WOYWW #473

Well, I don't know about where you are, but here in the UK it's blisteringly hot. Possibly not as hot as you, but you have to remember we Brits are used to an average one week of sunshine a year, somewhere around Easter, so this is most unusual for us. 😁
Meeting up over at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, ready for this weeks desk-a-thon.

On my desk this week, is another ATC arrival, this time from Kelly. Lovely card & ATC, thank you so much Kelly.







And, talking about ATC's, I think it's high time I sorted them all and got them into storage pockets.






This mountain of ATC's go all the way back to our 5th Birthday, and include the Halloween special we did one year.

The cards that so many send with their ATC's are there too, so I think this job is long overdue.

Over the weekend I made a few Christmas cards, for the Christmas Card Club Challenge .

Following the sorting of my embossing folders, I decided it was time I made more use of them!

















While I was die cutting, I cut some Bauble shapes from foiled card, then I've added detail to them with texture paste, stencils & glitter.

So that'll be another project to finish later in the week.






And finally.........................

I particularly love the Bee description!

WOYWW #470

And the ATC swaps are still arriving! So much amazing artwork involved in them, thank you so much to everyone who swapped with me.If you've never joined in with our regular Wednesday Blog Hop, then pop over to Julias place, The Stamping Ground, and leave your link. It's fine here, we don't bite! While you are there, have a look at the info page about this years crop, in September, in Llandudno again. All you have to do is turn up, chat, eat cake, and a spot of crafting, if you want to. 😀

From Dolores (Cardarian), and our Beloved Leader, Julia.











From top left, Suzanne Alexis, Christine (Bishopsmate), Sylvia (Little Treasures) and last but not least, Jo,( Twiglet) who had already swapped with me, but as I was her PIF, she sent me another. Inside a fab card featuring the work of her daughter, Max, otherwise known as Tilly Teadance. Tilly used to join in WOYWW, but if you are new and have never seen her wet-felted work, go check out her blog.

Onwards, then. No crafting this week, I've been busily organising for our upcoming weekend-

yes, we're off to Download again. Friday to Sunday. Fingers crossed the rain stays away, but for headliners  Avenged Sevenfold, Guns N Roses & Ozzy Osbourne,  I'll tolerate a soaking.


A subject came up on SCS, about how to line up Oval dies on your card face and get them straight, or to line up your dies to cut from the centre of your card front/panel. Someone came out with an idea so simple, I think we all sat there feeling dumb!
 Here it is:
Die cut your oval shape, then fold in half lengthways. Open out and fold widthways. Then mark the folds. Now put the diecut back into the die, and mark the four points on the die. If you mark your card front lightly in pencil, dividing it in half lengthways & widthways, you can accurately place your die to cut,or if you lightly mark your die cut oval to place on top, everything will be straight.

I just cut mine out of scrap paper to demonstrate, but you could actually have a template the same size as your card front, and use that for accurate placement. Works with circles too. One thing I did notice is that the Nesties Scalloped Oval is not symmetrical- you can see on the die markings I made, so it would be wise to mark the top of the die & die cut.



One final thing I keep forgetting to add in, we had a follow up from my last scan (back in April) a few weeks ago, and to be honest, we expected the best result we'd get would be that it hadn't changed in size. However, he said it had shrunk since the scan in December, and it was now half the size it was a year ago, when I first got referred to him. Back then it was 5cm, now it's 2.5. So, way better than we expected, and he was happy to refer me back to my local Oncologist, as he didn't see any need to keep going to the QE. It'll just be monitored with regular scans.

Just quickly hopping back to ATC's- Kim Young sent me one, with a stamp on it that featured a Solar Eclipse. I'm always hanging on to interesting looking stamps, so I still had it, when Kim told me that if you warn up the stamp it changes.

And this is what is revealed when you do- how clever is that?







And finally...................................

I'm sure that applies to most of us too-I'm just amazed our home HAS that many safe places!

WOYWW #469

Good Morning everyone, I hope the weather is good wherever you are. This is the post-birthday edition, and as such, features a whole bunch of Birthday ATC's. Stop off at Julia's place, The Stamping Ground, for all the links, and also information at the top of her Blog about this years Crop in Llandudno, in September. If you've never been- you really will enjoy it, it's a fab day of chat,cake,Coffee & Tea,chat, Cake,Crafting,Dinner,chat, Cake- you get the idea?

