Happy New Year

Happy New Year everybody - wishing you all the best for 2011 and slainte!

Yeah - my great-granddaughter is on her way - due to born very soon I believe.

Elizabeth

WOYWW - Week 82 - New Toys from Santa + Workspace Re-organisation

Good Afternoon to you all,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that Santa was good to you. I can't believe it is a week since I last posted. The holiday has just gone by in a flash and to make matters worse my great-granddaughter, due on Christmas Eve, has not yet arrived. We are all on tenterhooks here.

Welcome also to my new followers, Debbi and Claudia Rosa. I hope to keep uploading posts that will be of interest to you.

Now, to What's on my Workdesk this Wednesday - not sure what this is about then please pop over to Julia's here and take a voyeuristic peek at many more workspaces :

It's my new Hougie Board - one of my crafty presents from Santa (aka DH). Other craft related goodies I found among the parcels were:

Not had time to play with them yet as I've spent the last 3 days having a massive re-organisation of my workspace. This was a job long overdue! The place was a mess and I was starting to get very frustrated with the muddle left from all the Christmas card making neglect. It's much better now, I know where everything is and I can see my where all my stamps are.

There's not a lot of the wooden-backed stamps but they were tucked away in a drawer, I couldn't see what I had, and I read somewhere that it is best to store them on end like this. Other stamps are stored in DVD or CD cases which I've started to label so I can see at a glance what each one contains.

Once again I have to apologise to those of you that I failed to visit last week, Christmas just got in the way - I promise to do better this week.

Now that I've sorted out my workspace I can get down to some serious crafting and playing with my new goodies. There are a ton of new techniques I am eager to have a bash at and share the results with you.

In the meantime, I hope that those of you who are still on holiday continue to have fun and those unfortunate enough to have returned to work, well, it's only a couple of days before the New Year and hopefully you'll be off again for the weekend, at least.

Here in Scotland the New Year celebrations can be somewhat protracted, going on for a few days. Although I feel it is nothing like the fun it was when we were all young and the extended family, with friends, got together  in each other's houses and partied a few days away! We used to travel from Edinburgh out to the suburbs, Musselburgh, Dalkeith, Danderhall, Old Craighall and Rosewell, all on the best bus service in the country, to make sure we'd wished everyone a Good New Year. Now we all live too far apart, Aberdeenshire, Stirlingshire, the Borders, London and even Australia, so we have to make do with a phone call. Changed days.

We're off to M&S this afternoon - some vouchers are burning a hole in DH's pocket. So glad the weather has improved.

Bye for now.

A New Home card and Another Graduation Card, this time for a new PhD

It's been calm, bright but cold for us today - quite a bit of blue sky showing - a perfect day for a walk but I've still got this cold hanging on so staying in the warm. Yesterday, I made these two non-Christmassy cards and enjoyed the change.

The first card is for my DH's lovely grand-niece, Laura, and family.

It was quick and easy to make using an A6 card base, landscape,  covered with design paper from Papermania's Summer Bloom 6"x6" pack. I found a use for the decorative strip I made recently when I was experiment with embossing on the Cuttlebug and punching a lace edge with my one and only Martha Stewart punch. The digital image is Home Sweet Home from Squiggles Stamps, coloured with Promarkers and the sentiments were made using My Craft Studio Professional, edged with a turquoise ink pad from Studio G. Inside and back simply decorated.

The other card is another graduation card but this time it is for a friend's daughter, Amy, who has just been awarded a Doctorate in Music. How she found time I do not know because, not only has she been teaching in Edinburgh, and as she lives in Glasgow that means quite a commute each day, but in the time it has taken her to write her thesis she has also given birth to her second child!

Again I used an A6 base card, portrait this time, and covered it with left over design paper. I used the Grad Anya digi stamp from the Greeting Farm again, coloured with Promarkers. And, again, I used a couple of stamps from the Congratulations stamp in the SWALK series, silver embossed, to decorate the front and inside.

Now, I have to clear my craftroom - DH is coming in tomorrow to put up a shelf in the corner for our little TV to sit on. You see, I've got quite a collection of videos with recordings of some of the Create and Craft stamping programmes showing techniques I want to try out at some time. Especially those with Barbara Grey from Clarity Stamps - I love what she does and the way she demonstrates. And, of course, the best place to follow them is here at my workdesk.

I'm told it will only take a couple of hours so should be back crafting later tomorrow.  Actually, it's forced me to have a clear up and that's no bad thing!

Bye for now
Elizabeth

The Graduate

Good morning to you all. Yesterday passed in a whirl and Juli looked wonderful in her gown and hood. The procession of graduands were piped into the hall which made for a very moving scene. Here she is just after the ceremony:

And here she is with her extremely proud mum and my DH, her step-dad.

