WOYWW # 149, Paper Flowers

Back at the Weekly Workdesk Wander, courtesy of our most excellent hostess, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground.
   These were the Tim Dies I bought recently, having admired what people were doing with them. So I’ve spent a few days cutting out loads of flowers in different papers.

I’ve have been putting some together for a couple of Wedding cards in Black and White that I have to make.I used black and white pearlescent paper, along with some glittered vellum for a bit of sparkle.

Here I’ve layered them all up, and also added some seed beads in Black or White to the centres. So that’s my desk this week.

                   Roof Update:
 We now have a roof over our bedroom, lol, just in time for the glorious (!) Bank Holiday weather we had,and we have someone coming into plaster the room next weekend. The kitchen roof is coming off now, as well as taking down the chimney stack at the end of the kitchen. We have an old Victorian house with the galley- style kitchen:

According to the guy you can see taking it down, the only thing keeping it there was gravity!!!
 Hope you all had a lovely Easter, and have a great Wednesday.

WOYWW #148

Not so much Whats on my Workdesk, as the view from my Workdesk today.

 

 Scaffolding.

We are having a new roof, and this has also shown up some cracked brickwork between two floors.

So at some point soon, all the brickwork above my window has to come out, have a steel lintel put in, then re-bricked. Great. How much mess is that going to make?

 On the up side, we have also had the dormer window in our bedroom widened, and raised to a peaked roof, instead of a flat one.
This is a ‘before’ pic of our bedroom, which is on the attic level,and you can see the slope of the eaves either side, and the height of the ceiling over the widow. Beloved Husband has hit his head more times than I could count on that slope! He is also going to redo the built-in cupboards that were to the right of the window, and we have used the need to shift everything out to have a damned good clearout.

Having the dormer widened, and the ceiling raised was Hubbys idea, and I have to admit that its made a HUGE difference to the room.It looks, and feels, twice the size now.

This is what it has looked like.

 Work is still ongoing on the roof, but at least now we have some solid-ish covering. For three or four days, it was tarpaulin between us & the sky. I feel like I’ve spent the last week in a tent.

So not a lot happening desk-wise,(but you can see some new Tim dies I bought recently in the previous post) so its time for everyone to visit our Mistress of Ceremony’s,

Julia Dunnit over at The Stamping Ground. Oh, and a big Thank You to Julia for my WOYWW badge I received last week. Its fabulous, and pinned to my handbag in the hope that one day it will be spotted by a co- WOYWWer.

Have a great Wednesday, this post took forever as Blogger didn’t seem to want to post pictures today, so I had to try to upload them from my pc, wait for them to ‘vanish’ then upload them again from Picasa! Duh!!

 Have a great Wednesday everyone.

WOYWW #146

Hi everyone, been MIA for a few weeks- wrapped up in Wedding Stationery, and work. I’ve really missed joining the weekly workdesk wander, at the Incredible Julia Dunnits,so here I am again. Back on afternoon shift now, so have some more time (at last). I can go to bed when I want, get up when I am ready, and still get stuff done. Right now I am making a wedding card for someone at work who’s getting married, I have a mug of coffee by my side, and Disturbed blasting from my PC- all is right with my world! 🙂
This engagement card was made for some friends, really simple, just a ribbon threaded through a Diamanté heart buckle, wrapped around a square of white card, matted onto another square of white, then navy to match the ribbon. Stamped the Congratulations in Distress Stormy Sky and heat embossed it with clear powder and matted onto a navy strip.

 This is the start of a Christening card for a little girl, using a Creative Expressions medallion stamp I’ve used for this before.

Been bargain finding again- I’ve wanted the Raven stamp from Jennie at The Artistic Stamper for a while, and she had a fab sale on Feb 29th, so I took advantage of her generosity, lol. Got some embellishment bits as well, I’ll find those again and post a pic.
 The Halloween stamps are from Chocolate Baroque, I don’t have any Halloween stamps, and these were a great buy. The little wood mounted Alphabets you can see were probably my best buy to date- we went to Kidderminster recently, as Beloved Husband wanted to go to PC World, and they have a store called The Range there, which has quite a big craft section. These stamps were in their reduced bin, 99p a set! I also got the other two for 99p each, a ‘With Sympathy’ stamp, and one that reads Thank You in scrabble tiles. The rosettes are done in a sparkly vellum, for the previously mentioned Wedding card, and to everyone who suggested it last time, a glue gun works great, thanks folks.

Last couple of pics, from my youngest son for Mothers Day, a Simons Cat pillow. On my pc desk, there are two Simons Cats, one each from Son & Hubby for Christmas, a Charlie Brown,as I am also a massive Snoopy fan, and sitting next to CB is Boris the Bat, a pressie from Beloved Husband. The tiny little white clay teddy was made by my Daughter in Law Becky a few years ago.

 So thats my little corner of the world today, hope you are all having a great Wednesday, see as many of you as I can get to over the next few days.

WOYWW #141

 Its Wednesday!!!!

Good WOYWW morning folks! This is what was on my desk last night when I took the piccy. It also goes to show that despite what my pictures usually look like, I do NOT do Tidy, lol. You can see I am a confirmed fan of the ‘push it out of the way’ method of crafting. The card on the desk was my Valentines card to my Beloved Husband.

Valentines Day is a bit busy, as besides this, it is my Youngest sons Birthday, a nephews birthday, and also a work colleagues!

I will do a post on the Valentines card how to a bit later.

For my youngest son (he’s 25 now, and passed his driving test last week), I converted a tag I had made before into a card. He is a big animal lover, cats in particular, and of course he adores Ambrose.

  The base card was overstamped with a Birthday words stamp, just randomly inked with the same Distress inks I used on the tag, then I matted the tag onto some black cardstock.

Posting at an odd time today, as we are back on shifts, and we do a permanent afternoon shift, 2 till10. Its a shift you either love or hate, but I love it- being a person who really does NOT do mornings. I seem to have loads more time to do stuff, too.

 Talking of work, I thought I would show you a picture or two of where we work & what we do- I say we as my Beloved Husband and myself work together too.Here’s the proof! Beloved Husband & his toolbox.
 These are the sort of things we make- the bolts that hold aeroplanes together. So when you go on holiday, if your plane is an Airbus, its pretty likely that it has bolts in it that we made.

And here is Beloved Husband (Doug) at his favourite pastime- gaming.  I’m guessing this picture shows him playing Skyrim, which is a new one to him, its usually Call Of Duty or Battlefield. As it is with Youngest Son- I feel like I live in the middle of a war zone some days, lol.

Well thats a little portion of my world- my desk, my real job, and my Beloved Hubby. Pop over to Julias and show us yours, please. We love to come visit. Amazing how long the list has grown now- something to do with the Craft Stamper feature, maybe?
Something else I meant to post, have any of you seen Tims new direction with his ’12 Tags of Christmas’ idea?If not, follow the link on his name- its a really cool idea. Have a great week.

WOYWW #137

Well, here we are again, wandering around the desktops of the world, courtesy of our much-loved hostess, Julia Dunnit.

 Not a huge amount of stuff on my desk this week, as I have a bit of a project deadline to meet, which I will tell you about in a minute. So the stamping I have been doing, I can’t show you yet.
But there are some new (to me) Tim stamps this week, via e-bay, and a cool selection of acrylic gemstones, also e-bay.
  Also, some craft wire, lots of different colours, from Wires.co.uk   I came across this pack when I was looking for something else, and it just sort of fell into my shopping basket, 🙂 .

Talking of new Tim stamps, I have been getting the blog updates of his new releases for CHA- there are some fabulous stamp images, and great dies & folders.

