WOYWW #460

Whats On Your Workdesk Wednesday time again, and if you don't know what this is, then pop over to Julia's place, The Stamping Ground, and read all about it, then join in!
Stuff on my desk, then. I've been making some stencilled backgrounds, ready to do some stamping on. Not sure exactly what I'll be stamping on them yet, but these three will probably become Lavina stamps scenes.

 All the stencils are by Clarity, and I've really just been playing with sponging here. Distress Inks & Oxides, some done with Cut N Dry foam, some with brushes.

I love how these circle stencils came out- the shading means they really look dimensional. As I said, no real idea where I'm going with these, but I shall be playing more with them over the next few days.


Depending on the weather, that is. I've been clearing my planters, and have a whole load of new plants for them, so if it stays dry, that will be the next job.

Still making my mind up about these- it's something called the Retiform technique. You create shapes with sponging and post-its, then mask off each area and stamp into it. No idea where the name comes from, and Google for once has nothing to say on the subject, apart from asking me if I meant Retriever!
 They may end up in my UFO box yet- we'll see.

Bought this little drawer set from the Range- I sort of hoped I could fit my Brusho pots in them, but the drawers are just a fraction to small for them.







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

So, I'm done. Short & sweet this week.

WOYWW #406

So here we are, rushing through March already. Linking up as always on Wednesdays with Julia over at The Stamping Ground.
 On my desk this week are three partly finished cards from Pauline Butchers Workshop I did on Sunday.
 Learnt some new ways of doing things, the Floral stencil on black is done by sponging on Gesso first, then adding colour over that. I think a sort of version of the Black Magic technique. Some of the Gesso got under the stencil, but that can be repaired with a black pen, and I quite liked this technique, so may give that another go.
 The seahorses card I'm not happy with at all and may take them back off and try something else. Maybe butterflies and flowers, or dragonflies. Not sure yet.

The background is done using Liquitex Heavy Body Gel through a stencil, then when it's dry, using Brusho's for colour over the top.
Did have a lovely time at the workshop, which Erika also went to, and met some lovely ladies. I may well do one or two more, we shall see.
This quilt picture gave me quite a shock when my daughter, Louisa, put it on Facebook and asked me if I remembered it. I had completely forgotten about it, but when I saw it remember making it for my youngest sons cot, and he was 30 this year, so tells you how old it is. I also remember making a sleeping bag the same way, and apparently she still has that too.
  So there we are, short and sweet this week. By the way, I have an appointment with my surgeon for a follow up on Friday, so we shall have more information after that. I'll let you know what was said next week.

Holly Wreath Christmas Cards

Right then, just a couple of versions of this card, then I'll give the Christmas Card posts a break for a while.  The Holly Wreath is a Sweet Poppy stencil, and I did two versions, on black card and on white.

You can see the holly looks a little variegated, and that came about quite by accident.


I used white stencil paste, and a dark green glitter to start with, on the white card.

I maybe should have patted the glitter down a little harder at this stage, as after it had dried, and I was brushing off the excess to reduce the shedding, I ended up with quite a few white patches. Which led me to a couple of solutions.

Firstly, for the next card I coloured my white stencil paste with a green re-inker. Be very sparing with the ink you add- you don't want to make your stencil paste too runny. So try to pick a reinker close to the colour you want, rather than the usual method of starting light and adding ink to get darker.

Have a tub with a lid handy to save any excess paste in too.


 I also decided to patch up the bare spaces using Indigo Blu's Flitter Glu through the original stencil.

 Using a small piece of Cut'n'Dry foam to add the glue.

I re- attached the stencil, then worked my way around the bare patches.

Then I added a brighter shade of green glitter than I used the first time.



As you can see, there are lots of places for holly berries, and this was where I used up most of my red acrylic gems.
I used a mix of 3mm and 4mm ones.








There is also no greeting in this stencil, and I solved this by using a green marker to colour some silver Christmas Peel-offs. I'll get down them one way or another!

This was the wreaths on black card after a touch up.






Final addition was a torn corner of Christmas Paper- something else I have way too much of- and a little green ink sponged around the edge.The image was matted onto black card, both had their corners rounded, then mounted onto a 5x5 card base.

Still at the Christmas Cards.