It was a very special occasion made all the more special because Juli is disabled - she has cerebral palsy and is profoundly deaf - and so this accomplishment is all the more hard won by her. So to Juli, HNDip Accounting, here's my tribute to you.

Juli was born with Rhesus Disease and was not expected to live more than a few hours. However, she was then, and still is, a real wee fighter. Growing up she tried everything and didn't let her disabilities get too much in the way. She very quickly learned to lip-read, long before her deafness was identified and when in her teens she learned sign language. At school she excelled in maths and art but struggled with anything associated with language. She also excelled at swimming and diving gaining numerous badges and a trophy or two on the way. She joined the Girl Guides and again excelled at collecting badges (I eventually sewed the badges together in strips so that when she outgrew her swimsuit or her Guide uniform I just had to sew one huge row of badges instead of all the individual ones!)

Unfortunately, because of her difficulties with language Juli left school without any qualifications. Soon after she met and married her husband, Graeme, and they have been together now for over 22 years and they have 5 children, ages ranging from 21 to 7 years. When she was in her twenties Juli had to have her jaw re-aligned - the spasms caused by the cerebral palsy had taken their toll and pulled her face out of line.

When her youngest child, Shari-Ann, was at the nursery school stage Juli decided to go to college and get some qualifications at last. With excellent assistance from the staff at Kilmarnock College and a sign language interpreter/note-taker she was able to study efficiently. However, in the first year she contracted glandular fever but somehow managed to complete the year. Then in the second year she had a mild stroke - she was only 37 at the time. It was discovered that she had a hole in her heart - apparently there from birth but undiagnosed until the stroke. Just before Christmas that year she had an operation to close the hole from which she recovered very quickly and we all breathed a sigh of relief!

By this time Juli had gained an HNC in Accounting and had gone on to obtain the HND as well. She then started on a degree course even though she was finding it even more challenging but 2 months ago she suffered another stroke, albeit another mild one, and was forced to put her plans on hold. She is now taking a year out to recover fully and get accustomed to the medication that she has to take for the rest of her life. And, she is also looking forward to becoming a grandmother for the first time - all this and she is still only 39 years old!

So, you see, I think my daughter is amazing and I am more than proud of her for her persistence and insistence, against a great many odds, to live a 'normal' life. She rocks:)

Signing off
Elizabeth

Wedding Tag and Card

Well, the wedding was wonderful, the bride beautiful, the groom (my husband's nephew) scrubbed up well, and the weather was great on the day! It poured with rain on the 6 hour journey down on Friday and again on the way home on Sunday. In fact it had rained so much that the valley just before New Cumnock on the A76 had become a loch - the treetops bobbing on the water giving an indication of how deep it was.

Here is the wedding tag I made for the bride:

I must apologise for the quality of my photographs - I'm a rank amateur at this and still have to work out the best way to take a picture! :(
Materials used:

Cardboard - I re-use the card that is used to back and stiffen envelopes for photographs as I have quite a collection of these saved up - can't bear to throw it away :)
Papers: - For the front: American Crafts - The Color of Memories; for the back Flair Designs - Love & Marriage Words.
Stamps: Digital stamp from Pink Petticoat - Lola Rose Big Day - love these images; Papermania's Alphamania and the flourish from Summer Bloom Picnic set.
Versamark, gold and white embossing powders, Promarkers, Stickles (Crystal - my favourite)
Embellishments: miscellaneous ribbons and fibres; charms - bell, key, butterfly, heart from local shop; pearl trims from local haberdashery; feather and pearls (from my stash); flowers (roses, cherry blossom and rosebuds) and blue crystal stem from Wild Orchid Crafts 

I make the stickpins myself with beads from my stash - my sister makes jewellery and I usually get to help myself from her stash when I visit her.

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph the back of the tag but it is pretty plain though I did add an insert with a dedication taken from the invitation inside a wee vellum envelope and the date of the wedding (so they will never forget it! :)

I also made a card too:

Materials used:

Background paper fromPapermania's Summer Bloom 6"x6" pack. Matting card cut from an old wedding card (I throw nothing away)
Stamp - another from Pink Petticoat of Lola Rose on her big day - wearing a different dress!
Promarkers and Stickles (Crystal)
Heart shaped doily (Magnolia)
Embellishments: pearl beads, cherry blossom and rosebuds from Wild Orchid Crafts

I typed out the 'Congratulations' using a MS font on to white card and edged it with a Promarker in pastel blue - I did this to some of the roses on the tag too.

I'm embarrassed to say I treated myself to a bit of a haul on Monday so I am now imposing a spending moratorium on myself - I need to save my pennies for the Hobbycraft exhibition at the SECC in Glasgow at the end of the month. However, I can't wait to experiment with the pack of Aquamarkers and the watercolour paper I bought later today.

In the meantime I'm off for a bit of late lunch, bye :)