WOYWW 411

Really short this morning Julia, just as you like it.  Here is my desk

Yes, totally empty, that is except for the little fella lurking in my collapsed water pot and my K roll at the back, oh, there are some mints somewhere.  Well, what is the reason?  My craft room is being turned upside down over the next few weeks.  

You see we are having a new bathroom installed, think I mentioned it last week, and there is a door in my craft room which makes it an en suite craft room.  The door is never used because there is a big cupboard in front of it, and before that it wasn't used - not sure why the previous occupant did it like that with access from two bedrooms.  Anyway, the door is going and it is going to just be a wall thereby giving us more room in the bathroom.

This is my empty cupboard

You would not believe how much stuff there is that has come out of it.  All my silver boxes of stamps are now in the utility and the other stuff that was hidden away (seasonal, other crafts etc) now resides in his study.  So I have messed him up too!  I still have lots to go through and lots to move as the whole wall will need skimming and painting. Wonder if I will get my cupboard painted now?

So that's it folks, sorry it is so boring.  Pop along to see Julia and link to more interesting desks than mine.  Next week - who knows - might even show you the utility and study as they get messed up more.

Good Friday (Smiles with Annie 216)

Well, the day came and went in a flurry of, not Easter Eggs, not bunnies (well not quite), no hot cross buns - but lots of lovely friendship and paint (and stencils and goodies).  Yes, I went and had a day at Art from the Heart with the delightfully delicious Dyan.  And my bessie, Lorraine, of course  Met up with Carol from the NE and sat next to her and the lovely bright, colourful Donna was sat opposite (but a little down on the other side).  All the other ladies were lovely but I cannot remember their names, except Marilyn who did the egg and spoon race with me, sorry folks.

Dyan gave us all bunny ears to wear and we had an egg and spoon race part way through the afternoon and then settled to gorge ourselves on delicious Carrot Cake and Red Velvet Cake  - and there were tempting little chocolate Easter eggs for us to top up our energy levels as the day went on. Think I smiled all day.

Pinched this from Dyan's Dylusions Facebook page - hope that is ok. It shows some of us having an egg and spoon race.  Dyan is creased with laughing, Marilyn is lagging at the back and Donna (who cheated and held me back) has lost her egg - serves her right LOL.

My Dyary does not seem to have much in it but I flitted about and got lots of bits in it rather than concentrating on a page.  Here are some of the lovely goodies we got to go in our Dyaries to start us off. Remember these are in no way finished pages, or even a quarter finished, just us having fun and learning about all the goodies we can put in our Dyaries.  There will be stamping, stencilling, collage maybe, colouring, words and embellishing with stickers figures, pens etc. before a page can begin to look complete - and are they ever complete?

See the stars on the left?  They are long blank stickers for you to stamp on - I stamped on the wrong side - couldn't understand why I was having so much trouble trying to peel one off.  DOH!  Need to go to Specsavers!  DOH!  Blonde Moment!!!

Some of the bits I stencilled, stamped etc

Love this stag

Stamped cats and a border

This was my favourite stamp of the day

I love all the Dylusion stamps but this border really caught my eye, now I want it but I bought enough - forgot to take a photo so you cannot see but suffice to say it was a fair bit of shopping!  Now to disappear and enjoy myself putting some more work into those pages - might start off with black paint and do a bit of touch up work first. Oops!  Must visit Annie first of all and see who else has linked - off for a nosey.

Jeudi Journal - Squares

I wanted to do a Seth Apter page using a technique of his I did recently and using some of his diecuts. Got it all worked out and then thought that I should really keep this a bit more "Dylusional". Thought then about cutting some squares out with my straight square Spellbinders dies and made some narrow frames.  Then I got some of my skeleton heads and decorated a couple of them like Sugar Skulls and the other one with a bit of colour on his head and put them inside the frames.  I guess they would be a bit wonky so they got moved about a bit.

The background was already done (pink?? what possessed me?) and it had brickwork on it so that is not strictly squares but hey ho, it's my blog.  Then I found some 'freebie' dies I had - a camera and one depicting the word 'smile' so they got incorporated in it too.

As the facing page was one of the pages I had cut into smaller ones I decided to put the full skeleton on the other side.  Now whether he will say something at a later stage about his family rogues gallery or not remains to be seen.  For the moment he stays as he is.

The strips down the sides of the next few curved pages will have to depend on what I do on the pages themselves so they are left - just a hurried coat of Bubblegum Pink to finish off for today.

So that's it folks - my Square pages for Jeudi Journal with Wendy.

WOYWW 410

Gosh, Tuesday evenings come around much quicker than I like them to.  Then it reminds me that next day is WOYWW day and time for me to show off my lovely clean, tidy desk area - some hopes!

Today is the aftermath of last Saturday when I went to the club and we did fabric printing.  Well, some did, I did ask "teach" if it was ok if I got on with my slip cover for my Dyary.  So that is what I was doing, simply painting along - but it was Fabric Pain.

I also had to take a couple of birthday cards.  Forgot to take a photo of one which is a shame as it took a fair bit of work to produce it. The other I made out to 'Christine' but when I handed it to her she told me it was very nice of me but her birthday was not until December.  It was Sue who had a birthday coming up.  What a great sense of humour Sue has - she rook the card out of my hand and said "when my husband asks me who Christine is, I will tell him it's my new middle name".  What a dope I am.  Here's the card that went to Christine and should have been made out to Sue

A long shot of my desk - and the end of my craft room almost

Close up of my work - slip cover for my Dyary

You can see my new fabric pens on the left.  From Crafts 4 All via Amazon.  20 pens and a cute little black canvas bag to hold them in - one of the girls had one and I fell in love with it/them.  To the right are all my Stewart Gill Paints, Lumieres and Dylon Fabric Paints.  Far right are a lot of rubber stamps which I am getting rid of because I want to prune my room and have more space for other things. Some of these stamps must be fifteen years old at least.

Well, that's it for this week folks. Pop along to see what Julia has to say this week and then join in with some of the deskers and have a fun morning (or day, or week) nosing around desks.  Have a good week anyway. xx

Friday's Smiles with Annie

Even though it is a week late I am still smiling whenever I talk about my trip to Holland last weekend and today I looked at my photographs and my tag and smiled all over again.  Annie is so lucky to have some Dutch friends because they can teach her one or two words in their own language.  Wish I knew more.  Here I am linking up to her Friday Smiles, a day late.

We met some Chinese people across the road from our hotel.  I tried my bit of Chinese on them but they obviously did not understand me. However by smiles, greetings and gestures I gathered they wanted me to take a photo of them.  No - they wanted a photo with me! They also beckoned Lorraine to come on as she was standing back a bit. Here we all are - why can't everyone be so happy and have no wars, we just need smiles not anger or even language at times like this.

Chas thought it was because I was so tall and fair haired, like it was in Tiananmen Square when we were over there and the people kept taking photos of me.  Our guide explained when we got back to the coach that they were farmers and not used to seeing such tall women or fair haired people.  I think, this time, they just thought we were Dutch.

Anyway, here are some more photos to make you smile, or be envious, or both.  Enjoy!

This one should really make you smile

Some more cards, you can be forgiven if you think you recognise them from last week's mammoth showing but there are some different ones on the right hand side of this display.

and next a beautiful book cover

Gilding wax tags, boxes and books

cats were very popular

such pretty Distressed Ink Cards

and finally another to make you smile

This is Eva whom we made the humingbird card with

Too quickly our time at Nijkerk came to an end and it was on to the train for our journey to the airport.  Never seen anyone carrying food to be consumed on the train like this before - have you?

... and here is part of a train - it wouldn't fit in my viewer on my cell phone - we counted eleven carriages on one train and the carriages are so-o-o long.

Until next time ...

Jeudi Journal - Nature

After last week's little muddle up I am now submitting my Nature Page which has taken over a double spread.  I am a little late in the day posting but I forgot to do it last night and then this morning I was off for a 9 am appointment with physio followed by one for podiatry and it has taken me until now to get it done.  Enough twittering - here it is - two separate pages

and 

Mr Skinner's stencil had taken over these two pages and I tried to paint over the second page to get rid of the stars that were already on it so the image became blue lending itself to the sea.  So in order to have a bit of uniformity with the green page I went over the stencilled image and it became green.

Figures and fish/flowers are all Dyusions and I had a great time cutting them out and colouring them. Something soothing when you have back ache and you sit well back and just colour or cut.  Have a good day I am off to see what Wendy has done for her Animals!

WOYWW 409 (and a Little Mouse with Clogs on)

"A little mouse with clogs on

'Well' I declare

Going clip clippety clop on the stair"

Yep, I have been to the Netherlands.  Only a short short trip - flew out Saturday morning and returned Sunday evening.  Both ways were good flights but I thought the pilot was having a laugh when he told us on the way back that we would probably be "ahead of time" as he was "going to take a shortcut".  Never thought of that in the air!

Won't talk too long but we went to a show run by the Art Specially people over there, somewhere I have wanted to go to for simply years.  It is a stamping show, mainly rubber stamping but with a fair amount of mixed media in it now and it is full of Dutch and some French (and a Swedish) manufacturer's stamps, plus English (apologies if I missed someone).  There are lots of free workshops too but we only managed to join in one of them as we were too busy enjoying watching the demonstrations plus two &T's (lots of them - UK take note please). 

These are what I made, followed by two ATC's that Eva (Wanders - who I made the hummingbird card with at a Make and Take) gave to me - the tag was made with Bettina from Scrap Unlimited in a workshop and the top card was made at a Gilding Wax Make & Take

Anyway, here are a few photos from the show - first of all some cards that were on display

There were mixed media canvases

I bought lots of the metal pieces from Scrap Unlimited

and below is a stamped canvas I liked

Hope you enjoyed the pictures - but you came here to see my desk (oops - sorry Julia!)

The thing that struck us mostly about the Netherlands was the friendliness of the people. Not just at the show but everywhere we went.  And, of course, they all spoke really good English which made me feel so embarrassed that I could not speak their language at all. Mind you I did find it difficult to pronounce and have just about mastered "thank you" after a whole weekend.  Next year, yes, we are hoping to go again, I hope to manage "excuse me" for when people are stood in the way.  Next time we want to tag another day on so that we can see something of the Old Town in Amersfoort which looks lovely on photographs and which we glimpsed as we passed on the train.

Hope you enjoyed my photographs.  Now it is over to Julia, our "Queen of Deskers" to see what she has been up to and to link up with so many others.  See you over there.