WOYWW #421

Well that was a darned short week! definitely doesn't feel like a week ago we were all linking up at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, for our chance to browse desks and workrooms around the world.
A shot of my desk, whilst having a bit of fun with my Stampscapes stamps over the last week.I now have a batch of scenes done, just need to turn them into cards now. Along with making a gazillion birthday cards, as our 'peak season' for birthdays is coming up, and we're on holiday for almost two weeks next month, so I have less time.
 Also on my desk, two new ATC's for the swap have arrived, Thank You ladies.

This one first from  Kelly Henkins, an ATC and a selection of die cuts too, all in a little folder.

This one from Sharon Madson, has a couple of little embellishments with it, they are almost like some sort of shell, or mother of pearl. Lovely.

Spent a bit of time making myself some new earrings again.These cabochons are 8x6mm ovals, took a bit of hunting to get some suitable sized studs that also had the notch for butterfly backs.

 We had a lovely evening on Saturday, as we met up for a meal with the Bromilows-Diane (Morti), David & Livvy. They were coming up to Birmingham so Livvy could go to the Birmingham Uni Open Day, and as we only live less than half an hour from there, they came over and we went for a carvery. Typically, none of us thought to take any pictures!

 These are a few of the scenes I finished, I'll blog them towards the weekend.

Not used my Stampscapes as often as I'd like, one or two need a few tweaks, but are pretty much finished.













If you remember, last week I posted about doing some stencilling using a stars stencil and glitter embossing paste? Here's a funny story, that those who visited early on last week won't have seen in my comments, from my Beloved Hubby. Here is his comment:
       "I found out about the glitter stars when I washed up on Monday night. The sink of water I ran looked more like a snow cone , as a certain someone hadn't rinsed the sink properly :) everything had to be re rinsed under the tap as I didn't notice it until I had almost finished due to the ever-so slightly OTT amount of liquid I tend to put in.
I looked over to the draining board to see a nice clean stencil trying desperately to look innocent and failing miserably."   Guess who was in trouble?😈

Saw this last week, but I don't think I'll get away with it!

WOYWW #420

Well, we had a fab weekend in London, and blimey was it hot! Still is for that matter. The concert, Guns N Roses, was ace, seeing Axl & Slash on stage together after all this time was an experience we didn't want to miss.

Packed doesn't even come close to describing it!


Then on Sunday we decided that as we were there, we'd go to the Natural History Museum. An incredible place, Free entry, like the Science Museum next door, and free disabled parking right outside.

So much to see, and to be honest, I'm not sure what was most spectacular- the exhibits, or the building itself.

The carved work on the stone pillars was just amazing- see the shells down the edge of this one?

And sea creatures here.

Absolutely an amazing place to visit.

Driving through London was a bit hairy, but we went down Fleet Street, the Strand, past Nelsons Column & Trafalgar Square, past The Ritz and loads more I've forgotten.







Well, with that weekend, and how hot it's been not much crafting has been done. The only thing on my desk is this piece, done with an Imagination Crafts stencil, and some homemade glitter embossing paste, just using clear Embossing paste, and mixing in glitter. Just wanted to try it out and see if the idea worked.
All the glitter, but no shedding.
 All I need to do now is get round to finishing off all the things I've started lately!
  So get yourself over to Julias place, The Stamping Ground,add your link and get to visit desks all around the world.

WOYWW #419

So here we are, back at The Stamping Ground, where Mistress Julia will attempt to keep us in order!
Two more ATC's on my desk this week, the top one from Andrea, an ATC, in a pouch, all in a card. So much work involved, it's gorgeous Andrea.
 Bottom one is from ShazinOz, again a lovely card with the awesome ATC, the background is stunning, love it, thank you both so much for swapping.







From Donna, over in France, this fabulous book full of 'stuff', and a hand-drawn & coloured card, its fab Donna, so many awesome bits & pieces, thank you, truly.













Elsewhere on my desk:

 I don't get many papercrafting or card making magazines, but this stamp set, free with Making Cards caught my eye.

 Visible Image released some new stamp sets, 3 in all I think, but this one called to me. I think it's because the clock spiral and falling figures made me think of a '60's show, The Time Tunnel. The door made me think of The Twilight Zone, although I know that was a window, not a door in the opening credits.

Last thing is some card fronts I've been working on, for Christmas cards, a smaller version of some I did last year using an Imagination Crafts stencil. More on these later this week, I'll do the post up & schedule it. On Friday we are off down to London to see Guns'N'Roses on Saturday, coming home Sunday afternoon, so there won't be a lot of crafting done till late Sunday, or more likely Monday.


 I've had a date for my MRI, 4th July. As we go on holiday for 10 days on the 13th, plus they have to review & discuss the images, I doubt we will have any more info before the end of July.




And this week, yet another truth.Pretty sure it's cheaper than therapy, though maybe not by much.😎






The post below this one is how I made my ATC's, so at least I got that done.

Birthday ATC's.

This is a selection of the ATC's I made to share, showing the various colour blends.
 They were all done with Distress Inks, and assorted Versafine colours for the stamping itself.

 After the ink blending, I used a dots stencil to sponge through a little of the darkest colour through in patches, then flicked water over them and blotted it with some kitchen roll.


The WOYWW was done with some alpha stamps, little wooden peg ones from Hampton Arts I picked up for a quid somewhere- either going to be Hobbycrafts the store, or the Hobbycrafts show at the NEC. The 8 comes from a Tim Holtz alpha & numbers set called Mini Worn Text. They were stamped in Versafine Crimson Red.

