Wednesday, March 31, 2010

WOYWW- What a mess!!!!

Hello and Welcome to my What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday post. Here's what my desk looked like at 6.30am this morning before I left for work.


What a mess!!!!!! You can see the results of my craft morning with my friends yesterday, when I made good use of Kay's BIIIIIG flower punches to make some funky flowers. There's also some bits of stash from my NEC trip- the Big & Juicy ink pad and Distress Inks, and some nearly finished tags with a tree and fairies on, for a Facebook tag swap group. Plus some cool 2 step stamping flowers from Stampin' Up in the bottom right corner. There's also my new Moleskine film journal, which I had for Mother's Day and have finally started to write in.

I'm going to risk a swing now- don't be shocked!!! Swing right......


Even more of a mess!!!!! My desk is L shaped, so the junk tends to float to the right. You can see my ever present heatgun, my beloved crop-a-dile and my box of stamps to be filed away, which never seems to be empty despite me putting them away each weekend. There's also a black box of flower and leaf punches that I am planning to make use of one evening in front of the telly with my scraps box.

Swing left, miss the arch through to the kitchen, and you get to......


My as yet unfinished stamp storage unit, built by my clever husband. I need to buy more boxes to put on the shelves and then I can finish sorting my stamps. Can't wait!!!!

Soooo, what's on your work desk? To see more go to Julia's blog.

Monday, March 29, 2010

NEC Stash shopping- what a fab day!

I had a lovely day yesterday at the NEC Hobbycrafts show with my friends Kay and Angy. Lots to see, lots to buy, and boy did I buy!!! I did have a shopping list, and I got most of the things on it in the first aisle, but I did manage to buy quite a bit that wasn't on the list as well..... oops.



So, I got..... some more Promarkers (not that I needed them, but they were the only "set" I hadn't got and they were only £5, bargain!), 2 Big & Juicy pads and some silk coated card from Clarity so I can pretend I'm Barbara Grey with my new brayer, 5 new Distress Ink colours (wanted the lot, but they'll have to wait), a few bargain stamps, some Lavinia stamps I've had my eye on for months, ink blending pads and a fabulous big swirl punch. My little girl was particularly pleased that I bought an owl babies stamps especially for her- you can just see the corner of her jumper in the bottom left corner of the picture- she was reluctant to let it go even for me to take the photo!

It was also lovely to meet Leandra at Paperartsy, I follow her on Twitter, and she tweeted me yesterday after the show! I'm still coveting the new Paperartsy stamp plates, as well as a couple of sets from The Stampman, and some Stampotique ones. There's always something else, right?

Monday, March 22, 2010

Spring a licious

Isn't it lovely to see daylight before work in the morning, and feel the weather warming up a little bit? On my way to work I pass a series of grass banks that are filled with gorgous happy little crocuses (or is that crocii?) in yellow and white and purple. They make me smile every morning (no mean feat at 7.30am), and I know that once they start to fade, I'll start to see the cheerful yellow daffodils, and then it's just a matter of time before I'm complaining about the heat of summer!!!!!

In honour of springtime, and because I needed some cards for little girls, I dug out a cutesy stamp called Maggie with Spring Flowers and got making.


 Maggie is coloured with Promarkers, and the backing paper is DCWV. The flowers are fabulous, with a slightly sude effect finish, and came from my Mom!!! The flower centre sentiment is by Stampin' Up, and the ribbon was a bargain roll from Hobbycraft.

This is my challenge entry for-

Crafty Cardmakers- Spring into Spring
Totally Gorjuss- Ribbon
Challenge up your life- Flower
Allsorts- Spring is in the air
By the cute and girly- Spring is in the air



Maggie is coloured with Promarkers, the papers were a gift and the Make a Wish stamp is from ScrappyCat.

I'm entering this into Fussy and Fancy Friday's Green challenge.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Eyes down, look in.

Each week, Kay, Michelle and I have a regular crafting session whilst our little girls play together. We also all participate in a regular ATC challenge between the 3 of us and a good friend up in Scotland, Leigh, who Kay and I got to know via Docrafts. All of us have a bit of a stamping obsession, and so we take it in turns to set a stamping challenge. We have to produce an ATC for each of the other 3 on the required theme. The idea was to get us using our huge stamp collections, and previous themes have been the colour green, fairies, children, using patterned paper and postage.

Leigh has set the current challenge, and it's a belter! She sent us a list of bingo calls and we had to choose 3 of them to make into ATCs. I've made 2 of my 3, and they've been great to do. Here's Legs Eleven and Kelly's Eye....




Did you spot the Stampotique legs?

I haven't decided quite what to do for my third one yet. That's my challenge for tomorrow!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

WOYWW

Last week I forgot completely about What's on your workdesk Wednesday until it was far too late in the day to do anything about it. Today, however, I managed to snatch a couple of photos on my phone as I was hustling the kids out of the door at 7.30 this morning. Here's my desk....


Front and centre you can see my monthly art journal, which I try to sit down to every day or at least every couple of days. A few trusty tools of the trade are there too- tiger striped scissors, white gel pen, the white sugar bowl I use as a water pot for painting.... Also there's one of my button jars and my ice cream tub full of stamps to put away, or use.
Right in the centre top of the picture is my little ATCs folder with ATCs to swap or to back up and send off to other ATCers. It's leaning on my new ink pad shelf, a verrrrry useful addition to my desk. It was a broken bookshelf, scrounged from work, and with a bit of glue and TLC I now have a moveable ink pad shelf. 
Thought I'd give you another view this week, so here's the inspiration and reminders string that's hung on the wall above my desk.

It has various favourite and recent ATC acquisitions, my "you've won" letter from Craft Stamper, some tags, a lovely bee card I had for my birthday and couldn't bear to part with, a card from my daughter (with the puppies on) and a money off voucher for a craft shop! There's also a postcard of the delectable David Tennant as Hamlet for me to sigh over occasionally, and a lovely little saying someone sent me that tells me I'm good enough just as I am. I'm tempted to put a noticeboard up there, but a little higher up I have a lovely metal advertisement which I'm loathe to move. Does anyone else have an inspiration display space?

Take a look at some more work desks via Julia's blog.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Art journal- march pages

I just sat down to fill in the past couple of days in my art journal, and realised I hadn't shown you the decorated pages before I started journalling. So here they are, in my favourite colours.




The pages are painted with semi-gloss ranger acrylic paints, I think I'm addicted to those paints....... and I adore those colours. My colour palette is definitely reds, oranges and yellows. The lovely picture of Alice is the beautiful one I used a day or two ago on an ATC by Arthur Rackham. It doesn't look like this now though, I've since journalled on 13 of the squares. The squares are cut from a brown envelope and inked with Distress Inks, the yellow ones are Sundays.

Stampotique again!!!! Another challenge entry.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Stampotique stamps???? OK, OK, I'm like a broken record, but they are FANTASTIC!!

This is my entry for the Stampotique Designers' Challenge blog where the theme this fortnight is Spring has sprung. Can you guess where the springs came from? I'll tell you at the end of this post.


The background is swooshed over with my Ranger Studio semi gloss acrylic paints, then I sponged a little ink through some sequin waste and covered it with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls, then I did the same on the chipboard flower. The sort of flowers are Paperartsy stamps, and my versatile little peg alphabet stamps were called into service again for the words. The bow tie, and buttons have more Perfect Pearls to tie in with the background. White gel pen again, and a little doodle round the edges before I stuck his springy hair on.

Well, did you guess? The springs are from the middle of some pegs! Hope I've still got enough to peg the washing out!!!!

This is also my entry for Something Completely Different, where the theme is Men.

It's also my entry for Sunday Stampers where the challenge is to use bits and pieces. I hope my peg bits qualify!!!!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Alice in Lisaland

There are a lot of Alice in Wonderland inspired things around at the moment- no surprise there! Here are a couple of ATCs I made for a PIF (Pass it forward) swap on Docrafts. I've used two different illustrations of Alice, the first by Sir John Tenniel and the second, my favourite by Arthur Rackham. I haven't decided which one to send for the swap yet.


The quote is said by Alice, and is exactly how my life feels sometimes!!


The red/orange backgrounds for both ATCs are painted with my glorious new Claudine Hellmuth Studio Semigloss acrylic paints from Ranger. They give such a fabulous smooth background, much less chalky than usual acrylics, with a lovely sheen to them. They are then stamped with a mesh background stamp and a distressed checkerboard stamp. I've added some card suit symbols and rings made by inking the edge of my glue stick lid!! The letters are a fab set of alphabet peg stamps I've used for lots of wording on lots of projects and the hearts on the tag are Paperartsy. Of course, I had to put a bit of white gel pen on there, it really makes the details pop out. I'm sort of loathe to part with either of them at the moment.......

For my Mom

OK, here's a predictable post.....my Mother's Day card for my lovely Mom!


