WOYWW 666

It's Wednesday and it's WOYWW day - the day I join in with Julia and her gang of crafting bloggers to show what is on our work desks.  Follow the link above and join in, guaranteed fun and friendship for all.  So feast your eyes on my desk today which has some Adirondack Stamp Pads (a blast from the past but for the workshop planned by our new Programme Officer at our first meeting of our club after two years - pandemic!) and a new stamp from Aall & Create.  Then there is my cutter cum scorer and my bag full of stuff brought back from the caravan in readiness for Saturday.  

I thought I would also show you a couple of shelves in my craft room so here they are - my shelf of colouring materials and the lower one mainly containing journals.

These shelves go a long long way back so there are all kinds of things that you cannot see.  I have Alcohol Inks in the two silver tins, Prismacolours in the pink zip container and Inktense pencils in the blue one.  All manner of pencils for colouring (Caran D'Ache, watercolour, metallic etc) and my Ranger craft sheets that are cut up to protect the various sized journals are in the next silver tin.  Next is my covered Felix (cat food) box with Promarkers in  then my Arteza and my Chameleon pens and in front two tiny watercolour paint boxes.

Lower down is a stacker with junk in, some Gesso, a hessian bag with small journals, then a silver tin with other journals and finally the ones I am working in.  Behind are most of my completed journals that rarely see the light of day now and yet there are hours of fun in them.

So that is the tour for the day over and done with.  My favourite Polaroid for this week has to be this one - Stitches, as I love those cotton reels.

and as tomorrow is my birthday my hairdresser presented me with this on Tuesday when I went for a trim - here is my birthday cupcake with my unopened cards.  Have a good week!

WOYWW 665

 Is it really a week since I was doing this before?  The days are flying by and I grow older each day, wish someone would invent a clock to go back just a little for me.

Such a sad world at the moment with all this trouble in the Ukraine.  It's heartbreaking to see those women and children fleeing their country, their homes and leaving loved ones behind to fight.  The thought of leaving my husband or son behind to fight brings me to tears.  Friends too.  Just so hard and what a harduous journey they face themselves ... and to what end?

So much sadness in the world, our hearts go out to our own Juilia lost her dear Mama, and I heard yesterday that our closest friend in America had had to make the decision to turn off his mother's life support (her wishes).  So very sad.  My condolences to them both.  I haven't mentioned before that someone I knew years ago fell on the first day of her holiday and hurt her leg.  She saw a doctor (in Dom Repub) who said nothing broken ... to rest and take paracetamol.  A week later she was admitted to hospital, transferred to ICU where she had two heart attacks and died.  Her husband had to travel home alone facing his 70th birthday and his eldest daughter's 40th just a week or so later.  As I said, so sad for so many.

Sorry for all of that, on a better note, or an attempt to brighten you up, here is one of my Polaroids where I used the colours of the Ukraine flag as my backdrop.  That and a couple of donations is all I can think of doing at the moment.  It should be a grandad cooking but I changed the head.

I think he is cooking a bit of steak and there are a couple of burgers and two sausage on the grill, but there is also a fish in the bucket if you look carefully.  I did take the head off.  I remember my 16 year old son working on a fish stall in the local Saturday market, if they asked for the head to be left on he would chop it off and vice versa.  In the end the owner rang me and asked me not to send him in any more.  (Glad he doesn't read my blog now he is grown up.)

Our stamping club opens up next Saturday.  Thursday I have to go and look at the new proposed premises ahead of the meeting for a health and safety induction.  I have been so busy with the paperwork and getting a class sorted for the month after as we won't have anyone volunteering to do any as yet.  I tried a couple of external tutors but no joy - anyone know of any around the Warrington area who are good and willing to travel (and don't cost too much).  We have money in the funds and want to spend it on a good class.

Well, better get my workdesk shown to you for Julia and the gang, here at woyww.  It is the aftermath of my getting my class ready so it is nice and tidy with just the stuff hanging around waiting to be put away - where do you put  twenty completed cards safely for a month?

Don't tell anyone you have seen some samples, twelve from a 12" x 12" sheet and eight from a 8" x 8" sheet.  Plus I got rid of lots of my scraps of coloured card.  Win win!

See you next week!

WOYWW 661

 Well, I did manage to finish off my Polaroids - done 31 of them now and I am making them into a book in the next few days but also am starting a new set of them because I enjoyed doing the so much.  So if you followed me on Instagram you will see me posting again in the next few days.  In the meantime:

25 - 27 of my Polaroids

28 - 30 of my Polaroids

31 Last one for this set

Julia made me laugh on FB with her comment on this last one.  Brill Julia, good one!

But you came on here to look at my desk - well here it is.  If it looks a bit too tidy it's because I have also been crafting elsewhere for the most part because my back has been a bit 'jittery' and I have needed to sit in my straight backed chair.