This one arrived before the Birthday, and is from Nikki. Included some of her fabulous artwork, and bits of ephemera. As well as a host of gorgeous stamps on the envelope!

Nikki also produces the fab birthday badges for our blogs every year- this years 9th ones are available on Julias blog, if you missed them on Nikkis last week.

Diana's (Velvet Moth Studios) came in a beautifully decorated matching envelope, Heathers in a little card, as did Annie & Jo's( Wipso & Twiglet), with a lovely little verse.

Margaret (Glitter& Glue), LLJ, Sarah Brennan, Helen (Stamping by H) and Cindy. Awesome little cards with them too.

Kim Young, Neet (Hickydorums) and Angela (Felix the Crafty Cat). Angela also included some pieces of ephemera, and some die cuts!













Kyla was actually my PIF, then she sent me one in return, along with some fab pieces of her backgrounds.  Love the moths on the envelope too!













Zsuzsa (Inkydinkydoodle)  also included some goodies in her ATC, which came in a gorgeous envelope of handprinted paper.





Thank you so much everyone, for the swaps, and the amazing goodies so many of you included. I need to up my game next year, clearly! 😀







In other news, how many of you ladies, and I'm pretty sure it will be mainly the Brits, and ladies 'of a certain age', lol,- remember the PG Tips Tea monkeys from (a lot of )years ago?
My late youngest brother was crazy about them as a small child, and they once ran an offer to buy a toy version, which was actually quite large- probably as tall as your average 2 year old.
 Anyway, this pic, which my niece took a few days ago, is of her daughter playing with it now. 47 YEARS LATER!  Yes, that's how old it is, and it looks pretty much the same now as it did when Darrell got it. They don't make toys like that anymore.
The real monkeys from the ads used to live at Twycross Zoo, and I remember my Dad taking us there a few times, so Darrell could see them.

Did a little gardening over the weekend, and this old fashioned Aquilegia, I think they are called Grannys Bonnets, were very much flavour of the day for the bees! They were loving them. I also have some in white, and two shades of purple, and they are quite shameless about spreading their seeds all over the garden, which I rather like.

I also made some Christmas cards for the Fortnightly challenge, and they are in the post below.






And finally..............following on from last weeks Viking revelation............................

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.

The Making of the ATC's.

Ok, so I've been intending to do a post about my ATC's and I thought it's about time I got around to it.
 The actual backgrounds were done with a slightly unusual technique I'd watched in a video by Andy Skinner.
 He calls it the Alcohol Ink Floating background, and this HERE is the link to his video, if you want to watch it.
 We've all seen the marbling technique done with shaving foam, but this one uses just plain water and alcohol inks. You will need a tub for the water, and it needs to be deep enough to dip your sheet of card into, not lay it on top.
So, you need to cut your card accordingly, and I cut most of mine down to A5 & A6. I found the tub that washing capsules come in was a great size for this, but Ice Cream containers and similar would work just as well. What you do is pretty much fill your container with water, then drip some Alcohol inks onto the surface. You can swirl it a little if you want. Then take your card and dip it fully down into the water, then lift out. You will need a surface with paper towels/ handtowels on to absorb the water.

 You can see I cut my pieces down to ATC size, then backed them onto ready cut ATC cards, as there is often a little curling in the wet cards, which you can get rid of most of by weighing them down when dry.You will get totally unrepeatable sheets of marbled card- and the best bit is that there is colour on both sides, so whilst one side may be poor, the other side can be amazing!






 First image to stamp was the heart, and this was a new purchase from Honey-Doo crafts, when I went to Port Sunlight. I stamped it at an angle, and partly off the card to give me room for everything else.

 Rather than doing each card entirely, I had a bit of a production line on the go- stamping each element on every card before going on to the next step.

 The inkpad I'm using is Archival, Cobalt Blue, by the way.



Next stamp was 'Laugh' and this was part of a set from WOW embossing powders, and also contains the two other words I used, 'Love' & 'Live'.

Now I've added the number 7, and that comes from a Tim Holtz set, called Mini Worn Text, which has letters, numbers & punctuation.

Here I've added the WOYWW letters around the edge of the heart, and also drawn an outline around the heart, this time using a Distress Marker, in  Faded Jeans.

