Brain surgery is cause for reflection

Hello friends! I hope your 2012 is off to a wonderful start! I am on week 6 of my recovery from surgery. I have Trigeminal Neuralgia, which is the compression of the nerve root which hosts all the nerve endings to either side of your face. The condition is very painful and I've had it for 5 years. To make a long story short, my husband and I had had enoiugh of this disease and it's effects on our life together, so I made the decision to have a Microvascular Decompression (MVD surgery). They made about a 4-5 inch incision behind my left ear, cut a silver-dollar sized hole into the bone, and went about putting some teflon pads in between the artery and vein that were compressing on my Trigeminal Nerve. They popped the bone plug back in and sewed me up. *phew*

Pretty scary stuff, but the worst of it is that I've been left with some vertigo as a result of the surgery and am waiting for it to fully pass before returning to work.
What does this have to do with crafting?!
Well, brain surgery is certainly cause for reflection. Having this surgery will allow me to get off the heavy meds I have to take to keep it in check, which will allow me to have children of my own one day, but also give me my energy and life back! I have been thinking about how different I *can* make my life now that I've got this surgery behind me and how I can get back to the energetic, ethusiastic ME I was before my surgery. One of the things I used to do was Art Journaling. It was so fun to make a mess, try out new techniques, purge and vent, and either share it, or tuck it away just for me to see.
I decided that the NEW-old me should art journal this year...what a way to document this year, right?!
I went through all that to share a couple pages from my journal using the Gelli Plate by GelliArts (http://www.gelliarts.com/), which allows you to monoprint anytime without the need of a press or the mess of making your own gelatin and letting it set...all that for just $30! SO WORTH IT!


On both of these pages, I used some rubber stamps by Unity-they are SO my favorite new stamp company. The owl was purchased at a trade show and the "follow your heart" set was purchased through Unity's new stamp of the week club-a new stampset in your mailbox every week for just $5.97! SO FUN!
I hope that you will try out thE Gelli Plate too, or at least check it out on YouTube...it's a BLAST!


Hugs and HOOTS,
<3 Alicia