Art and Counselling (part 2) - MS Canvas

The second canvas I did for counselling was around my feeling towards my MS. I feel like its a monster that is always behind me waiting for me to relax and it'll 'bite'.


I bought a black 12 x 12 canvas and dry brushed various Ferro metallic paints on to it. My Mam had torn a piece of cardboard from a box in a wonderful shape. I painted that with more Ferro paint in blue.

I had many ideas for the canvas, but none were working, so I left it for a while as I wanted to get it just right. I tore some pages from some MS magazines that I subscribe to and eventually came up with the idea of a hungry sea monster biting at a girl dangling above it. I used a citrus Paint Dabber to colour the monster and a Tippex pen to colour the teeth and put the spots on.

Next I took a picture of a model out of a magazine and glued it to a piece of card for strength before cutting it out.  I coloured her in grey with a wax crayon (the only thing to hand and I couldn't be bothered to stand up!) and gave her red shoes.  If I could, I'd wear red HIGH heels.  The shoe falling off represents the way that each time MS bites (in the form of a relapse) it takes a little of you away.  At the moment its just my red high heels!

I wanted it to seem like a fifties cartoon strip so I gave the monster and heroine speech bubbles cut from MS magazines.  I also did a little 'commentary' to bring it all together, again from MS magazines.



The whole canvas depicts totally how I feel about the MS.  I dangled the heroine string which I hammered into the top of the canvas with a decorative staple.  I say hammered because the speciality stapler it came from wouldn't work like a normal stapler when you can use just the top to staple, so I hammered it in instead!

Here is the front of the canvas.

The back of the canvas is also 'decorated'.  I used pictures cut from MS magazines again to show some of the symptoms I suffer from.  The left one shows how I can never know what is round the corner for me.  The middle is depression.  The right is fatigue.  Even looking at that photo gives me the wobbles.  I know I'd never manage those stairs!

I then wrote 'MS' in orange (the colour of the MS Society) and crossed it out in green, the colour of the MS Resource Centre (MSRC) who I support and sell cards at Christmas in aid of.  They have been a great help to me since I was diagnosed.

So there you have it, my MS Canvas and it was very, very cathartic to do.

Workshop and sheer exhaustion!!

Jo Na I attended a brilliant workshop at Graphicus in Barnard Castle, run by the wonderful Lesley Wharton and was called 'Fabulous Finds and Curios'.  It was all about using items you have in your home or office to make fabulous crafty things out of.

First of all we started to make flowers out of tissue drinks coasters.  We crumpled them up to release each individual layer and spritzed them with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist.  I think I used some sort of lime and a yellow.  We also had to cut around the inner circle of the coaster and do exactly the same thing with scrunching and spritzing to make the smaller flower.  We then punched out 2 scalloped circles and 2 smaller plain circles from dictionary pages.  These were also spritzed in the same colours.  We dried all of the pieces with a heat tool before scrunching the dictionary pages to match the coasters.

Once put together with the help of a small circle of cardboard behind the flower, we added buttons for centres (or a scrabble piece, an idea I unashamedly nicked from Jo!)  and 'floofed' them to make them stand up.  Once we'd done this we made a gift bag from a plain white A4 envelope and attached the flowers to it, adding stems from paper printed onto self adhesive labels.  Any decoration can be added when the bag is flat.  As with all crafting, you're only limited by your imagination!!

Then we each picked 3 (empty) loo roll holders out of a bag which Lesley had the staff at Graphicus collecting for weeks.  We flattened them and Lesley put them under house bricks to make sure they were completely flat.  Once they were, we covered them with paper, put holes in them for book rings to hold them together and voila a mini tag book!  We used a cheap elastic hair band to hold the book closed and it looks FAB!!!

Our final task for the day was after lunch and was an absolute killer for me.  Lesley had to help me as I was s-o-o-o e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d.  It was all about making another mini tag book from a DL envelope.  Luckily Lesley gave us full instructions and did all of the folding and cutting for me.  I just had the job of gluing down which I had to get Jo to help me with, but the result is stunning!!

Luckily Carrie had very kindly given us a lift through to the workshop, so I didn't have to drive.  I was so exhausted when I got in I had something to eat then went to bed and slept from about 8pm.  I had treatment the next day at the hospital and I came home straight afterwards rather than shop in Newcastle.

Although the workshops kill me, fatigue-wise, I won't stop going to them.  At least when I feel dreadful for a few days afterwards I know that I've achieved something that I am proud of.

A big thanks to Lesley for a FAB workshop as well as to all the girls who attended.  I think its safe to say we all had a great time!!!