What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday - Week 507

Morning Everyone

I see that I haven't joined in on a Wednesday for three weeks - that's a long time for me to be absent from Julia's WOYWW blog hop. But I'm back today and, fingers crossed, that's an end to the winter bugs that have prevented me joining in these last weeks. Not that that I've been crafting so I wouldn't had much on my desk to share anyway but here's what's on it today.

As can be seen, I'm still trying to finish a layout I started weeks ago! While I've been poorly I've had plenty of time to think about what I should be working on and, well, it's all those unfinished projects I have tucked away. I haven't counted but there's quite a few. So, apart from the layout there's the garden album described in yesterday's post. I'll be working on it over the coming weeks until it's up to date.

So that's it for what's on my desk today. I'm still in recuperating mode so it's slow work but better that than nothing at all. Happily the weather is improving too so I've been able to take a wee ramble round the garden to spot these signs of Spring.

Snowdrops

Crocus Tommasinianus

I'm particularly pleased to see that the snowdrops have not only survived but are increasing, if only by a few - there were none when we moved here.

That's it for this week. No books this week - I've been too poorly to concentrate fully but that's improving now too so perhaps I'll have one or two to write about next week.

I wish you all a very good WOYWW and a great week to come. Many thanks for popping in - your comments are much appreciated.

Garden Album - A Work In Progress

Hello Everyone,

I'm sure I'm not alone in having more than a few unfinished projects. In fact, I have more than a few and it's time I finished each and every one. Starting with this album which is intended to be a record of what we have done in the garden since we moved here more than five years ago. 

The album was found in a used book store.

I was attracted to the illustrations and quotations on gardening that appear throughout - foolishly I imagined it would make it a very quick and easy project to complete!  

One of the pretty illustrations

Here's a few of the pages as they are now. Clearly unfinished - no embellishments and no journaling. Just photos. 

Looking through the photos I'm astonished at the changes we've made to the garden through the years and it's a real pleasure to be reminded of the beautiful flowers we've planted so far. 

The plan now is to bring the album up to date and with that in mind it will stay on my desk - you might say, a nagging reminder - until the job is done!

Hope you've had a good day and thank you for visiting. 

Christmas Card Club - Cards 3 & 4/2019 - Fairy & Robin

Hello Everyone,

It's been quite a while since I've been able to blog anything - another lung infection bad enough to prevent me from doing much more than cough. Happily, I can report that I'm now almost completely recovered and normal service can be resumed!

And I have a twofer for you today because, unfortunately, I wasn't able to post a card for the last Christmas Card Club challenge. Firstly, here's the card for this week, CCC no.4, which is based on Gwen's challenge - 'birds'.

Actually, I've only managed one bird so I hope that passes muster. I found this bird stamp in a set and thought that coloured appropriately it would look like the perfect Christmas robin.One of my all-time favourite Penny Black stamp creates a very nice wintry scene.

Supplies used:

• a white A6 card base (Docrafts) portrait orientation
• stamps - Berry Red, Snow White (Penny Black); Winter Woodland stamp set (Craftstore) - leaf and bird; Forest Magic - greeting
• inks - Memories Black; Memento Rich Cocoa; Versafine Olympia Green
• card - white for stamped topper; red for layering; scraps of smooth white for bird and greeting
• paints - black, brown and red Spectrum Noir Aquatints Nos. 63, 40 & 11 for bird 
• embellishments: black 'pearl' for birds eye; Xmas Red Stickles for 'berries'

The second card, CCC no.3, should have been posted two weeks ago for GranMargaret's choice - 'angels or fairies'. I'm not a fan of either angels or fairies so I very nearly ended up going for the fallback of 'anything goes'. However, after a lot of digging around in my stash I discovered this fairy topper.

I also dug out of a box of 'experiments' the piece of embossed vellum used as a layer on the card. It started out as a sheet of plain white vellum but a long time ago, in fact two printers ago, I used desktop publishing software to change the colour to pale blue. This was in the days before it was possible to source coloured vellum - now it's easy to find online.

Supplies used:

• a white A6 card base (Docrafts) landscape orientation
• card - blue and red for matting and layering; scrap of white for greeting
• papers - red/white check from Those Characters from Cleveland (2012); pale blue vellum
• embossing folder - Snowflakes Cuttlebug) 
• topper - this cute fairy image is one from a set bought from an online store several years ago (source forgotten)
• embellishments - red peel-off greeting; red/white gingham ribbon; turquoise enamel dots

Right, that's me caught up with the Christmas Card Club challenges. It's so nice to be back and fit enough to participate again. The ladies in our Christmas Card Club will be publishing their cards too. To save the stress of the last minute dash in December we make a Christmas card every two weeks and posting it on our own blogs - see the list of links on the sidebar to the right.

There's quite a whiff of Spring in the air today so hopefully that's an end to the winter blues. The EM certainly thinks so - he's planning ahead by putting the picnic chairs in the boot of the car ready for the better weather.

Thanks for visiting - I really appreciate it.