Adieu mes amis!

Well, the car is packed with as much stuff as can be packed at this point and I have copious lists to remind me of what else needs to be packed in the morning. I need to print out a few bits of paperwork and then I'm off to bed cos we're planning to leave at 5am tomorrow!

Two weeks in France, en famille (hubby and I, the kids, mum and her partner, hubby's brother, hubby's uncle and hubby's auntie), in a gorgeous big chateau. Can't wait!

Doubt I'll have much chance to log on over the next two weeks so I shall bid you adieu and I'll see you in July! :)

WOYWW - 15 June 2011

Well, this will be my last WOYWW for the month of June as I am about to be separated from my workdesk for a whole two weeks - *sob*! We're off on hols on Friday - two weeks in a gorgeous chateau in France with a bunch of family. Am soooo looking forward to it... although could do without the stress of trying to get organised and packed for myself and hubby and two small kids!

Anyhoo... here's what's on my desk this morning:

Amongst the usual debris (and believe it or not, this is better than it was - until a couple of days ago I had pretty much my entire collection of spray inks crowding all over the desk!) is my recently completed Father's Day card for hubby. We'll be in France for the big day so I've had to have his card and pressies ready in advance to pack and take with us.

Oh and somewhere under this pile of chaos...

... is a computer keyboard! :lol:

I have no time to tidy atm as I am frantically trying to get certain projects (like the card for hubby and some backgrounds in my art journal to take with me to France) finished before we go. So the crafting debris is building up at an alarming rate. When I get back from holidays I will get in here and have a proper tidy and reorganise. I promise!

Thanks for stopping by - hope you're having a great WOYWW and that the next two weeks are kind to you. I doubt I'll be able to log on much, if at all, while in France so I'll see you in July folks! :)

Father's Day Card

We're off on hols on Friday so we'll be in France on Father's Day so I've had to get hubby's present and card sorted in advance. I'm still waiting for one of his pressies to arrive in the post (it better get here by Thursday or it'll be too late!) but I've finished his card.

I wanted to put a picture of each of the girls on it so I decided to go with a double-ended stepper card:

This took a lot of measuring and calculating as I wanted it bigger than A4 card would allow so I used a piece of trimmed-down A3 card and had to work out my own measurements for the stepper section. I used patterned paper and alpha stickers from the Basic Grey Sugared collection and used a Sizzix die to cut the word "love" from chipboard which I then inked with Inka Gold paint. The word "Daddy" was done in computer font printed in reverse onto pink cardstock and hand-cut out.

I matted the photos onto textured gold cardstock and I stamped a "Happy Father's Day greeting and heat embossed with gold embossing powder and wrote the girls' names underneath in gold pen.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out and I think - hope! - hubby will really like it. :)

And some more cards...

Most of my crafting lately seems to have been cards - well, cards and ATCs and CJs. I tend to make little cards to send out with swaps and things (ACTs, CJs etc) and these are some of the latest ones:

I made these little notecards using the bird from the Tim Holtz birdcage die with some card that I'd previously inked with Cosmic Shimmer inks and rock salt texturising. I stamped the branch and greeting (from a Hero Arts clear stamps set) onto the card and painted in the branch using Cosmic Shimmer Drawing Inks. I added a black adhesive gem for the bird's eye and doodled musical notes around the greeting. :)

For these little cards I took inspiration from a recent issue of Craft Stamper magazine. I had been doing a lot of spraying and inking (making backgrounds in an art journal) and decided to use some of the spattered, inked scrap paper that I had used to protect my work surface while playing with my inks. So I chose two interesting areas of the scrap paper and cut out strips of the paper, tearing them down one side before adhering to the outer edge of the card blank. I then used a bottle of Liquitex ink that has a dropper in the lid to drip splats of purply ink onto the cards. Finally I stamped the image (a Paper Artsy stamp) and the greeting onto the card and doodled a border.

ATCs

I made some more ATCs recently to swap...

The first set I made using one of my fabby new Octopode Factory stamps:

The ATC is cut from mountboard using a Sizzix die and I made the background by spritzing and splattering with Cosmic Shimmer chalk inks. I stamped the Souxsie image onto - by complete, but as it turned out, happy - accident, onto photo paper (I grabbed what I thought was a remnant of white SU card, which I find is great for using ProMarkers on, but it turned out it wasn't! :lol:) and coloured in with my ProMarkers. I found I really liked the results - the photo paper took the ProMarkers well and gave the finished image a nice bit of gloss. :)

I stamped the wings (a Paper Artsy stamp) onto coloured vellum and cut out before adhering to the ATC and cutting out and attaching Souxsie over the top of them.

