Hi hi!
I’m back after a week off as the ‘stuff to do’ for university got the better of me. We got sent a list of ‘pre course reading’ which involved podcasts, TED talks, non-fiction books and core books! It’s looking like I’ll be on campus at least some of Mondays, Tuesdays and possibly some Wednesdays too so I don’t know how many WOYWWs I’ll be able to join in with from the end of September but it’s a good way of keeping me accountable and actually doing some art. Thank you to Sarah for keeping the crafty blog hop going!
This week I’ve been working on my goals and intentions for the rest of the year so I got out all my Reset Girl stuff including my (unfinished) One Little Word book. Here I’m in the process of seeing what I can use, what I can alter etc. At the back of the desk are the two planners I’m currently working on – one is purely for goals and the other is an everything bullet journal. My new Temu washi tapes are still there waiting to be put away. For those asking, Temu takes about 2 weeks or so to arrive. I wouldn’t buy anything like paints, or anything that might end up being unsafe or dodgy but for things like stickers, pens & washi tapes etc it’s great.
This was what I was working on last week. It’s the same Reset Girl collection but used in my altered book (which I finally finished gluing). The lady in red is a lift up panel with the journalling ready to go underneath and onto the gaps on the next page.
While I was fretting about how much reading I felt I needed to do, I of course decided to procraftinate and organise! These shelves were painted several months ago now you might remember, and now they have everything back on them. The cake stand in the corner houses my ATCs and cards etc from lovely WOYWW-ers and crafty friends.
In other news from Pretty Towers, my ‘little boy’ Deliver-Lou passed his driving test so is now driving himself about & has moved into the seniors rugby team so is now playing against fully grown (and some overgrown…) adults. I don’t know which thing I am more worried about!! And my baby girl is on work experience this week in a pre-school and is absolutely loving being climbed over and held onto by ALL of the little people but she’s not loving the coughing in the face and having their sticky fingers in her hair!!
Right oh, back to the reading pile… Please do pop over for a cuppa and save me from forgetting to eat / drink / pee etc!
Bye for now xx
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Hi hi!
Another week & another desk hop hosted by Sarah – it’s easy to join in, leave a link and engage in some reciprocal visiting, that’s it! Well, other than unpacking my Temu order, no crafting has been acheived this week, in part due to another doggy adventure! Loki came to stay for a couple of days so Miss B went to collect him and take him for her usual long walk. He absolutely LOVES the water (and mud…) and as usual he went for a little paddle in the river that runs along side the parkland. Unfortunately he must have stepped on something sharp because he came out bleeding and limping! We had to cover the floors with old blankets and towels (luckily I had insisted we keep a load) and I had to dash out to get some antiseptic spray and rather a lot of treats… ahem… He was a very very sad pup as he couldn’t put any weight on his paw which meant he couldn’t run about so he just laid very still for nearly 24 hours – a very weird experience as he’s normally like a toddler on speed. Deliver-Lou carried him up 3 flights of stairs and I turfed Mr Pretty out of our bed so that Loki could sleep with me and I spent a restless night trying to stop him licking his paws. Loki that is not Mr Pretty! He’s coming to stay for 5 days next week (again, Loki not Mr Pretty, I tend to let him stay a bit longer…) so I’m hoping for no more doggy dramas!!
So what does my desk look like in the absence of any actual crafting?
What a mess??!! You can see the little plants I potted on last week – out of five 500ml pots I got 57 plants!! Behind the new plants you can see that I have another 2 larger plant pots to pot on and there are still another 2 larger ones downstairs too. Craft wise you can see what happened when I went to order a ring snug from Temu… Several packs of ephemera, several packs of quotes, a pack of cable holders, and a little booklet of clear pockets for holding die cuts. I also needed some wide washi tapes but in a vertical design for giving some stability to my altered books and I came across a couple of other designs on clear backgrounds which I’m excited to try. A number of stamps made their way into my cart too (hopefully no copies) with a mix of sets for textures and marks and then others that will be great for making ephemera such as tickets and bills etc. I had planned to stamp a load and then cut them out in the garden or in front of the TV but my arms & fingers are refusing to cooperate after I had a hand-therapy appointment on Thursday. I did receive some very odd looking splints though that I’ll show you next week, that’s if Loki hasn’t run off with them!
Well that’s all from me, pop the kettle on won’t you and I’ll be round shortly.
Bye for now x
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Hi hi! Happy What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday! If you’d like to join in, pop over to Sarah at https://www.sarahscraftshed.co.uk/ and add your post to the linky – easy peasy!
This week’s desk is a little different from the norm as it’s actually my kitchen table. I’ve been meaning to pot these aloe vera on for oooh about a year – I kid you not! I spotted these stripey pots in the colours of my craft room on one of our many trips to the garden centre so it gave me the push I needed. They are too small to have pots inside so I’ll have to be careful of over-watering but that never tends to be my issue… ahem…
All of the plants you can see in the pic below came out of two small pots that fitted inside the basket!! I have absolutely no idea how they survived, let alone thrived, as there was virtually no soil in the pots at all, just plant roots. I have another 6 pots of about the same size still to do so I think I might put some on a table at the end of the driveway and a pot for donations to charity.
The two ‘mother-ships’ have been put in the garden. I know they won’t survive the winter but I figured I could spare them…
Today is a double-doggy day as we have Chip here for the day and then Loki is staying with us for 2 nights. We went to pick him up the other day for a walk and his owners were standing at the end of their drive meaning we had to park across the road. As I got out of the car I was almost knocked flying by a furry brown monster. Loki had recognised our car and legged it across the road to tell us how much he’d missed us!! Good grief these boys are giving me palpitations!! His owners are very laid back & didn’t seem overly concerned but I was in bits thinking about what could have happened. Luckily it’s a very quiet road, but still… *and breathe… Borrow a dog they said… It’ll be fun they said…
So what has everyone been working on this week? I’ve shown you mine, now you can show me yours!! Pop the kettle on and I’ll be round shortly.
Bye for now xx
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Hi hi!
I’m a bit late for our weekly blog hop hosted by Sarah this morning as I’m struggling to keep up with which day it is! I got sidetracked yesterday evening as the boys had a birthday fishing trip and came back with smooth hound shark for tea which was delicious. I’d taken the opportunity to have a play at my desk while they were out for the day and catch up on some of the videos from the Creative Summer Retreat at The Pigeon Letters but I’ve not been very inspired so far.
I’d inititially only gone up to my desk to sort out a large Craftelier order that I placed with 3 friends. This was my pile of phrase stickers, a few papers, some pom pom trim, a typewriter die, some more planner discs & a pack of heritage style die cuts. I tend to scan the sale lists first and so all of these are bargains.
These were the stamps I purchased, mostly for art journalling, but I’m looking forward to using the planner tracker one bottom left. The little origami fellow is unmounted and I’m not sure what to do with him as I prefer the clear stamps. I managed to get him to stick to a block enough to test him out with the little houses too and I had a go at painting them but that did NOT go well. I then tried aqua markers & that was better. It’s hard to keep finding things you used to do and now can’t because you don’t have the fine motor skills!
I couldn’t resist having a play with the new heritage die cuts in the book I started altering last week and I picked out the mauve because it reminded me of my mum (her nail varnish, she wasn’t purple…) We were estranged when she died 18 months ago just 5 months after I lost my dad so it was a LOT. I’m having EMDR therapy at the moment for complex PTSD all wrapped up in that so it’s quite tough going and I’m hoping journalling about it might help a bit.
So what have you got planned today (other than visiting lots of desks?) We’ll be in the garden, being supervised by young Chip, our Wednesday doggy visitor. He’s a BIG contrast to Loki, our other Find My Doggy furrend as he’s very easy to look after in that he doesn’t need walking, entertaining, feeding, etc, except for this little story…. Chip loves to visit my son Louis in bed as soon as he arrives and licks his toes to wake him up! He also pops into his room during the day to make sure he’s still alive too (teen boys huh?!) I was putting some washing on and I heard my son say “Hey Chip, have you come to see me? Oh are you looking out of the window little one? That’s nice… MUM HELP!!!” I rushed into Louis’s room and absolutely froze! Louis had his arm out of the window clinging on to Chip’s collar with Chip ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE GLASS!! He’d jumped up on Louis’s sofa and wandered out of the open window onto the sill outside!! We have a very tall Victorian house so he was a LONG way up but he was sitting there quite happily. Louis must have vaulted his desk at high speed to get to him!! Every time I see Mary-Anne’s cat conundrums it makes me think of Chip’s little adventure!