I used a fine tipped black pen to draw a box around the words, and to colour in the first 'W'.

Now I added a white line around them too, as a highlight.
 I'm showing you a different ATC each time, so you can see the amazing range of colours you can get with this technique.

I've added some highlight to the '7'.

Adding some Faded Jeans around the edges with the round blending tool.

 A final touch up with the white gel pen, as I thought it had faded too much.

Filling in the backs, having used a stamp from Lost Coast Designs.

WOYWW #323

And....there went another week. Blink and you missed it! Some stuff on my desk this week:
What a stunning ATC, arrived this week from Bridget Larsen. This photo does not do it justice, the sepia tones are so rich, it's beautiful. Thank you, Bridget.


















The dies are the result of a couple of enabling WOYWWers- you know who you are, ladies! The bottom Happy Birthday was the one I was enabled by, the second Happy Birthday just fell into my basket by accident, honestly! The snowflake die is gorgeous, almost Celtic to look at.

Part way through a second Bird Crazy card, this time I used some coloured letters for the Happy bit. Must admit, I'm loving how the Bird dies cut, they do a great job.

Final thing is a card I needed to get done, for a work colleague who gets married next month. They'll be going home to Poland to get married, so the girls at work need the card early to get everyone to sign it. Lots of gold, white and doves- all popular themes for Polish wedding cards, apparently.

So thats my desk, and it's looking a bit neater than last week.
Be a bit of a crafting flurry tomorrow, as I have Beloved Hubby's card to finish before Friday, and it would be better if the glue was all dry when he opens it, lol.
 Neet, thanks for the link to the moulds, just been and had a look. Can't believe how many she has- loads and loads. Lots of masks and faces- I love masks! Oh dear, I feel another enabled session looming on the horizon, lol. Fortunately, she's on holiday at the moment, and not shipping, so I have plenty of time to browse!

 Right, update time, and we finally have a date for the surgery- Wednesday 2nd September. Thats 3 weeks today.
 The appointment went much better this time, he even managed to make me laugh a couple of times, so we are on a better footing. I took the bull by the horns, (who, me?) when we first went in, and told him how unhappy I'd been when I left last time, and asked him if he realised that we had had no idea of the nature or implications of this surgery, last time he saw us. He admitted that no, he had not known that, and apologised for how the appointment was handled, which I have to admit immediately improved his standing in my eyes.He was very nice this time, carefully explaining everything, and indeed, so thoroughly that in fact he'd answered half my questions before I had to ask them. The Epidural, which I need, and was one of my big worries- the idea of someone approaching my spine with a needle really freaks me out-he assured me I didn't need to worry about, that was done only after I was under the anaesthetic.I admit to being slightly shocked to discover there will be him doing the bowel surgery bit, an Orthopaedic surgeon to remove the bone, a Neurosurgeon to look after the nerves, and a Plastic surgeon to move some muscle and skin! He was also very good when I asked if I could be admitted the day of the surgery, so I didn't have to be on my own the night before, as he had wanted to admit me on the Monday. He agreed to this, if I would be prepared to go back between now and the surgery to see a couple of the surgeons beforehand. As he put it, and one of the things that made me laugh- 'they like to see their prey, as it were, before they meet them on the table'! So, not feeling so stressed as I had been, but I'm sure that will change as we get closer.
I also had an MRI appointment for the 22nd of this month, but then Monday I had a call from the MRI dept, they'd been told to bring the appointment forward, and I had that yesterday morning. So now it's just a matter of seeing these surgeons, then the pre-op assessment appointment, and we'll be good to go.
 And that's another WOYWW post from me,  kept in order as always by our much loved Head Desker Julia, over at The Stamping Ground.

ADDED UPDATE:    Just had a call from the secretary of a Mr Grainger, who apparently is the Orthopaedic surgeon who will be participating in my op. I now have an appointment to see him on Friday. I phoned my DIL to let her know, and she was really pleased I was seeing him, and he'd be doing my op. She's had spinal problems since a child, and is also a trained nurse, and has seen him many times. She said he is very good, and in fact was one of the two best Ortho's she hoped I'd get. I've also had my admission letter  in the post (ours often arrives about 2.00pm), and a date for my pre op assessment, which is the 27th of August. This is now getting quite scary- for ages the op has been a vague blob on the horizon, now it's all becoming horribly real