Still plodding along here, and I'm swapping between two stencils at the moment. I moved over to doing some sparkly trees, using another Dreamweaver stencil, as I wanted to sprinkle them with glitter, and that meant I could use the 'off-gold' paste!

Both are done with the gold paste,and the glitter hides it nicely.



I've also done some white and silver ones.







I shall be adding some acrylic flat back gems as 'decorations' eventually.

 I'd swapped to doing the trees, as I was having trouble getting the NOEL stencil to come out cleanly. I kept getting paste go under one edge of the 'L'.




Anyway, I went back to it after a while, and tried again. I discovered the trick to this particular stencil is to drag the paste down from the top, rather than spreading across the stencil from left to right/right to left.


 Once I figured that out, it went much better. I also decided to leave the glittering of the snowflake till after the paste had dried, and go back to that bit. As you can see, no nasty smudged line anymore.













When the paste was dry, and I left them overnight by the way, I lay the stencil back over the design, and using a small piece of Cut'n'Dry foam, patted a little Flitterglue over the snowflake.  Removed the stencil and sprinkled the glitter over it.

This made it much easier to apply, without having to be so careful about it sticking to the edges of the letters either side.

I've also done some white, using the Aileenes Glitter Snow paste, crystal glitter and silver glitter again for the snowflake. These were easy to glitter all in one, as I did the crystal glitter first, then the silver.

WOYWW #277

Hi folks, back for another Wednesday Coffee morning at Chez Julias, otherwise known as The Stamping Ground. Where are these weeks going to? 3 parts of the way through September already. Well, the beads got sorted, after a couple of days of 'getting around to it'. Then over the weekend, I thought it was time to sort out the filing cabinet. Just a small 2 drawer one, but it had got to the point that I couldn't cram anything else in, much less find stuff. After shredding wage slips/bank statements etc going back as far as 2007, it has a considerable amount more storage room now. Why on earth did I keep stuff that long? 7 years, that really is daft. Anyway, everything is down to current year now, although we did go paper free bank statement wise, earlier this year. So, whats on the desk? A little bit of retail therapy- some jewellery findings for starters. After the sorting last week, I discovered I didn't have a single jump ring, and was missing a lot of matching fasteners etc. The Tim Holtz mini applicators- I've seen a lot of people raving about how easy to use for smaller projects these are, and that it is much less likely to end up with accidental lines than the oblong ones. Enough justification there, I think.I'm also thinking that I may be able to cut spare foams from cut'n'dry foam with a circular die, and add some felt to the back. We shall see how that pans out. A few new stamps, like I really need any, and a re-inker and an alcohol ink colour I don't have.

During the course of tidying, I re-found these. I ordered some Brusho paints a couple of weeks ago, and spotted these little paint pots with lids on E-bay. I thought they would be ideal for them.The postage seemed a bit steep, to be honest, as the pots were £2.69 and the postage £2.70, but they did come secure in a little box, and it still only made it just over a fiver for the 20 pots. They have all sorts and sizes of these pots as well as spray misters/bead vials/ little screw top pots etc.

Everything still going well, I'll be updating my other page tomorrow night, as we have an appointment with the Oncologist tomorrow afternoon, at 6.00pm. So that should give us the timeline for the chemo/radiotherapy.Had a nice surprise too in the post during the week:


A lovely card, and the most amazing slab of chocolate I've ever seen!Janet, (Fairythoughts), thank you so much. I must admit, I'm enjoying being able to use 'medical condition' as a reason to eat chocolate, rofl!  Despite choccy snacks- Bourbon biscuits are another indulgence- and eating 3 regular meals a day,I have so far lost 5 1/2lbs in two weeks. They did say I would lose weight after this op, which went into the 'pluses' column. Possibly because my meal size has dropped by half- I can't eat as much before I'm full now.So thats my show and tell for this week- its even possible that some crafting may get done in the near future. Trying to psych myself up to starting the C cards- I really should, while I have the time on my hands, especially as I'm pretty sure that fitting them in will get almost impossible later in the year. I've been looking at cards I've Pinned for inspiration, and have found a couple of possible designs so far that I have similar stamps/stencils for. Christmas cards from me in September? Whatever next? If we get plagues of frogs,typhoons and earthquakes, that'll be my bad! Catch up with everyone later, have a great Wednesday.