Well I hope the weather where you are is a lovely as it is here today and I’ll be round shortly for a cuppa, decaff for me please.
Bye for now x
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Hi hi!
Well I bet we are a bunch of hot women this week aren’t we?! You don’t have to be a hot or a woman to join in with What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday hosted by Sarah’s Craft Shed though, you just need to share what you’re working on and hop around the other desks / blogs to leave a lovely comment – easy peasy.
So is there anything arty or crafty on my desk this week? Well it was a close one but the answer is yes! This morning (Tuesday) I had an abdominal scan where the sonographer concentrated on one particular area for ages and then said “the GP will be in touch within a couple of days to tell you what happens next” which I thought was a slightly worrying comment! I couldn’t settle after that but I’ve had a slight change in meds which is knocking me about & with the heat as well I just didn’t know what to do with myself! I decided to show willing with the ‘rescued’ books I mentioned previously and set about making an art journal. While I was doit the GP texted to say “nothing specific in relation to your symptoms” which in my suspicious mind sounded like “but you’ve got other weird anatomy that we won’t go into!” Anyway, another dead end so a mix of relief and frustration!
BJ was very helpful about which sort of books to look out for and I watched several videos about it too and basically it seems like there are a multitude of ways to do it on a variety of books. Some people said you can only use glued books and some said you can only use stitched books so I just grabbed the smallest book I had and gave it a go. It was a little book about identifying antique china and is in fact a stitched book. I figured that if I only took out the pages that were opposite each other in the signature then it should still hold together okay. Here I’ve separated the signatures and started taking out a few pages to reduce the bulk and then I’ve stuck the remaining pages together in twos. I plan to stick the outside pages of each signature to the next one to help with the structural integrity. I keep my glue in one of the little jugs that come with an iron & I hold them still inside an old sink tidy which works really well for painting water etc too.
I loved the little illustrations and the colour of the pages and I think I’ll probably fussy cut the images on the book sleeve and use those somewhere too.
I’m working on my new glass cutting mat which I purchased from Lidl / Aldi (can never tell which is which) – absolute bargain. Someone asked about my wooden work surface the other week – it’s actually a standard white Ikea desk top with wood effect wipe clean tablecloth on top.
You can see that I have a few more books to keep experimenting with, some of which are good for the pages rather than the books themselves but lots of lovely collage fodder none-the-less.
I’m still dog-sitting on Wednesdays and the coolest place for myself and my little doggy visitor today will be in our lounge with the Olympics on so that’s where you’ll find me if you come to visit. I’ll pop round to yours too, I’ll bring the Pimms, yes?
Bye for now xx
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Hi hi! Time for another snoop around some lovely crafty desks hosted by Sarah’s Craft Shed. Please do join in – we’d love to see you there!
To the desk dear readers!
I had a crop last Saturday and I forgot most of the things I needed so I finished off the two layouts on Sunday ready to enter a couple of challenges over at Go Go Getaway. You can see the empty spot in the middle of the desk where I was working on the layout. The silver fishing tackle type box is where I keep the embellishments that match the collections I’m using when we do our twice yearly retreat at a barn in Dorchester. Our last one was right at the beginning of March and I’m still yet to finish the collection off! Under the box is the scraps I have left of the collection and on the right is the geotag stencil I was using from Peartree Cutfiles.
I just can’t seem to time it right at the moment to get the photos of my layouts in the best light. It’s much nicer in real life! This one was for a sketch challenge and I tweaked it to add an extra photo. I go on weekly walks with two other ladies who I met through crafting & our strolls are always followed by coffee, sometimes by cake too. On this day we were joined for the first time by another crafter so now we are 4, hence the ‘New Friendships’ sticker.
I’m using Simple Stories Trail Mix to document all our walks, this one was along the Itchen Navigation past St Catherine’s Hill and into Winchester. There is a cafe on top of the little viaduct there which is where this ‘Banksy’ inspired artwork is.
We’re still de-cluttering although I’ve rescued a few hardback books to do alterned art journals in and I’ve got inspiration for glue-bound books as well as stitch bound ones. Not sure my husband is over joyed about me keep saying “Oh I can use that” every time he starts another box to go to the charity shop!