  I also made use of my Stamping Platform to get the fairy, from Lavinia Stamps, in the same place on each card, which was slightly more critical than normal, in order not to end up mixing with the WOYWW8 stamped in the bottom corner.

  She was stamped in Versafine Onyx Black, and heat embossed with clear powder.To get her away from the numbers, and give me room to stamp 'Believe in Magic' on the right, I needed her to be stamped slightly off the page.

Bit of improvisation here- I used a clear ruler lay along the left hand edge of the platform- which is the 'closed' side- butted my ATC up to it, added the magnets to hold the ATC down, then removed the ruler & stamped. A cheap & easy way to give yourself a bit more freedom in positioning.

I know Versafine isn't specifically meant for heat embossing, but I find that dependant on the cardstock used, and sometimes how quickly you can do it, it is possible. The cardstock for these ATC's, by the way, are Clarity ready cut ATC's.

 These pics seem out of order, but I made another 10 on top of my original batch of 20 to have some extras for sharing, and clearly didn't do everything in quite the same order!


  Next bit to be added- and again I used the Stamp Positioner so I didn't get it wonky- was the 'Believe in Magic'. This comes from a Lavinia Stamps  one that reads' Those who don't believe in Magic will never find it', but I didn't want the whole thing, and the positioning of the words on the original didn't work for me either, so out came the scissors.

I snipped out Believe,which was on one line, and In Magic, which were part of the next line, and arranged them alongside each other. I used Onyx Black again to stamp the words.

 The hanging leaves along the top are stamped in Olympia Green Versafine, first & second generation stamping.





 Final stamping was some Tiny Mushrooms, Lavinia stamps, in Versafine Majestic Blue along the bottom.

Now to give them some dimension, and I used Liquid Pearls Onyx on a few of the 'buds' at the ends of the flower the fairy is resting on. On others I used Stickles Black Diamond.

 Just about visible here is Stickles Diamond used on the Fairys wings, and then just a few dots to her right for a bit more sparkle. Then I decided the mushrooms needed a bit of bling, so added some Stickles Midnight Blue to the tops.

The backs were stamped finally with an ATC stamp bought from Stamp & Go, in Versafine Sepia.

Christmas Card Club Challenge #12- Anything Goes

Sylvie has chosen this fortnights theme, and given us a lovely wide ranging brief- Anything Goes.

 Had a think about it, and decided to re-visit a design I made a few of last year, especially as I had stencil paste out on my desk at the time!


 The stencil itself is from Imagination Crafts, and is called
Poinsettia Multi. Instead of adding glitter on top of the wet paste, I mixed it into the paste itself. Makes the whole process a bit less messy, and as long as you have some small sealable pots, you can store any excess.You get better glitter coverage too, and it doesn't shed either. Plus, it's way cheaper than buying glitter stencil paste, which was what originally set me off with this idea.

The stamp is by Honey Doo Crafts, called Happy Christmas Mini. I used a matching glitter embossing powder from WOW! Embossing powders on both cards. I also added acrylic gems to the centres of the flowers. The stamped sentiment is matted onto the same backing paper I used for the main image.
 The image is set onto a 7" card base- although on measuring, I find it's the envelope that is 7", the card base is 6 3/4".
 But even so, these are quick and easy cards,and could be made smaller just by using a smaller piece of cardstock below the stencil, and then a correspondingly smaller sentiment. In fact, I think I may go and give that a try!

WOYWW #418

OK, I'm back after a weeks absence, due to our Internet connection going down on Tuesday. After many phone calls, they decided we needed an engineer, who was booked for the FOLLOWING Tuesday! A whole week to get an engineer out. Anyway, by Thursday Doug had had enough- I was going slightly crazy as it was, but he couldn't game at all! He got on the phone to someone else, they did another bunch of tests on the line & box, and it seemed that the box was the fault. Then he remembered our DIL's Mom, Marg Silvercrafter, had told him a while back that Virgin had sent her a second modem by mistake, and she was waiting for them to get it collected. Anyway, a quick call later confirmed that she still had it, and knew exactly where it was. We fetched it, and Bingo! Back on the net. I've never been so glad to see Google. Lol. The upside was that two days without internet got some crafting done, and I'll be posting that up later in the week. But for now, here are all the lovely ATC's I've received off WOYWWers for this years swap.


Some lovely cards arrived with a few of them- Jan, Margaret, Lynne & Ali. And one had a gorgeous hand made little wallet.
 Kyla sent some happy mail goodies with hers, and a lovely Bee card from Sandra De.
 A very pretty card from Lisa M, a gorgeous one, which I'm guessing is Distress Oxides, from Angela, and as usual, a fab card & verse from Annie, Wipso. Hers & Jo's ATC, are so tactile, love Jo's felting.

Loving them all very much ladies, so Thank You to everyone for taking the trouble to swap with me.

I've added names to them all, I though they were a bit clearer than this, but if you click on the pics, they'll enlarge, and you'll be able to see the names.So, lots more desks to see over at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, so I'll let you go.

Once I'm sure all mine have arrived, I'll do a blog post on them too.

 I've also managed to grab a cold from somewhere, but it seems to be going now.
 I did have an appointment in the end to see the Oncologist, but really we don't know a great deal more. He did say there was something,and it had been there since the scan I had back last Feb/March at the QE. He wants a Doc at the QE to have a look and see if he thinks a bout of targeted Radiotherapy might be a good idea, and I've since had a call from his secretary to say the QE want an up to date MRI, so now I have to wait for that appointment.Whatever it is, it didn't show up as 'active' on the PET scan I had in August, so it most likely isn't anything important, which is probably why they aren't rushing about over it.
 Ok, I'm done, I think I'll just leave you with this thought for the day.