The next set was essentially me playing with some new ideas and techniques! :D

I painted the mountboard ATCs with orange acrylic paint and then mixed sand medium into bronze paint and applied that thickly through a Tando stencil. Once it was all dry, I rubbed Inka Gold paint around the edges. I made the butterfly using FIMO (I bought some aaaaages ago intending to have a play at using on cards etc and somehow have just not gotten around to it until now!) and, once set, hot glued it onto the ATC. :)

Passion for ProMarkers - Week 103

This week's theme over at the Passion for ProMarkers challenge blog is the colour combination pink/brown or blue/brown. As I pretty much love all things pink, I had to go with pink/brown! :D

I used another of my scrummy Ching Chou Kuik design stamps from Sweet Pea Stamps and coloured it in with my ProMarkers. I used an 8x8 kraft card blank by Papermania and the pretty pink papers, vellum quote and butterfly stickers are all also Papermania. I made some flowers using scrunched up pink tissue paper and cicle and scalloped circle punches and used Card Candi for the centres. I also scrunched up more tissue paper, flattened it out again and layered it behind the coloured image. I used pink Papermania sparkly dots to create my own blingy flourish. :)

WOYWW - 8 June 2011

A quick post from me this week as we're off out shortly to go shopping for various bits and bobs for our impending holiday! :D

Here's what's on my desk today:

The usual chaos. I really really *really* need to tidy. I am now at the stage where it's getting difficult to find space to craft! I need to reluctantly scale back on my crafting anyway as we're off on hols in just over a week. So perhaps time to stop crafting and have a proper tidy.

Here's some close-ups of some of the goodies mixed in amongst today's chaos:

Two gorgeous ATCs received yesterday from new2this and some in-progress ATC backgrounds

A cute cupcake Circcle Journal that arrived yesterday

Some stamped images in the process of being coloured

Some of my Stampin' Up! circle punches

Pots of Inka Gold paint and sand medium

Righto. We're off shopping. Thanks for stopping by - hope you're having a great WOYWW! :D

Edit: Oooh! Got home from shopping to find that the postie had been and brought me my lovely WOYWW PIF from Sarah. She sent me this lovely card and handmade keychain/toolfinder:

I love the beaded keychain/toolfinder, all the delicate little leaves and the fab WOYWW alpha beads! I think I will take Sarah's suggestion and attach it to my craft scissors so they are a bit easier to find on the clutter of my desk! :lol:

Thanks so much for my PIF, Sarah and to everyone who took part - it's been great fun! :D

Errrm... is ballet a sport? ;)

So the theme over at the Passion for ProMarkers challenge blog this week has been "sports" and I do not have a single sporting-themed stamp in my entire collection.... well, okay, I tell a lie... I have one. It's a footballer stamp and I have used it precisely once to make a personalised Valentine's card for my mum to give to her football-mad partner (I even looked up the strip design of his favourite team so I could colour it in correctly!) and I honestly can't see me ever using it again - I don't know any other men who are particularly bothered about football!

So I couldn't face using that stamp again so I decided to maybe bend the rules a little and go with this ballet stamp... I mean, ballet is practically a sport, right? It takes rigorous training and high levels of fitness... it's almost gymnastics and that's a sport! ;D

The ballet stamp is a new acquisition from Debbie Moore and I also couldn't resist playing with my new Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page set. I added ribbon, bling and some lollipop flowers made from patterned paper. I rather like this. It's very pretty and pink and girly. :)

WOYWW 104!!

It's WOYWW again folks... and not just any WOYWW but the 104th WOYWW! Yup, 2 whole years of crafters the world over sharing what's on their workdesks, all presided over by the lovely Julia over at her Stamping Ground blog. In honour of the momentous occasion, Julia has been organising a WOYWWer PIF... mine's ready to go so let's see who signs up after me! :D 

I'm posting this in the early hours because Blogger has been, quite frankly, a pain in the behind today and keeps telling me I am logged out (and hence not letting me post comments etc and occasionally arguing with me when I want to insert a photo!) so I daren't wait till the morning to try and create my post!

So here's what's on my workdesk today:

Pretty much same mess, different stash! :lol: Highlights of this week's crafting debris include some new stamps, some test images from new stamps, a new Martha Stewart punch, a recently-finished card and a tag for a recently-completed circle journal. Oooh and you may notice that the back of the desk has sprouted a large collection of paintbrushes since last week! I've been getting more and more into altered art techniques so I invested in a bulk buy of rather good factory second brushes. :)

Thanks for stopping by my desk - please do leave a comment (if Blogger lets you!!) to let me know you were... I will try and reciprocate, Blogger gremlins allowing! I hope you're all having a fabby WOYWW anniversary... can't wait to see how the whole PIF thing works out.