So what have you guys been up to? Pop the kettle and I’ll be round shortly.
Bye for now x
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Hi hi!
Welcome to another trip around the world one crafty desks at a time, hosted by the lovely Sarah.
Straight into my desk this week so that you can look, snigger, and then move along to another desk where someone might have some actual crafting to share. My husband has re-retired (he went back after his replacement didn’t work out…) and we’ve been having a mass declutter event but I’ve also had a flare of gastro, skin & menopause symptoms, neither of which has been fun!
Front and centre is the box housing the remains of the Simple Stories Trail Mix collection that I was using for my folio. I have a crop on Saturday so I’m gathering supplies for a couple of scrapbook pages with the stuff I have left.
To the right are some bits I rescued from the decluttering – the two pretty tins are Fortnum & Mason tea (which was out of date & got composted), & the old candles are to add to my collection of wax. What? You don’t have a collection of old candles & wax? Just me then… I have great plans to utilise the old candles by re-melting them and either making totally new candles or just rescuing the ones that have suffered ‘tunnelling’ (which happens when you don’t allow the wax to melt right across before you blow it out. Candles have a memory you know!)
Next to that on the right is a die for a rolodex type card that I had planned to use for Junk Journal July. Which I haven’t even started. Ahem… To the left of the plastic box the heated eye mask still hasn’t been used, despite me complaining about my dry eyes every day!
Just out of the window, between the two plants, you can just make out a yellow hippo bag that I’ve been filling with honeysuckle trimmings. We’ve just ordered a shredder so we can put more stuff in our composters & I’ve been researching wormeries & bokashi bins to try and make more of our own ‘black gold’ which makes me very happy. Wowzers, if this isn’t the life of a rock and roll star, I don’t know what is!
Apologies to those I didn’t get to last week – I opened all the pages and found some of them still opened & awaiting perusal just now… It’s the first time though & hopefully the last so please do pop the kettle on and I’ll be round. Rock gods & goddesses drink tea right?
Bye for now x
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Hi hi!
Welcome to another Wednesday snoop hosted by the lovely Sarah over at Sarah’s Craft Shed. Thank you for all your good wishes for the Very Big Scary Thing of going to Uni in September. To answer some questions, I used to be a Criminal Intelligence Analyst before I was a mum so I’m returning back to the subject area I know & love. Part of the therapy that helped me arrive at the decision to go involves exploring good-better-best scenarios. The aim at this point (the good) is just to get through the next 2 years (literally!) as I don’t know how my health conditions are going to behave but after that (better) might be a job in research, or even (best) a Phd! I’ll be attending Portsmouth Uni 1-2 days a week which is a bit of a slog at around 50 minutes but worth it I hope!
And now to my desk… this is the wide shot, very messy and starting to irritate me…
Lots of recycling under my desk, my ‘messy play’ basket and next to that you can see my pencil case, all packed ready for September!
And then my main desk a little closer… I’ve been having a sort out of some planner stuff which will eventually go downstairs in my Raskog for weekly planning sessions so there are planners, notes, stickers, washi tapes, stamps etc. You can also see my eye-wheatie that I’m supposed to use for 10 minutes a day to help with dry eyes but because the microwave is downstairs it rarely gets used. I should just use it downstairs of course but my brain can’t compute that! Who’s idea was it to go back to uni…?
I’ve almost finished the folio but it has taken me AGES and my photos are all the wrong size so I’ve had to improvise a bit. I need to add some embellishments and the journalling slots etc and it will be ready to share but here is the front all finished. I couldn’t get the colours right in the photo but I promise you it’s much nicer in real life! And this photo shows it as it is meant to close but I much prefer it with the other right hand page in front which means it looks less ‘exposed’ so I’ll share that next week.
I’m definitely not going to joke about the weather this week as it’s really starting to get me down! Our poor garden is really suffering with veg not growing & then bolting in the heat, and larger spindly shrubs & plants collapsing & falling over. But I did spot this beauty tucked under our traumatised geum… I do know it’s name, it’s just not in the accessible part of my brain right now!
Time to put the kettle on I think? Definitely need a hot drink, despite it being JULY for goodness sake!
Bye for now x
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