I also am really pleased & chuffed to bits to tell you that I was one of those chosen for the Craft a Scene Design Team-Thanks so much ShazinOz for pointing me to it!
Actually, I have to say a huge Thank You here to each & every one of my blog visitors, and all my WOYWW friends, for all the encouragement that your visits & comments gave given me over the last (almost) two years. And I also have to give very big thanks to my Beloved Husband, for encouraging me to start a blog- this whole thing was his idea.
    So the stamping I have been doing is for my first submissions to the site, but I will share it once it has been posted!
   I shall try posting this via scheduled post again, I have tried it a few times, but its never actually worked for me yet. I am probably doing something wrong and missing something obvious, like the time I set the oven timer,set how long it was to cook for, set the temperature, put our dinner in the oven so we could have a meal about half an hour after we came in,double checked everything, then went to work. Came home, expecting to smell dinner almost ready- nothing.  Guess who forgot to turn the oven on!  Happy Wednesday everyone, see you all over the next few days!
PS. The scheduled post didn’t work!

WOYWW #135

Well, a Happy New Year to all my fellow WOYWWers-  if you are new to this, pop over to our delightful hostess, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground and join in with the most addictive bit of legal snooping around.
You may remember a few weeks ago I was talking about finding a wooden chest for my  Beloved Husband, who is a fan of fruit teas ( I call it his Hot Squash fetish). I managed to find some, and they have them in all sorts of sizes, from two to a dozen compartments. The supplier was via Amazon, Coins Accessorise, and they have lots of little boxes in their store, perfect for altering. I didn’t want one too large, as it was to take to work & keep in his toolbox, so this one seemed perfect.

I inked loads of white tissue with mists, then overstamped with dragons, swirls and so on.  The tissue was torn up, then pasted over the box. A few coats of spray varnish sealed it from the oil where we work.  I stamped a large dragon onto acetate, backed with adhesive film and then covered in gilding flakes, from a selection at Crafty Notions.
This was a lot of fun to do, and I learned quite a bit in the process.
Firstly, colour & stamp a lot  more tissue than you think you will need. When you run out, its very hard to get the same sort of colour blend.

 Second, don’t put the main image on first, then do the tissue bit.Definitely the wrong way around.
 But I think the most important lesson I learned, was Never have your mug of coffee and pot of PVA on the same side of the table. Very easy to dunk your brush in the wrong one.
So, I have plans to do some more of these, maybe as Christmas presents this year (See my New Years Resolution post, if nothing else it will give you a good laugh when the epic fail undoubtedly happens), because they had some lovely little drawer units that would make fab jewellery boxes, and for people who don’t like teas, the box above could hold candles maybe, or little pots of jam, or bath bombs- what’s that phrase about best laid plans of mice and (wo)men? Well, my intentions are good, and yes, I do know there’s a saying about that too. Probably the more appropriate one , 🙂
 So have a great Wednesday, I did really well last week and visited everybody- I even surprised myself,but I was at home all day- back at work this week though, so it will probably take me a few days.

WOYWW #134- mid-way between Christmas & New Year.

Good Morning everyone, I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas, and are looking forward to the New Year. Time for the last WOYWW of 2011, hosted as always by our Mistress of Ceremonies, Julia Dunnit over at The Stamping Ground.
        I know its a bit early for spring cleaning, but when I have finished all the Christmas cards, while I am putting everything away, I usually do a bit of re-organising.
So this first picture is what my desk looked like a few days ago:

As you can see I have a bit of a problem with ribbon. I knew it needed some sort of organisation, but I didn’t really know how I was going to make it user & space friendly! That is, until someone posted a link on Splitcoast Stampers, to this lady, Becca’s blog, where she had come up with her own solution. She used foamboard to make ‘bobbins’ to wind her ribbons onto. So I purchased some A4 sheets of 3mm thick foamboard online, 30 sheets, as I would need quite a bit, and that was the cheapest way to buy it.I found that I could cut it into 7 x 7 cm squares, and have next to no waste. Each A4 sheet gave me 9 squares, and a little strip. So I started with 270 squares, and believe it or not, I have 2 , yes 2  squares left over!

