Is it just me?

Am having real problems with the formatting on Blogger lately... I type my post up and it all looks fine but then I add the pictures and all the spacing between the paragraphs goes screwy (either no lines between paragraphs when there should be or more lines than there should be) and nothing I do will fix it! And often when I finish composing a post and hit publish, I get a box asking me if I'm sure I want to navigate away from this page and whether I choose yes or no it goes to a 404 error message! :/

Is it just me? I have been having some problems posting on one website since changing over to DH's hand-me-down laptop....

WOYWW - 28 September 2011

A short and sweet WOYWW post from me today - partly because we're off out shopping very shortly and partly because I can't really show you my desk today! :lol:


That's partly because the only thing really on my desk is a DT project which I can't reveal just yet.. and partly because a certain percentage of my stash (and most of my tools!) are still here:

Yup, I haven't quite gotten around to unpacking my stash following last weekend's Green Buttons Retreat! So the hallway is still full of boxes and totes and the like. I've rescued the guillotine and my basic tools (scissors and glues and the like) with which to work on the DT project and the rest awaits an hour or so of free time in which to unpack, sort and tidy away (if that's even possible in the chaos that is my craft pit!).

Thanks for stopping by my blog - hope you enjoyed a peek at "what's in my hallway" :lol: - and have a fun WOYWW!

What a weekend! :)

I'm back home following an awesome weekend away at the Green Buttons Retreat. It was my first retreat and I had an absolute ball - great venue, the extremely lovely, funny, clever and creative ladies of the Green Buttons House on UKS, and a whole load of fabulous, incredibly inspiring classes and challenges. :)

I have to say thank you to all the Green Buttons gals for making me so welcome and for being such great company - and for setting such amazing classes. And an extra special big thanks to Tink for organising the whole thing!

Here are the gorgeous projects I have created over the weekend:

Marvellous Mask-erade class

This was actually my class! :D I showed everyone how to play around with masks and spray inks and a lot of (messy) fun was had by everyone - and a huge amount of absolutely gorgeous LOs were created! :)

These were the LOs I created as examples for the class:

And this is one of the two LOs I made during the class at the retreat (the other one isn't quite finished yet!).

Mini Book in a Box class

This was Fizzy Drink's incredible class. Such a very clever project and the results were amazing! Here's my creation:

The outside is complete but I still need to finish off the interior - I've pretty much chosen which photos will go where (they are currently tucked inbetween the pages ready to be attached) and I just need to stick them all in place and add journalling.

Would you believe this gorgeous box started life as a simple Graze box, like this:

As part of the class, Ruth also challenged us to create something with the removable interior section of the box:

There were some amazingly inventive ideas. Here's what I made with the interior section:

Good Times Class

Daisychain888's amazing class featured die-cutting, embossing and colouring (with alcohol inks) beer cans! :)

Here's what I created:

So many fabulous techniques and ideas in this class and the results were just stunning.

Teeny Tiny Envelope Album class

JimJam's fabulously clever class involved created an album/booklet using little brown envelopes. This was mine:

Mine is filled with photos and journalling about our family day out at Mirfield Show in August. :)

Sketch challenge

The sketch challenge was set by queen of digi, Mary Buttons. :) Here's my interpretation:

I used photos of Grenoble and went with a whole French theme for the LO. :)

Stamped Borders with Masked Space class

eClaire's gorgeous class showed us how to use stamps and masking to create fabulous borders. I couldn't choose between the two photos (and matching papers) I had taken with me and I loved the technique so much that I decided to go ahead and do both! :)

Speed Scrap class

The final class was Thrifty Crafter's speed scrap class - you are given a set of instructions one at a time, 10 or so minutes apart, and do your best to follow them! :lol: Here's my interpretation:

Am thrilled to bits with all the gorgeous work I've created over the weekend - and you should have seen how fabulous the crafting room at the retreat looked with everyone's incredible work on display!

P.S. Grrrr.. the formatting has gone all screwy on this post and I cannot fix it, it just keeps messing up all the spacing. Sorry if it's making this post rather hard to read. :/

WOYWW - 21 September 2011

Another Wednesday, another WOYWW - your chance to peruse the workspaces of crafters the world over, as hosted by the Queen of Desks, Julia. :)

My desk view is necessarily teasing this week...

The big gaping space in the middle of the work area is where I've had to move out of sight a recently-completed project which is a DT piece so I can't share it yet! Boo. :(

For a bit more of a teasing glimpse, here's some of the debris left behind from the process of creating the piece: ;)

As ever, tidying is badly needed and I also desperately need to start packing for the weekend scrapping retreat I'm going to on Friday. If only there were more hours in the day! :lol:

Thanks for stopping by my desk - please leave a comment to say hi. :)

Steampunk Birthday Card

It's my friend's birthday tomorrow so I made a card to pop in the post to her (cos she moved to Scotland last year! *sob*). I decided to combine the need for a birthday card with the current challenge over at Simon Says Stamp and Show, as the theme is Steampunk... which is a) a cool theme and b) the perfect opportunity to try out the new Kanban steampunk stamps and papers that I got recently off C&C. :)

So here's my steampunk creation:

I made an easel card and covered the front faces with cog patterned paper (I also cut down the top section of the easel card so its smaller than usual, so that the stamped image would extend over the top of it). I trimmed sections of white card for each section and used Tea Dye Distress Ink blended around the edges and then stamped around the edges with the cogs stamp using Tea Dye again. I stamped the dressform image onto white card using Archival Ink and painted it in with Distress Inks before cutting it out. I stamped the dressform stand onto the decorated card base and attached the dressform with foam pads. To finish off I added some Kaisercraft wooden swirls, coloured with Distress Inks, and some layered flowers and stamped a greeting in Tea Dye Distress Ink.

I'm really pleased with how this came out. It looks really pretty and kind of vintagey but a bit industrial-ish at the same time. :) Hope my friend will like it.

WOYWW - 14 Spetember 2011

Fairly quick one from me this week as, once again, I have stayed up faaaaaaar too late crafting. So here's what's on my desk as of this morning (and yes, it is not very definitely morning!!):

The mess is rapidly encroaching and the useable workspace thereby shrinking but I am in a flurry of deadline-inspired crafting and no time to tidy at all. Nope, not even the growing piles of discarded tape strips from DST! Aside from the mess, the desk features a work-in-progress (my first time playing with some Flower Soft stamps I picked up a while ago on C&C) but pride of place in my craft room this week is this hefty beauty (seen here sitting on my chair for display purposes!):

Yup, I reached the end of my tether today with yet another paper trimmer (my third in a the last year or so alone) leaving raggedy-fibred edges to every cut (and now starting to rip thin paper instead of slicing through it) and flounced out in a huff to a local craft shop to bring in the big guns - a guillotine! Woohoo! I can haz clean, sharp edges nao? Yes. Yes, I can. It is a thing of beauty and I've made good use of it already.

Righto. I really really need to get myself off to bed cos DD2 will probably be waking for a bottle in oooooh, about 5 hours or so! G'night all! Um.. I mean, good morning! Errr... let's go with Happy Wednesday and hope you have a fun WOYWW! Thanks for stopping by. :)