WOYWW - Week 553

Morning Everyone,

After a longer break than anticipated, this is the first reveal of my desk of 2020 for What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday so Happy New Year to you all - may it be a happy, healthy and crafty one!

Predictably, I'm still scrapping December so there's the most recent batch of photographs and the contents of one of my homemade scrap kits taking centre stage. Making kits from old stash is the best way I've found yet to make some impact on my sizeable, but lovely, stash mountain. And can you see my fabulous new desk calendar - from Cindy, one of our crafty WOYWWers - love the cat! The rest of the stuff is just the usual mess. I try to keep it tidy but I'm as effective as Canute trying to push back the tide!

There's not been a lot of crafting going on here but I did finally finish this quilted Christmas tree cushion.

I did add some diamonte 'lights' - randomly on the ribbon trim - but it they don't show up on this photo. Here's a close up.

Still not too obvious but they look lovely in real life. Needless to say, it's now packed away - along with the trees and the decorations - until next December.

There's some new fabric on my sewing desk.

There was a sale and I couldn't resist these patterns - perfect for the little bookworms in the family and 4-year old Callum, who has a thing about globes and maps of the world - just like his daddy before him.

Now for the book bit. Not that I have a book this week but I thought I'd share my latest app, Libby.

After a trip to my local library, I'm now, through Libby able, to borrow audiobooks - free! All that's needed is a library card and password - it's so easy. It's also possible to borrow e-books through this app which can be sent to Kindle if preferred. I've now discovered a huge collection of books - both new and older ones - that I'm able to 'borrow' for a couple of weeks at a time. That's more than long enough for me to 'read' any book.

That's it from me this week. I'm off now to see what Julia and our fellow deskers have been showing us today.

Take care everyone and have a great week ahead.

Christmas Card Club - Card 01/2020

Hello Everyone,

As I mentioned in my earlier post today, today is the first of the Christmas Card Club challenges of 2020.  GranMargaret has set the theme of 'Angels or Fairies' but, as I don't have dies or stamps that suit I am, just for today, falling back on the alternative of 'Anything Goes'.

The topper started life as a scrap of white card I'd used to stamp off on to when I was creating this Christmas themed header ...

... now history, and these cards all from this 'one-sheet wonder'.

No houses this time but I've added a few more trees and snowflakes to make the topper.

Supplies used:
- a square white card base
- patterned paper from an old Paper Cellar 6x6" stack, 'Traditional Christmas'
- a scrap of blue cardstock for layering
- a scrap of white cardstock for topper
- stamps from 'Have a Holly Jolly Christmas' (trees) and 'Forest Magic' (snowflakes and Santa's sleigh)
- ink pads; green Letterpress, blue 'Stonewashed' Adirondack, black Archival 'Jet Black' and 'Crimson Red' Versafine
- glitter glue, Stickles 'Crystal' and 'Baby Blue' 
- green gems

That's it from me for the first CCC challenge of the year. I hope you will pop over to see what my teammates have created for today's theme. You'll find a list of their names and links on my right sidebar - as always they are so much more creative than I will ever be.

Post Christmas Catch-Up

Hello Everyone

And Happy New Year to you all.

My Christmas break stretched a few more days than planned but I was feeling, as many of us do at this time of the year, in the need of a bit more down time. We've tried to take advantage of any dry day - and if the sun was out, even better - by going for walks to enjoy some fresh, bracing even, air. Otherwise it can be too easy to just curl up on the sofa with one of the new books Santa left under the tree or, more likely, another Christmas film on TV. All very enjoyable.

However, I've not been slacking off completely. This blog needed a new header - the Christmas header with it's image of a sleigh, reindeer and the big man in the red suit no longer seemed right. After all, he'd done his job and was presumably back in the North Pole enjoying a well earned rest.

Instead, I wanted to welcome in the new year and the hotly debated new decade - I leave it to the pedantic among us to wait another year. As for me, it's a new decade, and hopefully better than the one just gone.

Supplies used: patterned paper,  'Christmas Cheer' from Heidi Swap's Winter Wonderland collection; 'Scenic Winter' border die set; scraps of white cardstock; American Crafts foam thickers 'Comfort'.

I use Serif Craft Artist to create the header these days since I gave up on MS Publisher when my old computer had to be replaced a few months ago. Buying the MS Office products would have been very expensive so it wasn't too difficult to decide to do without, after a great many years using it. I've been retired for ten years so just had to question why I still thought I needed it. Especially as I already had the Serif disc here. It does the job just fine. I'm happy.

Once the header was created and uploaded I was left with the panel. Usually, I'd make a card with it but, as it has the year 2020 on it, that wouldn't have been useful at all - 2021, yes, but not 2020!

So, I incorporated it into this layout featuring the first selfy the EM took of us just after midnight on the first day of the year. This page used up a lot of scraps of patterned paper - most from what was left from the December kit from Mind The Scrap. Loved the non-traditional combination of patterns and colours in this kit. The house and the robin were made from scraps of card and dies from two sets, 'Have a Holly Jolly Christmas' (Cardmaking & Papercraft, Issue 202) and 'Card Making Magic' (Simply Cards & Papercraft, Issue 197). The letters used to create the word 'hello' are AC 'Picnic' gold foil stickers.

I still have quite a few photographs from December to scrap yet, and I see that it's the first day of the Christmas Card Club again today, so Christmas isn't quite over for me yet. But that's okay. I love Christmas and it's so sad to see the trees and decorations coming down ... a job the EM couldn't wait to get started on. Sigh. Am I the only one to feel like this? Surely not.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, have a lovely Sunday. Take care.