WOYWW 163

Another wet and windy Wednesday is upon us (okay, so it's pretty early in the am and I'm assuming that's how the weather's gonna be when I get up but, let's face it, based on recent experience the odds are in my favour! :lol:) and it's time to brighten up your day by taking a spin around crafty desks the world over!

Not much to share on my desk I am afraid. I have actually just finished up a card but seeing as it's a DT one, I can't really share it with you just yet. Darn.

So instead, to add a bit of interest to this week's photo, I've dumped on my desk a few pretty new craft purchases for you to nosey at:

A bunch of U-Mount, to mount more of my ever-increasing stack of Sweet Pea Stamps. A set of Andy Skinner stamps, a funky new Sizzix stamp and emboss set, and another Sizzix die, and a few random packs of embellies.

I do also have something else to share with you this week, although it's not something tangible that can sit on my desk. Instead, it's some exciting news. I've actually known for a while but things were a bit too crazy busy last week for me to get chance to blog about it so I thought I'd do it today instead...

I've been invited to join the Design Team at the One Stitch at a Time challenge blog. :D

I looooove Stitchy Bear digi stamps (you may have seen me wittering on about them previously on this blog) and am thrilled to bits to join such a friendly, creative team - and to get to play even more with these fab images! So expect to see plenty more of Stitchy Bear's images cropping up on my blog.

That's it from me. My bed beckons and it's a busy day tomorrow as I've a good friend and her two little ones coming to stay for a couple of days... so there's gonna be 4 kids aged 3 and under in the house! Eeep! :)

WOYWW 161

Yargh. What you see on my desk this morning is an exercise in frustration.

You see, I recently bought a rather funky looking doily die. "How fabulous!" thought I. "I can make doiles to match my projects, as many of  them as I like! Yippee!"

Or... not. Now, it's an intricate die and I'm not daft... I realised there would be some work involved in popping out all the teeny tiny little pieces. However, as it turns out, there's a lot more to it than "popping out"... mainly because even after being run through the BigShot twice (turning 90 degrees between runs through), the darn thing *still* didn't cut completely through in places. So I've ended up having to push and pull with a pokey tool, and occasionally try and re-cut lines with a craft knife, and generally it's taken me faaaaaar longer than I even care to think about to produce just one usable doily (and I wouldn't look too closely at it as there's a fair few ragged edges here and there).

So that's what I've been doing at my craft desk - that and a lot of swearing! :lol

So, to end on a more cheerful note, I shall also share with you the finished CJ page that I made using the background that was sitting on my desk in last week's WOYWW post:

I used a Dylusions stencil and a Stempelgelde stamp and handwrote the journalling. The CJ is now winging its way to the next recipient.

And that's it from me this week. I've stayed up faaaaar too late (or early, really) fighting with that doiley so I am taking myself off to bed! :)

Distressed Page

No, not a page that's sad but a scrapbook page made entirely with Distress products! :)

The new Scrap Map challenge is up over at Creative Craft World's challenge blog.

The challenge is simple - just make a scrapbook page using the sketch for inspiration, upload it/pop it on your blog and add your link to the Scrap Map challenge post. You've got till 4 August to enter and you could win yourself a fabby scrapbooking kit and a DT guest spot! :)

Here's the sketch for this month's challenge:

And here's my take on it:

I started with the idea of swiping Distress Stains across the page to make blocks of colour behind the photos, echoing the rectangles on the sketch. I added a bit of texture and interest by dabbing Distress Ink through a stencil of small circles and replaced the large circle in the sketch by dabbing Distress Ink over a decorative mask. I mounted my photos with foam tape for a bit of added dimension and finished things off by doodling frames, a few decorative flowers and some circle borders using Distress Markers. I drew and coloured my journalling and title (cut out and mounted with foam pads) with Distress Markers too. Et voila, a scrapbook page made entirely with Distress! :)

FFS stop raining!!

My cellar is flooding again, dammit, and I really really REALLY don't want my kitchen to flood too. Can the rain just PLEASE stop now?!! :(

Grrr... men!

Why are they so difficult to make cards for?! :lol:

And while I'm ranting... grrr... weather! It's July and we're currently experiencing what seems to be a monsoon out there! The front drive is a boating lake, it's so dark we've got all the lights turned on and (I'm not sure whether this is related) our landline has stopped working - it's just making awful crackling noises.

It's also a real pain trying to photograph craft projects when the light is so poor. Even in my nice, light and airy conservatory, the light is very dull and grey today.

So I've had to resort to photographing this card on my craft desk with the daylight lamp on:

As a comparison, this is how it looked when I tried to photograph it in the consevatory:

Anyway, crummy weather aside, this is a funky little card that I've made for my mum's partner's birthday. Men's cards can be difficult so I decided to keep it simple and bold, using a funky Stampotique stamp and a background made by colouring a piece of card with Promarkers and dripping/squirting alcohol ink blending fluid onto it (a technique I've not tried before). I used my Stampin' Up! postage stamp punch to punch a hole in the card front and stamped the greeting inside the card so it was visible through the hole.

I'm entering this card into the current challenge ("outside the box" - the very clean and simple look is a bit different for me and I've also used a technique I've never tried before) at the Stampotique Designers Challenge. :)

WOYWW 161

For once, I actually have a work in progress to show you on my desk this week! :) For some reason, on Wednesday mornings my desk always seems to be either completely covered in (often non-craft related) bumf, sorely neglected, or, more usually, showing only the debris of a recently-completed project. But not this week. :D

Today was the UKS sponsor blog hop and what a fine hop it was! Some fantastic projects and inspiring ideas... and one of them - some textured background tutorial vids from Just Scrapbooking - inspired me to get my paints out. Something I've not done for far too long!

As it happens, I have an entry to do in an art journal CJ, so what better excuse to get painty? :)

So here's the desk this morning:

And here's my painty, texturey background:

It's still a work in progress in that I still need to "decorate" the page, as it were. But I'm quite happy with the background.

That's it from me this week. Short and sweet. I've already stayed up later than I should cos DD1 has recently taken to waking up a good hour or so earlier than she usually does *and* coming and opening her bedroom door and making a noise on the landing, which then wakes up her baby sister in her room, which in turn means that mummy's then got to get up at silly o'clock! Argh!

So. Bedtime for this little crafter. Goodnight and thanks for stopping by! :)

Happy Birthday Yasmin!

It was my cousin's birthday... erm... yesterday! Whoops! Am ashamed to say with everything that's been going on here I completely forgot to make and send a card, until today! So this will be a little late getting there, but it's the thought that counts, right? ;)

The image is a Stitchy Bear digi stamp and the papers and ribbon were recent freebies with a craft magazine. I also had a play with the second of the new Memory Box dies I recently picked up. :)

I'm entering this card for the Passion for Promarkers challenge (ice cream/cupcakes) and the One Stitch At A Time challenge (use a digi).

Happy Birthday, Yas! Sorry it's late....