WOYWW Week 889/109

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are all well and enjoying time at your craftdesks. Thank you to everyone for all the lovely comments welcoming me back last week. They were much appreciated.

This was my desk yesterday morning after I spent some time reorganising and clearing a space for Silver to sit/snooze on while I work. She loves to pop up and see me at work but she usually plopped herself down on the pile of materials that were kept over to the left. I think she likes making herself snug under the shelf. She clearly likes sitting on paper so I've forfeited that 12x12 sheet for her own personal use. 

My desk just a few hours later. I had been working on a layout and these are all the materials and scraps leftover once it was completed. Notice there's no furry friend keeping me company after all my efforts to make her welcome. It took no time at all for me to clear up so it's now as organised and tidy again as in the first photo. 

The photo in today's layout is of my middle grandson, Joshua, and his girlfriend as she was then, now his fiancee, Annie. It's dated 2019 - seven years ago and they've hardly changed at all! Having finished the first homemade kit I pulled out another to work on. I will just keep working through these kits for now because it is fun to discover stash I'd forgotten I had. The design is based on a sketch from Shimelle's Start With a Sketch classes - from a few years back. 

The last few days have been a bit warmer and drier too, Just a few light showers to keep the grass green! We take advantage of any good days and get out into the garden to potter. Well, I potter while Silver chases around after bees. 

And there are plenty of bees to see popping in and out of the foxglove flowers. I grew them from seed but, as they are biennials, I had to be patient and wait until now to see them in bloom. 

Sadly, much has been neglected and the weeds are threatening a takeover but I can only do a little bit at a time. I'm not fretting about it. It is what it is!

Now, I know some of you are just here to see Silver so here she is.

 As you can see she was hissing at another cat who had the temerity to stray into her territory. You can see her hackles are very much up. This is the kitty that used to welcome all her furry friends into the garden of our last house! The episode passed off without fur flying and the trespasser left unharmed. 

To see more creative workdesks pop over to Sarah's blog, Sarah's Craft Shed. If you don't already do so, feel free to join in the fun and show us what's on your workdesk this Wednesday. You'll be made most welcome.

Have a great WOYWW day and a fabulous week everyone,

Take care everyone,

Elizabeth

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday - Week 836

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are all well and you've had a good week. What's on my workdesk this week is a series of part done project life style pages. Apologies for the glare from the plastic pockets. They are for a very special project I've been working on for fifteen or so months now. It's an album in memory of Alan for his eldest nephew who also appears in a few of these photos. They are all original - I've kept copies of course - that I think should be kept in his family. 

12/2025 - The Oban Games

This is the last of the scrap pages completed recently. The photo is another taken on our holiday in Scotland in 1995. We stopped off in Oban for an overnight stay on our way north and just happened to arrive in time to attend the town's Highland Games. Alan was really impressed with the pipe band, particularly the outfit the drum major was wearing so insisted we pose together for this photo. The rowan sapling I'm clutching was free from the Scottish Woodland Trust, distributed as part of a drive to encourage the planting of more trees. 

Once again I've matted the photo onto a bunch of leftover scraps before adhering it all on to a tartan patterned paper, 'Nantucket', from a Carta Bella collection from 2018. The base of the clusters are made up of punched circles, again from scraps. Alphas, stickers, fussy-cut flowers and enamel dots from stash. 

Seen on my walk to the shops yesterday was this demolition in progress. Bear with me, I have good reason to show you this. 

It's a 1970s block of flats/apartments that I'm told were in a bad state and no longer fit for habitation. 

This is the far end of the block. I looked up and had to laugh at what I spotted in the second window on the right.

Someone has a sense of humour. That dummy head must have had more than a few passers-by giving it a second look!

And almost finally here's a couple of snaps of a sleeping Silver.

Love that smile!

And she has the cutest paws. 

Finally, that's all from me this week. I will be late commenting today. It might even be tomorrow before I'm able to because I'm off to an all-day conference that is being held by the Carers Gateway here in North Ayrshire  It's a service that provides support and resources for unpaid carers in Ayrshire. When Alan was ill, the Gateway very kindly provided me with advice and support when I most needed it. 

To see more creative workdesks pop over to Sarah's blog, Sarah's Craft Shed. If you don't already do so, feel free to join in the fun and show us what's on your workdesk this Wednesday. You'll be made most welcome.

Have a great WOYWW day and a fabulous week everyone,

Take care everyone,

Elizabeth

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday - Week 830

Hello Everyone,

This is so late. I try to write this post on Tuesday evenings but yesterday was such a beautiful day, and we have had so few beautiful days recently, that I stayed out in the garden way too long. All that fresh air was so good for me that I slept like a log, woke late, and I've been chasing my tail ever since. 

Not the best photo of what's on my desk now that it's daylight and the sunshine is poring in on what is going to be my next project. As of later today I will be joining in Shimelle's new class. I may have mentioned before that I have challenged myself to use up all the lovely but neglected paper collections/kits that have accumulated somehow - I wonder how! - in my craftroom. Shimelle's very timely class, a follow on from last year's This Year's Story, aims to help me do just that. Use it up!!

Threatening to topple over on the right hand side of the desk is a pile of pages removed from my very first album. Not just removed but rescued. The album was amongst the boxes stored in the shed since we moved into this flat/apartment. Turns out the shed is very damp and so are the contents of the boxes that still remain.  I intend to replace the shed with a new one soon but in the meantime I need to empty the remaining boxes, many of which are full of crafting stuff. Such a shame.