 3 days of sorting and winding, and this is the result. 3 drawers filled with neatly wound ribbon, and 1 drawer that has metallics, leftover ‘bits’ and a few reels. The ribbon on each bobbin is held in place with a rubber band, and in some cases there are more than one ribbon on a bobbin, if there was not a lot of that particular piece.

 I am amazed at how little space this takes up now.
I went from these three tubs, to these drawers.

              

That sort of looks like it takes up the same space, so here they are side by side:

The three large tubs all fitted into 4 small drawers. Almost 90 bobbins per drawer! And now I can find any colour I want- easily.  I can’t tell you how many ‘bits’ I found, because I could never find the skein I had started! Had a bit of a stress sometimes over some colours- is Teal green or blue? and when does orange cease to be orange and become apricot?When does grey become silver? Then I realised that it only mattered to me- as long as I could find them, does it really matter if my orange/apricot/peach are all together? 🙂
 So I am off to post, and start visiting, as I am still on holiday until the 3rd of January!!! Yipee!!!
P.S.
By the way, I bought my foamboard from The Foamboard store, and I got the 3mm white, in A4 size. If you need quite a bit, this place seemed to be the cheapest, and they shipped really fast too- I think I ordered one Friday/Saturday, and it arrived on the Monday.

WOYWW #133

              Merry Christmas Everyone!

 Sorry to have been missing for a few weeks- between car breaking down, and extra work, trying to make cards- I’ve been chasing my own tail all the time. I hope everyone is ready (or almost) for Christmas, and want to wish everyone a very Happy, Peaceful and enjoyable Christmas, wherever you are. So, back to the Wednesday Wander around the Workdesks of the World, courtesy of Santas Little Helper, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground.

These are some of the cards I have been working on, using a Dreamweavers Bauble stencil, embossing paste, and adding some glitter to the paste before it dries. I also tried out the Tim Holtz Rosette die I bought at the NEC last month. I  found that by trimming the paper down slightly, I could make different sizes of rosette- then I had to get a couple of small scalloped punches to make the centres, as the original was out of proportion. I did try cutting them down with deckle-edged scissors, but didn’t really like the finished look. Punches are quicker too, 🙂

I also did them using my original Cuttlebug plates, rather than the extended ones, after I looked at the price of them. OMG! HOW MUCH???! I really cannot justify buying them, no matter how often I used them.  I will post the pictures of how I did them on my Cuttlebug page over Christmas, but as you can see, it does work, and is not really difficult. I actually found it much trickier getting the rosettes into shape. That is so fiddly!!!
 These were some made-to-order cards utilising few images I have stamped up previously. I hope you all have a great day, I shall be visiting over the next couple of days- yes, I STILL have some cards to make- and I haven’t bought a turkey yet- the tree & decorations only went up on Monday-I am so going to change my ways next year!

WOYWW #128

Happy Wednesday everyone! Time to saunter off to the Wonderful Miss Dunnits, for the regular Wednesday Wander.
         Pictures this week are of the set of boxes I won in Craftywombles draw. They are gorgeous, with so much attention to detail, and in my favourite colour, as well.:)
On top of the smallest box, you can see the Tornado, rainbow & bridge.

Each side has wonderful vintage images of the Oz story, featuring all the characters. At this point, I have to admit that I have never seen the Movie, The Wizard of Oz. I have read the book,as a child, and remember enjoying it hugely. I also remember that the images were very similar to the ones on the boxes!  Trouble is, the film is a musical, and I really do not like musicals! I have never seen The sound of Music, either- and fully intend to live out the remainder of my life not having seen it! The only exception to my ‘No Musicals’ rule, was recently watching Sweeney Todd- but I could forgive Johnny Depp pretty much anything! And actually, it really wasn’t bad. Anyway, a huge thank you to Craftywomble, this really is a very special piece I am very pleased to have won. I shall be using them to store some very special treasures, I think.
  Just thinking about how old the Wizard of Oz film is, what’s the likelihood that someone will think its time for a full bells & whistles remake? With current CGI, I think it could actually be pretty spectacular.
Last thing on my desk this week, are some really pretty little Slide Buckles, for my Wedding Stationery samples.

