WOYWW 227

Chaos. My life and my desk this week are chaos.

 

 

I have so much to get sorted this week that I feel like I am constantly running from one task to the next and never get any of them finished... or if I do get one finished, another two pop up to take its place! :lol:

 

I'm off on my yearly scrapbooking retreat this weekend. Heading off on Friday and coming back Sunday... so hubby has got Friday off work and will be looking after the kids all weekend.

 

I'm not packed. Not even remotely. Not even started to think about it. And I've not only got to pack the usual clothes etc for the weekend, I've also got to pack whatever craft supplies and equipment I want to take with me.

 

I've also agreed to teach a tutorial during the weekend on colouring with alcohol markers. So I'm busy trying to put that together too... including an reference sheet with in-progress photos. Hence the Promarkers and sheet on my desk in the photo. I've also been printing out image sheets for folks to colour in but - sod's law - my printer has chosen this exact moment to run out of black ink. And... to make things even better... the package of replacement ink cartridges for my printer that I bought ooooooh ages ago because they were on special offer and which has been sitting around in my craft room waiting until needed.... turns out to be not the correct cartridges for my printer! So now I have to 1) go out tomorrow and buy a refill cartridge and 2) track down my original order reference for those cartridges and work out if I ordered the wrong ones by mistake or if they sent me the wrong ones by mistake!

 

See what I mean about every task I complete (or, in this case, fail to complete) spawning two more tasks for the to do list?! Argh! :lol:

 

Thanks very much to everyone who commented on my WOYWW entry last week (I did manage to get around a few of you and reciprocate). I'm pleased to say that the painting that was in-progress last week is now finished. I managed to find time at the weekend (while the kids were "helping" daddy in the garden) to work on it and I have to say, considering this is only the second ever original painting I have ever done on canvas, I am really rather pleased with the result:

 

 

Now I just need a few more hours in the day (and possibly days in the week) so I can find time to paint as a hobby as well as papercraft, and draw, and make digi stamps, and teach myself to knit (that one's on hold at the moment), and write fiction.... too much inspiration, not enough time! :lol:

 

Thanks for stopping by... see ya next week when my desk will no doubt be buried under boxes/bags/piles of stash that I've not had time to unpack following the weekend. :)

WOYWW 226

I've been a bit hit and miss with the old WOYWW lately. I either forget that it's Wednesday(!!) or just don't have the time to join in! :/

 

I'm a bit late today but am going to join in anyway. :) Here's what's on my desk this morning:

 

 

The chaos has gotten worse and my bird cage of paintbrushes has been moved down off the windowsill and plonked in the middle of the desk. There is a reason for this...

 

Last weekend there was a paint-a-thon at ATCsForAll.com. I was away from home Saturday to Sunday (going to my school reunion! :D) but I loved the idea of painting some ATCs and I found time to join in on Friday and Monday. I was really really pleased with the cards I painted and found myself not only enjoying painting but actually feeling like I was producing some decent images.

 

Yesterday the school teachers were on strike in England so I had DD1 at home with me... but DD2 was at nursery for the day so for once we got to have a bit of mummy and daughter time, just the two of us. DD1 loves to be creative (takes after her mummy! :D) so we took advantage of both my recent interest in painting and the opportunity to get creative without DD2 charging around like a bull in a china shop. ;)

 

So I got my paintbrush pot down and selected some brushes and took my tub of paints into the kitchen and got DD1's pre-mixed paints out... and we spent an enjoyable afternoon getting painty and creative.

 

I worked on this:

 

 

Am really pleased with how this is going. I've managed to get the shading on the skin with just enough contrast to give some contours to the face without too much contrast. And I'm pleased with the detail on the eye and the shading on the lips.