It's made with a gorgeous Stampin' Up set called Summer by the sea that I don't use as much as I should. I've also used a Stampin' Up spiral punch so that it looks as if the paper has been torn out of a spiral notepad. Love that punch, it's very clever. The image is coloured slightly with watercolour pencil, then blended with a damp paintbrush. 

This is my challenge entry to...
Fussy and Fancy Friday - theme is green.
Stamp something - theme is Cream and Green

Monday, March 8, 2010

A goodbye and good luck card

One of my lovely colleagues at work is leaving for a new job so I made this card for her.



The stamped image is a Gorjuss girl, coloured in Promarkers, and the letters are See Ds. The flowery paper is Basic Grey and the spotty is from my stash. I punched the balloons from the matching paper and drew on the strings with black fineliner. A few swipes with my beloved white gel pen and voila! I'll really miss my friend when she goes, she's such a bundle of energy and fun. Hope she likes her card!!!

I'm entering this for:

Crafty Cardmakers- Feminine Celebration challenge
Fussy and Fancy Friday- Movies challenge (inspired by Up!)
Stamp Something- girly challenge

Sunday, March 7, 2010

A bit of a find!

Oops, forgot to show off my new bargain. Well, not so much a bargain as a complete freebie!!!


This is my new ink stand/holder/carrying thingie (haven't got a snappy name for it yet!!!) It's an acrylic bookshelf that was being thrown out at work, so I nabbed it (with the boss's permission of course). It's perfect to sit my ink pads on, and because it has a handle each side, it's really easy to move them about if I need more desk space, or when I need to move them over to the table for crafty sessions with my mates Kay and Michelle. It needed a little bit of TLC, but some glue on the join and a clean  have saved it from being skipped. Recycling rules!

Mother's day pressie and a Tuesday tagger entry!

Finally had time this weekend to finish the tissue box cover blank I gessoed weeks ago for my Mom for Mothers' Day. 



With apologies for the scrap paper and junk in the pictures!! It's inked all over with Stampin' up Brocade blue ink, then stamped with a gorgeous Crafty Individuals swirl that I use lots and lots. I've got a bit of a thing for swirls.....


I then coloured some white tissue paper with some watered down Brocade blue ink and stamped again with the swirl stamp. All of the swirls are stamped using Midnight blue Stazon. I then laid some ripped sections of the tissue paper over the box and used Mod Podge to adhere them. A final coat of Mod Podge to seal and then a dab or 50 of turquoise stickles to finish.



I hope she likes it!! I used the swirly stamp so that this would fit in with the weekly challenge on the Tuesday Taggers blog which is curls and swirls this week. Hope it's not too late to enter, there's a Crafty Individuals prize on offer and I'm a great CI fan..

Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

WOYWW

OK here's what was on my workdesk last night- and I haven't moved a thing yet today, so it's still valid as what's on my workdesk today (except there may be a black and white cat sat on it at this very moment.....)


Ummm, a bit messy, but that's me! Usual ink pads and pencils and scrap card to work on, plus a stamp catalogue and post its. Particular highlights (LOL) this week include the sheet of curled up card, upon which I was trying out my new Claudine Hellmuth Ranger Studio Paints (gooooorgeous), and some metal sheets from Paperartsy in the pink basket top right- I'm itching to have a go with them, but have been sidetracked so far.

I love my desk, it was a birthday pressie a year or so back and it's big and has a lovely tempered glass top, so it doesn't matter what I spill or drip onto it :) Ooh, you can also see the bottom of my savings tin (centre top)- it has Tigger on it and was once a cookie tin. It's been hanging around waiting to be altered, but inspiration hasn't struck, so now it's holding my pennies that I'm saving up for the next hobbycrafts show at the NEC at the end of the month. Any donations??????? LOL.

OK, so mini swing left to see the rest of the desk.....




Even messier!!! Essential babywipes- I have a 2 little(ish) children, so.babywipes are a constant requirement, after all, you can't dress dollies and separate pieces of Lego with inky fingers...... You can also see a roller stamp- I don't have a roller handle, so I use my craft knife to cut along the seams and use them as unmounted stamps. This one is some lovely flowers and was a swapsy with my  mate Kay. Plus the TV remote as well, I often have the TV on in the background or my ipod playing while I'm crafting, I'm not a work in silence person. Centre of the picture is a very battered little white envelope. Kay and I have been swapping ATCs using that envelope for over 2 years now. It's turning into a little bit of an heirloom- we're often seen passing it over in the school playground....goodness knows what the other parents think!!!

Take a look at everyone else's desk here- at Julia's blog