As you can see, there is nothing really on my desk.  My glass mat has moved from underneath the window part of my worktop and now has a dirty yellow cloth on it.  Not really dirty dirty, I use it to clean my stamps.  A clear stamp I have just used for my journal tomorrow (everything else put away) a notebook with a clean up of my Distress tools on it (I quite like the look of it so it will get used - a future Polaroid?) some craft mat pieces that I use to protect pages in my journal when painting and my Ebosser.  The Ebosser never gets used because it is not normally in my craft room so I've moved it to see if I use it a bit more or will I want that space it occupies?  If so, it goes back on the trolley.

Here is another trolley, as opposed to the one with my die cutting things on, this time with my craft stuff on that I have been using to colour my images in when my back has been hurting.  Some of my colouring mediums, my beaker with my pill box stuck in it, my Felix box with my small JK stamps and my pill storage things on top of it (waiting to be put away), glue, scissors and my flesh Promarkers.  I would like to change over to Copics but have you seen the price of them?  Wow, I cannot see me buying those, guess I need to learn to use all the different colouring mediums that I have.

Well, that is it for this week, it is Tuesday night now and I must get to bed, too many late mornings recently (yes, I do mean mornings) so it's time to link to WOYWW and then see tomorrow what everyone else has on their desks.

WOYWW 659

One or two of you asked about the Polaroid Challenge last week, was it a Polaroid I had to take of something or what?  Well, it's a mock up of a Polaroid photograph.  You have one piece of white card measuring 4.2" x 3.8" and another which you work on measuring 3 1/8"square.  

I've never heard of doing Polaroids before, but in papercrafting there are lots of things that we do - inchies, twinchies, ATC's (and circular ATC's known as ATC Coins), tags etc but I am enjoying doing them and here are my first ones: (apologies to those who have seen them on Facebook or Instagram)

1 - 3 Sitting Down; Wings for Things; Head Swap

For these I used

1 - 479 Be Confident; Wild Honey, Dried Marigold DI's; Stencils 38 Cracked Walls, 95 Sunrise; Vintage Photo DI

2 - 416 Be Beautiful; Broken China, Shaded Lilac DI's; Stencil 112 Heapza Hexagonz; Wild Honey DI

3 - 422 Fly Free (Head); 425 The Captain (Body & Case); Background was a Mop Up

4-6 Birds; Animal, Mineral, Vegetable; Friendship

For these I used

4 - 407 Chicken Dance; 409 Home; 342 Windows; Cracked Pistachio, Mermaid Lagoon DO's

5 - 526 Serengeti; 522 Dinos; Tumbled Glass, Salvaged Patina, Crushed Olive, Lucky Clover DO's, Stencil 112 Heapza Hexagonz

6 - Lil Abs; Lil Tracy; Lil Leoni (Ltd Ed); Squeezed Lemonade, Scattered Straw DO's Washi tape #1

7-9 How Does Your Garden Grow Monochrome, Famous Face

For these I used

7 - 426 The Gardener; 510 Grow; Speckled Egg, Twisted Citron DO's; Stencil Dandelion Field, Sunrise

8 - 428 Charlie; all stamping was embossed in Black; Stencil 126 478 Lotza Starz

9 - 488 Salvador; Stormy Sky, Scattered Straw, Vintage Photo DI's (to represent the background of his painting 'The Persistence of Memory'); Washi tape #4

10-12 Hats Off, Holiday, Read a Good Book

For these I used

10 - 478 Choose Happy; 516 Peekaboo; 284 Hat Drama; Peeled Paint, Cracked Pistachio DO's; Stencil 113 Lotza Squares

11 - 422 Fly Free; 516 Peekaboo; Map for Background

12 - 415 Good Book; 423 Seaside (glasses); 461 Have a Seat (Teddy Bear); 409 Home (Books); Wild Honey, Dried Marigold DI's; Stencil 126 Lotza Starz

13-15 Good to be Home; Wonderland, off to see the Wizard;  Birthday Celebration

For these I used

13 - 461 Have a Seat; 342 Windows; 414 Bear Hugs (lamp); 296 All Good Things (dog); Washi - Horticultural Layers; Background was a mop up and used Lotza Dotz stencil.

14 - 524 Follow the Rainbow; White Rabbit; Dorothy; Toto; Signs; Broken China, Peeled Paint DO's.

15 - 379 Party with Me (words & bunting); 542 Sparks of Nature (balloons); 316 Oh Boy (bone); 296 All Good Things (dog); 417 Coffee Time (dog bowl - bottom half of cup); 373 Rescue Puppies; Die 22 Check Figures, Salty ocean, Broken China DO's.

That is half the month done.  I'll show you the remainder as and when I do them.  I have an idea that I will turn them into a book when I have finished but I am not disclosing how as it is a technique I learned with Tracy Evans a long time ago when we did a book similar with tags.

Guess I had better show you my desk now that I have done all of this or Miss Julia, Queen of Deskers, who is in charge of all of us WOYWW'ers, will have my "guts for garters" with the length of this post.  I did leave it until the last minute for this one but typed the above earlier.  Here goes:

My Felix box of small Janet Klein's, My heat gun, my plastic A4 box full of ready cut images and my box with all sorts of bits in that I might need for the Polaroids.  Now I had better get on with my ATC swaps.  And to finish off here is the sunset from Tuesday night - over our back garden fence: