What's On Your Workdesk - Week 531

Hello Everyone,

After taking an unscheduled break from this blog last week - due to nothing more than plain old exhaustion - over the weekend I've managed to get back into it again. This is good for me because I really didn't like missing WOYWW last week. Desk-snooping is addictive so a week without was very dull indeed. So to all you lovely desk snoopers, here's my desk as it looked this morning.

Not a mess. Really! Just busy. Over the last few days there's been lots of scrapbooking going on hence the piles of paper strips, tub of die-cuts, boxes of pretty patterned paper, and thats a folder of stencils teetering on the pile at the back. And, as you can see, I've been making more use of the Carved Flowers stencil mentioned in one of the weekend's post. It's the basis for a page featuring the photos just off to the left.

And harking back again to a previous post, here, I have a mini report on the Moxy glue stamp pad and a star shaped stamp the postie had just delivered.

In this photo the result does look good - better than it really is, as can be seen from these close-ups.

I'm afraid I found it a bit hit and miss. There's a lot of messing about spreading, as directed, the glue on the pad and, even following the instructions to the letter, stamp coverage was bad. I did use very fine glitter but still didn't always obtain a satisfactory finish. So, it's not for me. I did, however, make the best of a bad job and, after fussy cutting out the best impressions, created this card with one of the stars.

And talking of the postie, here's some happy mail received today.

After watching a great many, probably too many, YouTube demos, I decided I really needed, not just wanted but needed, a stamping platform. I daresay I'll be reporting on how I find this one in due course, but I'm hoping that my stamping will improve and there will be less stamping disasters to toss in the bin. The Plaid stamp is another to add to my growing collection from Darkroom Door. I've become a real fan of this Australian company's stamps and stencils so was pleased to discover a source here in Scotland - The Mad Scrapper.

And finally, the book bit. As you can imagine, I've listened to a lot of books recently, mostly whodunits, but this one stands out as very different from my usual holiday reading.

Kerry Hudson's 'Lowborn' is a very thought-provoking read. It's the author's exploration of where she came from, revisiting the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. I can't say I enjoyed this book, it's too unsettling in the way that it reminded me of the poverty my family experienced in post-war Britain, but I did enjoy reading how Kerry struggled out of poverty and how the life she has now is totally unrecognizable from her appalling beginnings.

Well, that's quite enough for today - Julia will be after me for such a long post.

Take care and have a great WOYWW.