I pictured them on white card, then tried them on black, as I wasn’t sure which one would show up best. I really like the round ones in the top right corner, they are a pearl & rhinestone mix. Well, that me done for this week, I shall post early, and visit tonight, so have a great day everyone.

WOYWW #127

OK, I think its time for whoever is stealing all the days between Wednesdays to own up. And the person stealing all the weeks until Christmas for that matter. Where are they all going? Do we have a black hole somewhere they are all dropping into? Or is someone secretly stashing them away to get themselves some extra time? I think its time they ‘fessed up!  But seriously, here we are again at the weekly wander round the worlds workdesks- presided over by non other than the Wonderful Miss Dunnit at The Stamping Ground.
 After my visit to the NEC, and my goody stash (here) all put away,and yes, Julia, that is definitely a years worth, Lol, I got down to a few tags. Some are in the previous post, but these two were inspired by some display cards on the Inkylicious stand. I liked their samples so much, I bought the stamps- that reminds me of an old advert!

I liked these stamps because they reminded me of a cat we used to be owned by- she was forever hiding amongst the garden plants to catch butterflies, gently carrying them indoors then letting them go. She was very fond of doing the same thing with mice too- and worms when it had been raining! Ick! There is little worse than treading on a worm in bare feet in the dark, honestly.Makes me shudder to think of it.
  The cat & butterflies are one stamp set, which has a sitting cat in it as well, the willow branches is a separate one. The flock of birds is yet another set, and it has a lot of single birds and flying birds in it. Really useful little set. This one doesn’t seem to be on their site yet, so I couldn’t link to it. The tree is from a Crafty Individuals Crafty Elements sheet, CI 209. The tag on the right has an assortment of small grasses and flowers,mainly from Chocolate Baroque,Autumn Hedgerow, the hanging leaves are from Lavinia Stamps,Leaf Trail, and one of the little birds sitting on a branch.

For anyone who likes small metal embellishments to add to tags/cards etc,like these:

 go look at the post about the NEC, there is a link there to the company I got them from, Riverside Beads, and they are SO, SO cheap!

 Final thing for this week, an e-bay purchase- lots of watch workings. The one thing I really have been short of is this sort of stuff to add to tags etc. 

 As Marg posted, we went to see our Granddaughter Merlin in a little concert for the Grandparents- they were wonderful. As were the cheese scones that we had back at Margs. I can most definitely vouch for the scrumptiousness of them- they have to be eaten to be believed! If you haven’t made any yet & tasted them, you do not know what you are missing. Trust me on this, you will be totally unable to eat just one. Unless its the last one, and the next batch are still in the oven.

 On the subject of the box I was looking for, I discovered two things: One, My Beloved Hubby reads ALL my blog posts, lol! I assumed he just looked at the pictures and read the comments- WRONG!

  The second thing I discovered was I should have Googled for them- I found somewhere via Amazon- and they do them in all sorts of sizes, from 2 compartments up to 12, I think.  They are called Coins Accessorise, and they have all sorts of  wooden items besides, like jewellery boxes, tags,hanging shapes, wine bottle boxes, coasters,and some fantastic little sets of drawers, and they are really cheap! Perfect for decorating/altering. Here’s a picture of one of the drawer sets-£8.69.
Had to share this place- its the sort of thing we are always looking for, isn’t it? I see lots of Birthday pressies for next year here. So my little box has arrived, and although Beloved Hubby knows about it now,( he thought it was a great idea, phew), he doesn’t know what it will look like when he gets it. I also just realised you have a picture of my penguin cursor on the drawers- his name is Nux. 🙂. Well I hope everyone has a great Wednesday, and I shall be seeing you later on.