What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday - Week 84 + My First Challenge Win

Good Morning to you all,

Gosh, another week's fair flown by, suddenly it's Wednesday, and once again it's time to report to our noble leader, Julia at Stampin Ground, keeper of the WOYWWer's blog hop. If you are as curious as I am about how and where others create then go take a look because this is the day we, metaphorically speaking that is, have open house and you are invited to view.

My desk looked a bit of a muddle this morning - by the time I decided to call it a day last night it was too late and I was too tired to do any tidying up.  So here's what's on it:

• the insert to a birthday card for a friend - I left it for the stamped greeting to dry overnight
• a pile of papers, stamped card (I've been experimenting), all for projects I've got in mind, including a lovely sheet of Prima paper, Pixie Garden, from the Fairy Flora Collection, the basis of the layout of my Mum's photograph (that's as far as I've got in the planning stage as yet) and a sheet of Basic Grey's Indian Summer paper which I might use on a card
• a pink topper I'm planning to recycle on another birthday card
• under the glass work surface is some card I practiced stamping the Lavinia tree & leaf stamps on
• a yellow mechanical pencil - the only kind of pencil I like to use
• a rock-a-block with the greeting stamps, cleaned, but still waiting to be put away in the pack underneath
• my lamp and my trusty pink heat gun
• three cards received recently which I want to display somewhere in my room - not sure where as running out of wall space : (
• a pile of CD cases with Lavinia stamps inside - as I'm experimenting with them they are handy there
• the post-it pad is there because I used some of it to mark of an area of card for a colouring technique using an ink pad and hadn't got around to putting it away  
• a yellow legal pad - the best discovery I ever made. I'm dyslexic (explains the occasional bloomer!!!) and find writing on coloured paper much easier than white so these legal pads are brilliant for purpose. And the pad is there because I realised that although I had organised my stash my to-do list was a bit of a mess and I was having difficulty keeping track of challenges, projects, and techniques, etc., that I wanted to have a bash at. So I thought I would write it all down, organise my thoughts and perhaps help myself feel more in control.
• over to the right of my workspace is a basket of 8 x 8 & 6 x 6 paper packs and similar size cardstock packs. The blue box is has photographs in it and the white one above is where I keep the wee bits of white card that come in handy for stamping a greeting on, etc.
• there's all sorts of other bits and pieces in the background; glue strips, hot glue gun, hole punches, ribbon holder, scissor pail, notebooks, my chicken box, border punches, etc., etc. - I don't think these are usually in view on WOYWW but they are always there.

So that's what's was on my desk this morning. I've tidied up and it's now looking ready for action but it will have to wait as I'm off to town to do a bit of necessary shopping - not crafty stuff today, I promised myself I would be frugal this month.

One of the cards in the background: I received this lovely card, made I think from two beer mats, from my friend Sarah at The Handmade Card Blog. Sarah makes brilliant cards, mini albums, etc., and her blog is well worth a visit. She also makes really watchable YouTube videos, many of them mini tutorials on the projects she makes.


My First Challenge Win

I've saved the best till last. Yesterday I heard that I have won Clare's Inspiration Challenge over at Docrafts - for the Cherry Tree card I featured in my last post. I'm over the moon. I've no idea what the prize is but it really doesn't matter because I'm just so delighted to have won.

That's all for today. Signing off,
Elizabeth

WOYWW - Week 81 - Seasons Greetings

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS

to you all from all at

including our very cold  

snow snail

Yes, it's still freezing here, as elsewhere in the country and the snail mail is being delivered at a snail's pace - though bless Royal Mail for keeping at it and trying to make sure we get all our cards before the big day!

And speaking of cards guess what's on my desk today - yes, more Christmas cards. I needed some last minute cards to give/send in return for the unexpected - there's always some, is there not : (

These are 15 toppers I was working on last night. After adhering some really thin strips of paper with PVA glue - the usual tape runner was too wide unfortunately - I left these to dry overnight. I got the idea from watching a WhimsicalWendy demo on YouTube in which Wendy Naismith showed how she makes her Christmas cards in bulk. Of course, I did not have the Kraft card, the same design paper, the same edge puncher or even the same stamps but, hey ho, I thought I would improvise and give it a bash anyway. Here's two of my finished cards:

As you can see I used some green tree embossed card  as well as some buff coloured textured card from my stash (can't remember where I bought them from) for the base of the toppers. A rummage through my off-cuts produced enough paper and white card for the strips and the trees, so it proved a great way of using up those bits and bobs leftover from other projects. The greeting and the tree stamps were from the Christmas stamp set from Let's Get Crafting, Issue 26. Wendy makes her own stamps - how clever is that!!! You can see what the cards should look like at Wendy Naismith Designs.

And, guess what, they really are quick to make this way. And I found the whole exercise really enjoyable -  just at a time when I thought if I had to make another Christmas card I'd scream!