 

And DD1 painted a grand total of 7 pictures - and drew 3 more! Here's her take on Mickey Mouse:

 

 

Not bad for a 4 year old eh? This was done with zero input from me (I was busy painting on my canvas) - she chose all the colours and painted it all on her own. Think she's definitely inherited mummy's creative gene. :)

 

The weather's miserable here today so am hibernating at home with DD2... might see if she wants to do some painting this afternoon and have a painty/crafty session with her too. :)

 

WOYWW 224

I've been a bit AWOL from the WOYWW party recently... sooo much going on! DD1 starting full-time school, DD2 going to nursery 2 days a week rather than 1, selling our old house, chasing the rotten useless bank for a mortgage redemption certificate so we could pay off the darn mortgage, getting A/C installed in our conservatory etc etc etc....

 

And on top of that I've been having major issues with my laptop, with the result that it has now been sent off to Samsung for repair and I'm reduced to using my painfully slow old netbook or my desktop to get online (and can only do blog posts on my desktop cos the netbook seems to have issues with both Blogger and Photobucket! Argh!)

 

But anyway, all that aside, I've managed to find time to snap a quick pic and upload it:

 

 

The workable space on the desk is on the endangered list... but that's partly because I have been working away. I didn't get any crafting done for a couple of weeks, due to all the above, and now I have a stack of deadlines looming! :lol: I made two cards today and have bits and pieces prepped for a couple more.

 

I have also been slowly tidying the craft room... I've started with the floor but the desk is next on the agenda... once I get these deadlines dealt with! :)

 

That's it from me... I've already stayed up too late... curse the morning school run! :lol:

 

Thanks for stopping by....

 

..p.s. d'you like my little tower of paint and embossing powder pots? Isn't it pretty... :lol:

 

WOYW 222

Otherwise known as... the one where's she finally started tidying! *gasp*

 

Yup, the craft room has finally reached crisis point (or I've finally reached my tolerance point for mess and chaos) and I've started tidying. When I say tidying... I mean I've started excavating my way inwards from the door! :lol:

 

I've cleared around a 2-3 square foot area of floor, filling a bin bag in the process (although half of that was from emptying the wastepaper bin into it too) and cleared out all sorts of boxes and piles of craft magazines and various books and bits of equipment and canvas frames and lord knows what else and gone and stacked them in hubby's study (heee!) until I can find somewhere to put them away properly once I've finished tidying.

 

Anyhoo... this is the result of my excavations so far:

 

 

 

I don't have any before photos but let's just say it was getting hard to remember what colour the carpet was. ;)

 

Things have been manically busy this last month. I've had 5 days at my mum's with the kids (and had to get ahead on my DT projects before going away) and last week hubby and the kids and I (and BIL) went up to Scotland for a week (so again I had to try and get ahead on DT stuff before being away). On top of that DD1 has just - today!! - started full-time school so we had to get ready for that, my laptop is dying (it's not charging properly) and I've had a 3 weeks saga of back and forth emails with Samsung to try and arrange to get it repaired under warranty, oh and we're in the process of selling our old house and are supposed to be completing this Friday... and at the last minute it's developed a small leak in the bathroom ceiling so this week I've also been trying to sort out roofers to get over there and have a look at what the problem is!! Aaaarrggghhh!!

 

*and... breathe...*

 

So that's my WOYWW for this week. No desk shot cos there's been no crafting going on since I got back off holiday - too busy with all the other stuff!! - but instead I shall share with you a snap of my DD1 all dressed up in her uniform and ready for her first day in Reception class. :)

 

 

Hope you're having a good week and thanks for stopping by! :)

 

WOYWW 220

Yikes. I had intended to get to bed by midnight tonight but it just hasn't happened. I am soooo busy lately and there are just not enough hours in the day!

 

We're sneaking off for a week's holiday to Scotland this weekend so I am trying (once again) to get ahead on my DT projects so I've had a bit of a production line going... last night I coloured in 9 (count em!) digi stamps and tonight I've made 4 of them into cards. :)

 

And this is the resulting chaos from my busy evening of crafting:

 

 

Of course, I didn't get to start crafting until gone 9pm because first of all I had to sit and watch the Great British Bake Off! It's back - hurrah! I admit to being hooked on it.. though it does make me a) want to go and bake and b) sad that I am nowhere near as good a baker as the guys on the show! :lol:

 

Anyhoo... busy day looming and I still need to finish up some stuff before heading to bed so I'll bid you goodnight and wish you all a happy WOYWW! :)