Not still in the shed is this lovely box of enamel dots. I spent an hour or so sorting through them on Sunday. It was a cold rainy day so I had no reason not to. I'm still trying to get the craftroom organised to perfection but it's proving an uphill task. This is a much smaller room than the one I had in Ayr and it also has to double up as the very occasional guest room. Apart from anything else, I'm struggling to get rid of stuff. I've already gifted a gazillion stamps to a beginner crafter and I've still got more to house somewhere. Just not that awful damp shed. Not the worst problem to have given what's happening in the rest of the world today!

Pages made recently:

06/2025 - They Met at the Dancing

I was inspired by the Making Memories, 'Tie the Knot' patterned paper to record how my late parents met in 1945. The layout is based on a Scrap-a-Sketch No. 128, Jul/Aug 2024 and the papers are from Ella Bonella's 'Cherished' kit. Everything else, including the fussy-cut flowers, is from old stash.

07/2025 - Hello Massachusetts

This was the work in progress on last week's desk. Another trip down memory lane for me as I record the trip Alan and I took together in 1996 motoring from Rockport to Plymouth on the Massachusetts coast. Alan, a Mancunian to the core, was delighted to discover Manchester-by-the-Sea. It made him chuckle because, of course, Manchester, England, is nowhere near the sea. 

The sketch the layout is base on is from a 2013 issue of Scrap 365 magazine - sadly now no longer published. Papers from the same Ella Bonella kit as above and also as before stickers and embellishments from old stash. 

This is the view from the craftroom window. Have you ever seen such narrow steps? They need to be broadened for safety's sake. Another job for the future. 

That's about it for this week. Like this post, comments will be late. I have a garden which still needs a lot of work so that's where I will be this afternoon. To see more creative workdesks pop over to Sarah's blog, Sarah's Craft Shed. If you don't already do so, feel free to join in the fun and show us what's on your workdesk this Wednesday. You'll be made most welcome.

I'll leave you with just a few photos taken in the garden yesterday.

Spanish Bluebells

Pansies

Clematis 'Elizabeth'

Aquilegia

Take care everyone,

Elizabeth

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday - Week 829

Hello Everyone

I hope this finds you all well and recovering from eating too many chocolate eggs! Unfortunately, due to a problem with technology I had to miss last week. It's all fixed now so this week normal service is resumed. 

That's not to say, I haven't been busy. The weather has been dire giving me the perfect excuse to stay cosy and dry indoors in the craft room. I've made a couple of layouts and there's a work in progress currently on the desk. The basket to the left is filled with small metal dies, The plan is to use some leftover card to make an embellishment or two for that layout. Just in front of the desk is a very old sketch - saved from the Scrap 365 magazine from Aug/Sep 2013. Sadly, in July 2014, the magazine ceased publication. 

Here's a layout I made earlier.

05/2025 - Out to Sea

The fabulous shots were taken by my Grandson's Mother-in-Law, Kathy. We are very lucky to have quite a lot of swans living in various locations along the estuary coast. Happily ignoring the danger warnings too! 

The materials used are the leftovers from the Ella Bonella kit mentioned in my WOYWW Week 827 post together with embellishments from the Set Sail collection from Heidi Swapp and stickers from Simple Stories Vintage Seas sticker sheet. 

This mixing of kits and collections is great fun. Because I've not been scrapping regularly for such a long time I have a lot of quite old stash. So to make it a more interesting I'm concentrating on using it all up. It's a challenge but I'm determined to make a really big dent in it all.

As mentioned above, the weather has been appalling here and there's not been a lot of gardening done. So nothing to show there this week. Instead, I thought I'd post this aerial view, found on the Saltcoats Photohub on Facebook, showing the area where I live in Ardrossan. 

(c) Graeme Smets

I think you can see from this shot why I love living in Ardrossan. If I turn one way when I go for a walk, there's a nature reserve - bottom left of photo - and turn the other way and I can visit either of two parks or carry on down to that beautiful sandy beach - a quick ten-minute walk away. 

On a very short walk today I spotted several of these beautiful butterflies. 

The Orange-tip butterfly. According to the Scottish Wildlife Trust it is more common in southern and central Scotland, particularly in areas like Dumfries & Galloway, Lanarkshire and the county I live in,  Ayrshire.

And finally, it wouldn't be a post from me without a photo of my furry friend.

Silver wishing the rain would stop!

That's me for this week. To see more creative workdesks pop over to Sarah's blog, Sarah's Craft Shed. If you don't already do so, feel free to join in the fun and show us what's on your workdesk this Wednesday.  You'll be made most welcome.

Take care everyone,

Elizabeth

Curiouser and Curiouser - A Scrapbook Page

I think this page is why I scrapbook. The photos taken of my son and granddaughter at Landmark, Aviemore are from 2014! Now that my granddaughter is an adult it is lovely to remember her when she was just fourteen. 

I put the layout, loosely based on a sketch from Scrap-A-Sketch, together from one of the kits I made up back in 2022 whilst preparing to move house. The plan was to use the kits in my spare time on a temporary table until my new craft room was set up. But to quote John Lennon, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Now I have a new plan to work through the kits, alternating with the pages I'm making for my 2024 album.

Materials are all old - from 2017 to 2021 - but I think the finished result doesn't look dated. Papers used are from Echo Park's 'Farmer's Market' & Simple Stories 'Simple Vintage Cottage Fields' collections. The flowers were fussy cut from one of the patterned papers. Embellishments from my inconsiderable stash!

The spatters, which can just about be seen on the background in the photo, were created with Heidi Swapp's Color Shine 'Citron'.

That's it for today. It's late and I need my beauty sleep, so I'll bid you all a good night. 

Elizabeth