I very much doubt I will be posting again until after the big day unless some goodies, expected but delayed by 'adverse weather conditions', finally arrive so let me wish you all a very happy and joyful holiday weekend and that everything goes well for Christmas day itself - and that Santa is good to you, bringing lots of crafty goodies perhaps : )

For those of you who may be having to live without oil for your heating - I understand some people won't get their delivery until mid-February!!! - I hope you have found some way of keeping warm and that you are wrapping up well.

Seasons Greetings

Elizabeth

Edited Note: How could I have forgotten this - for all those who have strayed on to this mad woman's blog and are wondering what she is on about please take a jog over to Julia's Stamping Ground and enjoy a blog hop through many more WOYWWers' workspaces.

Whats on Your Workdesk Wednesday

Here we are at another WOYWW and I'm running late today. For anyone who has not discovered what this is about pop over to Julia's blog Stamping Ground and discover a world of work desks - there's nothing like a good snoop around other people's desks and see what they are up to. Saying that, here's mine:

After I finished posting the cards I had made over the last couple of days yesterday I rewarded myself with a session playing with my Cuttlebug. I've had it for a few months now but not done much with it so I really wanted to experiment and I had all the leaves collected recently on the Woodland Walk (see Saturday's post for photos). Confession time: the leaves collected on Saturday had dried to a crisp because I left them too long so I had to nip up to the Woodland Walk and collect some more - a great excuse to get out in the fresh air! Anyway, new leaves collected and you can see the result.

I tried embossing on three types of card, white, gold mirror and a more matte gold card . The embossing showed up best on gold mirror but it doesn't photograph well so no close-ups to show you but you can see them on the left of the photo. It also showed up well on the matte gold:

I discovered that you need leaves with a very well defined texture - holly leaves were the best, with sycamore the next best. Others were very disappointing. Also after the leaves have been through once or twice they loose their texture anyway and have to be tossed. The results on white card were initially disappointing - the embossing was too subtle. However, when I took distressing ink to the card they perked up considerably and the effects were much more usable. For example here is the holly leaf distressed with Tim Holtz's Shabby Shutters.

And a sycamore leaf distress with Adirondack Noel



And leaves that really didn't emboss well but made an interesting card distressed with TH's Weathered Wood.

I think this will make a great tag.

And just because the Cuttlebug was out and I was in the mood I tried a few other embossing projects I had in mind. Here is a piece of lace on the matt gold paper - not perfect but worth trying again with other lace.

This last is a border. I like putting borders on my cards and dressing them up with lace and ribbons, I also love, love, love Swiss dots (there has got to be a name for this condition!) and, though I haven't managed to acquire the Swiss dot embossing folder yet, I do have a border folder. I decided to try to combine the embossed border with my lace punch and here is the result.

Love it - I think this will look great on a card.

That's my desk this morning but before I take off on a trip round everyone else desks I'd like to warmly welcome my new followers - my husband thinks this is hilarious, me with followers! - and thank everyone who left their kind and much appreciated comments since last week - it is all appreciated. I'd also like to say that I did visit all the desks over the week, albeit I didn't get to the last few until yesterday, but I did not, unfortunately, find the time to leave a comment on all. However, please be assured I enjoyed visiting every and each one.

Bye for now
Elizabeth

The Poppy Tag

I took advantage of the less than brilliant weather yesterday to work in my craft room yesterday and finally finished the poppy tag I was working on - here it is:

(As usual I ask you to forgive the naff photography.)  On my last post I did about this tag I had got to the point where I had covered the cardboard tag with hand made Cosmic Shimmer card, stamped in black with a stamp that had writing design on it, leaves and ivy tendrils then embossed more leaves with silver. I then stamped the word 'Remember' in black and embossed with clear powder, then stamped the word again underneath. I then distressed around the edges with Tim Holtz ink, Black Soot. The poppy image that I had recently coloured with Aquamarkers, I distressed with TH's Weathered Wood and then edged with gold embossing.

The red and gold lace, black satin ribbon and black beads are from my local haberdashery - I think the lace might be Dovecraft. The poppies and cherry blossom are from Wild Orchid Crafts, as is the green and black crystal sprays.

The ribbon with the word 'remember' on it is from Making Memories and the oak leaves are punched out using an X-cut Botanical Embossing Punch. I've threaded a selection of matching fibres from my stash through the hole at the top.

On the back the only thing I have added are the words 'Lest we Forget' embossed in gold.

I made this tag to commemorate my two great uncles lost in World War II, one in the army the other in the navy. When I'm not crafting I am researching the family history and, sad to say, I knew nothing about either of these uncles until I started looking into the family tree in 2009. They were not talked about by the family - I can only imagine that the loss was too hard to talk about. My great-uncle Robert died in Hong Kong serving with the Royal Scots and is buried there. The other, James, was lost at sea, died in action on HMS Thistle which was torpedoed of the coast of Norway. They were both in their 30s.

The tag now has pride of place here in my craft room.

I'm putting it into the Ooh La La Creations Challenge - Remember, Remember

I made another couple of little cards yesterday but I'll show them in another post.

Bye for now
Elizabeth