WOYWW 219

Am returned from the wilds of North Wales and once again able to share photos of my craft desk. :)

It's still in a state of chaos - though slightly less so than last week and I had to push back the mess to clear enough space to make a card in. :D

 

I am plagued by technology troubles this week. The AC adaptor on my laptop appears to be on its last legs... I have to jiggle the connector around to get it to start charging and then hold it in place while it charges. Which is not ideal! And Samsung want the princely sum of £56 for a new one! £56!!! :/

 

On top of that, when I came to take my WOYWW photo I discovered that I have left the data card for my camera in my mum's netbook... in North Wales! Argh!! Luckily I managed to "borrow" the data card from hubby's camera.

 

Hey ho, what fun!

 

Anyhoo, off to bed for me - it's late and I've a busy day tomorrow of belly dancing class (with a crèche for the kids - awesome!) and then a playdate with friends at a local petting farm.

 

Happy WOYWW everyone! :)

 

WOYWW 218

It's Wednesday and ordinarily I would be sharing a photo of my workdesk.

 

But I can't. Cos my workdesk is in Yorkshire and I'm currently in North Wales, having a mini break at my mum's with the kids. I meant to take a photo of my desk before I left, so I could post it today, but tbh in the frantic chaos of a) getting everything packed for myself and 2 small kids and b) trying to get craft projects finished up before I left, I just plain forgot! :lol:

 

Needless to say, I left the desk in a state of utter chaos, having spent the previous week or so trying to get as far ahead as possible on DT projects in advance of my few days away.

 

Soo... seeing as I have no workdesk photo to share this week, I shall do as I threatened last week and fill my WOYWW post with excited bletherings about the Wolverine movie, that I finally got to see last weekend! ;D

 

It. Was. Awesome.

 

I don't know what the critical reviews will say about it, but as a long-time Wolverine fan, it was total fangirl heaven. :) I love how they reinterpreted the source material (the Claremont/Miller series of Wolverine comics from the 80s depicting Logan's time in Japan), I loved the storyline (I'm a sucker for anything to do with Wolverine's healing factor), I loved Yukio (she was fabulous), the action/fight scenes were freaking awesome, there were some lovely humorous moments and there were also some genuine "Oh my god!" moments.

 

I loved it so much that, seeing as I'm here at my mum's and therefore have a babysitter... I went to the cinema on my own tonight and saw it again! :lol:

 

Yes, I am a sad geeky fangirl. I'm thinking seriously about making some Wolverine ATCs. :D

 

Anyhooo... hope you're having a great Wednesday and thanks for stopping by my blog today. I'll be spending the next couple of days mostly doing trips out with the kids and my mum. Hoping the weather picks up so that we might get to spend a little bit of time on the beach. If not, it'll be zoos and petting farms and the like until we head home on Friday. :)

 

I'll be back with the usual desk photo next week. :)

WOYWW 217

Another fleeting, late night (well, early morning really) WOYWW post from me this week.

 

My word, the summer holidays are busy! We've spent all day today out having a playdate at a friend's house. Tomorrow we're meeting friends in the morning and going off to a soft play in the afternoon. Friday we're invited to lunch at another friend's house... how is it that my kids have a better social life than I do?!! ;)

 

I've also made plans for the kids and I to have a short break next week at my mum's in North Wales - summer holidays at grandma's house at the seaside! Yay! - and we've also booked a family week away in Scotland at the end of August. All of which means I've got to crack on and try and get ahead on my DT commitments!

 

So that's what I've been working on tonight:

 

 

I've finished up one in-progress card and made another card from scratch. Of course, I can't show you them yet but you can see on my desk that I've been painting with Distress Inks. :)

 

I'm also struggling a bit to concentrate fully on my crafting this week cos I'm in full-blown geeky fangirl overdrive atm since a very lovely friend has offered to babysit this weekend (having a babysitter is a very rare occurrence for hubby and I as we have no family nearby) so that hubby and I can go to the cinema together... to go and see The Wolverine! :)

 

I am *such* a Wolverine fangirl and the new movie looks absolutely freaking awesome and I just cannot *wait*. Seriously, I am counting down the days till Saturday.