WOYWW #269

Happy Wednesday! A pic of the 'desk behind the desk' today, as it was a bit of a mess, lol. Where I tend to dump stuff before I get around to putting it away.

 This weeks Show and Tell, for our lovely leader, Julia over at The Stamping Ground, for our weekly snoop into the craft desks of the world.
 I will tell you in advance that I won't be getting around to any desks before tomorrow, as today is my eldest sons 40th Birthday, and we will be going to see him when we get up.Which explains the odd Facebook profile picture, for those who know me on there. Actually, you can see it in my FB badge on the right hand side. Everyone who knows him is changing their profile pic to that picture of Ant for the day, which I know he will find highly amusing.
 A little bit of blatant enabling now, and I just know that these new stamps I bought (who, me?) will grab some of you as total 'must-haves'.
Aren't they fabulous? There are a few more in the set, another couple of word stamps, a male and female profile, a pair of eyes. They are called INKCOGNITO, the latest addition to the Visible Image range,and the two word stamps are going to get a lot of use, I know.

I have to ask, but am I the only one who keeps the sheets of acetate that cling stamps come on?  I even keep the little square ones from the freebie Craft Stamper stamps! The usual excuse applies, of course- they will come in useful one day/ I have a project in mind I can use them for.

A quick look at the finished Wedding cards I was assembling last week:

The desk behind the desk after I'd tidied:

The squares of Cut n Dry foam have been stuck onto a sheet of felt, and were under the glass cutting mat to stick down- I'd forgotten I'd put them there. Need to cut them up now, for the blending tools.





And lastly, the original picture from my background:

I should have posted this up last week, as most of the picture is hidden by my ramblings.
 I may have another attempt at linking from my smartphone, last week was an epic fail. Smartphone, Dumbuser, lol.
 So have a wonderful week everyone, I'll be seeing you tomorrow.

Ink Blending pads for my new tools

Following along from making some new blending tools, I thought it would be cool to have some more blending pads,and as I have a couple of sheets of Cut n Dry foam, decided to give it a try.

 
It has two sides, a white one, and a grey, the white being the blending foam side.But the grey side is smooth, and won't stick to the Velcro. So I thought I would see if I could stick some felt to the grey side, which the Velcro would grip. I did this the other day when I made the blending tools, but needed to wait for the glue to dry to make sure it would stick ok, and not peel straight back off!
By the way, I'm probably the only person in the world who hasn't realised this, but I was reading the info on the back of the packet, and apparently you can heat the grey side, then press in onto a texture of some sort to make a stamp! Or into a rubber stamp to get a reverse image- how useful is that? Then just re-heat to get it smooth again, or make another stamp. Anyway, that's an experiment for another day.
 (I had some blue foam from the NEC a few years ago, that you could do that with- don't know what ever happened to that stuff.), and I know you can get it in sheet form from Hobbycraft stores,
called Magic Stamp foam by Penscore.

 I have some white felt I bought off e-bay, to cut up for Alcohol Ink blending pads (me, cheap?), so tried that first. It sort of worked- that is, it stuck ok, but wasn't a very 'fluffy' felt, so the grip with the Velcro was very iffy. Then I remembered I had some Red felt I got from a Hobbycrafts store, with the vague idea of using it for Christmas cards one year- (don't ask which year, even I can't remember that) maybe make little Christmas stockings? This is a thicker felt and a bit fluffier, so I gave it a go.

I had chopped up some Cut & Dry Foam in the past, to give me small pieces I could use,so I just trimmed these to roughly fit my new tools, then cut the red felt to the same sizes.

After a few trials, I went with normal PVA glue, and added a layer to the grey side of the Cut n Dry. Just a thinnish layer- enough to stick, but I didn't want it to soak through the felt and stop it gripping.


                                                       I put the felt onto the glue, flipped it over and pressed it down with a small acrylic block.  They all went to spend the night on the radiator, and when I tested them the next day, the glue held and nothing peeled off!
Its a bit thicker than the Blending Foams you buy,but as I didn't add foam to the tool under the Velcro, it probably works out about the same. I reckon I got about  35-40 pads from one sheet.You definitely need a thicker or 'fluffier' felt for the Velcro to grip.