl used four markers on the building alone and two greens on the bushes and trees. (Why do we do these things to ourselves???)

  I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for in a green cardstock and I wanted a bit of aging, so I took hot press watercolor paper and applied nice heavy coats of Peeled Paint Distress Stain. A thin strip or two of gold metallic cardstock, and done. And I just realized, I took a picture of the one I had done crooked and then pulled apart to straighten. Yeah, I was firing on all cylinders there. sheesh.

Anyway. All done.  Except that there were 40 of these puppies. You learn something every time you do a new project. This was the project on which I learned that I press really hard... too hard... down the paper while I use a wire trimmer to keep the paper in place.  I also learned that I can grip my markers too hard.  After 40 of these over the course of a week, I was having trouble using my hands. As an admin who uses a computer keyboard constantly all day long, this made for poor, achy, crampy fingers for weeks afterward.  Yep. That was the big signal.  I'm OLD, or at least my casing is. I've been told that's the sign... some body part that worked just fine no matter what abuse and torture you might have put it through when you were 20 now says, "Nope. That's it. I'm done. Now go away and let me rest."

My inner child is having problems with this concept. Outer adult-inner child conflict is problematic.

Anyway, as I was saying, 40 of these.  They went over well, but that put a kibosh on crafty adventures for a couple of months after that. I've learned to respect my hands in the months since then (and to lighten up my deathgrip on my writing utensils LOL). Next year, forget handmade... I'll do 'em up on the computer and have the printer do all the work. Ha!

So, that's it for today. Hope you are having a lovely December... may the days be long enough for you to thoroughly enjoy the holiday season. Unless you're anti-holiday, in which case I wish for you that time flies and before you know it we're deep in the January doldrums.

Til tomorrow!

Happy Crafting!
Christy