 

So that's me and my desk for this week. Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a fab Wednesday.

 

P.S. Please do not be surprised if my WOYWW next week consists mostly of fangirly blethering about The Wolverine! :lol:

WOYWW 216

Am so glad Julia's posted the WOYWW post early this week... cos I stayed up waaaaaaay too late last night and I really must get an early night tonight!

 

So here's my sneaky peek at my desk:

 

 

The small oasis of usable space is now definitely on the endangered list. I keep telling myself I'll tidy but I just need to finish these one or two projects first.... and maybe that one... you know how it is. ;)

 

Been doing a fair bit of crafting lately, mostly cards and ATCs - oh and a whole bunch of teacher gifts! (see previous post) - and indeed there is an in-progress set of ATCs on the desk.

 

Am also getting my head around the summer holidays starting and the sudden lack of routine - no kiddy classes or pre-school!

 

And that's it for me. Am going to finish up watching an episode or two of MacGyver on Netflix (I know, I know, I'm feeling nostalgic for the 80s.. :D), eat some ice cream and then hit the sack! :)

 

Have a good Wednesday folks.

WOYWW 215

Oooh lookit, I actually remembered it's Wednesday! :) And that that means WOYWW. (In fact, I even remembered to put the bin out which is progress cos I forgot to do that last Wednesday too! :/)

 

My desk this week (still untidied, still chaotic) finds me mid-creating:

 

 

School finishes for the summer this week and my DD1 is finishing pre-school and will be starting full-time school in September (Eeep! Still can't quite get my head around that!).

 

Her teachers at the pre-school class have been awesome and she's absolutely thrived there and settled in really well (and she got *the* most lovely school report for her pre-school year last week :)). So I wanted to show my thanks and appreciation and give the pre-school teachers a little thank-you gift. I think something handmade is always a nice gift and I decided to make them each a little decorated notebook.

 

So I've spent tonight playing around and creating my prototype, which you can see on the desk. I'm quite pleased with the results though when making the rest I will tweak the design a little and use a wider ribbon for the pen holder. Tomorrow I will have a bit of a mini production line and make another 4 of these.

 

From these:

 

 

To this:

 

 

I hope they like them. Oh and I also need to make thank you cards to go with them. Busy busy busy! ;)

 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having a good WOYWW.

 

WOYWW 214

I'm late to the WOYWW party again this week. Things are soooo busy here right now and I was also feeling pretty rotten this morning so not up to blogging. Feeling slightly more human now though so have managed to snap a photo of the chaos:

 

 

Hard to believe, but yes, it's actually worse than last week. Mind you, it looks the way it does right now because I've spent the last couple of days fruitlessly searching the house (including my craft room) for a missing bank card. The machine ate my card on Monday, at which point I remembered receiving a new card in the post several weeks ago. I put it aside and forgot about it. And now the bank have obviously decided that I've had the new card for long enough and the old one can be deactivated. Whoops!

 

I've searched high and low and I cannot find the darned thing anywhere. So I've had to phone the bank and ask them to please cancel it and send out a replacement - which can take up to 5 working days to receive! *sigh* I really wish I could be more organised. :/

 

On that note, however, I did do a teensy bit of reorganising in the craft pit - I got fed up of all the various flower embellishments no longer fitting in the drawer I had assigned them and the drawer constantly being left pulled out with packets of flowers overflowing from it.

 

So I bought this:

 

 

I had a nice time sorting out my flowers into it... problem is, they don't actually all fit! :lol: Maybe I should buy another one....

 

I have also done a bit of crafting in the last couple of days... I made a very quick birthday card to send to my mum's partner for his birthday yesterday:

 

 

I used patterned paper from Stampin' Up! and new stamps - and matching punch and embossing folder - from the new Stampin' Up! catalogue. The sentiment stamp (and matching Framelit die) are also from Stampin' Up!.

 

 

WOYWW 212

Another Wednesday is upon us and crafters the world over are sharing sneak peeks at their workdesks in the biggest blog hop in craft land, all hosted by the ever gracious Julia at her Stamping Ground blog.

 

My desk is in its usual chaos... in fact, even more so than usual!

 

 

As you can see, the chaos has eaten pretty much all of the (small, remaining) usable workspace! Whoops. :) It's the good kind of chaos though... the post-creative kind of chaos. :)

 

I have been doing quite a bit of crafting this past week and the various bits and bobs littering the desk are testament to my creativity - stencils, paints, inks, pens, stamps, you name it! :D There's also a sheet of digi stamps that I've been colouring this evening while chilling on the sofa.

 

My creations over the past week have included my first ever attempt at an original painted canvas and a whooooole lot of ATCs. I've been on a major ATC kick lately, particularly hand-drawn ATCs, and over the weekend I joined in a zentangle-a-thon happening at ATCsForAll.com and created all of these:

 

 

 

 

 

I had a lot of fun making these cards... and playing with some inks and pastels to make backgrounds to zentangle over. :)

 

I've got several more in progress, plus an idea for another (bigger) original canvas. So many ideas, so little time! :lol:

 

Oh and before I go, here's another photo specially for Julia, who was concerned last week about the apparent disappearance of my AIMEE alphas which have been stuck to one of my computer screens for.... oooh probably over a year now(!), waiting to be reused. :lol: Worry not Julia, they're still there... just hidden behind the ever-rising piles of crafty chaos! :D

 

 

Happy WOYWW folks - thanks for stopping by. :)

 

 

WOYWW 211

Oooh lookit, I actually remembered what day of the week it is, for the first time in 3 weeks! :lol:

 

Yup, I've remembered that it's Wednesday *and* that that means it's time to share what's on my workdesk. Take that, baby brain! :D

 

So here's my desk in all its messy glory:

 

 

 

I've actually quite productive over the past couple of days, mostly making ATCs. I am on a *major* ATC kick at the moment and getting involved in some great swaps over at ATCsforall.com.

 

Scattered about on my desk you can see some of the goodies I've been playing with - Pan Pastels, stencils, Chocolate Baroque and Stampotique stamps, pens, Distress Stains, offcuts of Gelli plate prints, crackle paint... ooh it's been a lot of messy fun! :D

 

There's also an in-progress card sitting on the desk. I've started off with kraft card and Distress Stains but not yet decided where to take it from there...

 

But here's some of the bits and pieces I have finished recently...

 

Three cards for an art journal themed swap:

 

 

And a hand-drawn card, using just a fineliner pen on card:

 

 

I also made a few quite notecards with which to send out my cards for swapping, including this one:

 

 

I love this big butterfly stamp (Swallowtail stamp from Stampin' Up!) and been wanting to play with it and I was tempted by the Clean and Simple challenge at Flutterby Wednesdays. So am entering this card into that challenge.

 

That's it for me for this week... will try and get around and comment on a few more desks this week. The days just seem to get away from me and I never seem to get chance to do as many comments as I would like!

 

 

 

WOYWW 244

Bah. I forgot it was Wednesday. Again.

 

Well, I didn't forget it was Wednesday, per se, in that I went about my usual Wednesday routine, but I did completely forget - for the second week running - about WOYWW. *sigh*

 

So here's a very quick, belated, WOYWW post and view of my desk:

 

 

The work area is piled high at the moment, with some new goodies that arrived yesterday (incl. some fab Andy Skinner stencils that I can't *wait* to play with!) and a pile of bits and bobs - mostly stencils and pots of embossing powder - that got dumped back on the craft desk after I took them into the kitchen last night to play with. I had a friend come over and we went out for a drink at the pub (something I rarely get to do as I rarely have a babysitter to hand) and then had a bit of a crafty play in the kitchen trying out a cool graduated embossing technique from the new issue of Craft Stamper magazine.

 

I have done a bit of actual crafting this week though and yesterday managed to finish this card for a lovely online friend who has had boy/girl twins. :)

 

 

That's it from me. See ya next week! (If I remember! :lol:)