What's On Your Work Desk? Wednesday 460

I can hardly keep up with the speed of the passage of time. Nor can I keep this up:

I know you can't tell, but this isn't just a tidy desk. It's been cleaned too...with proper cloth and spray stuff. The glass mat (under the scrapbook page) is actually reflecting light! See, I went to a crop at the weekend and before unpacking and finishing this layout, I decided to clean up and 'refresh'. Didn't take long and allowed me to put off the unpacking for a bit. Not much to see though! More glasses than a gal can use at once. More scissors than a gal can use at once. More glue.....oh heck. I've got a lot of stuff, but you know that. The patterned card just falling off the iPad stand is home-made, will do another and prolly share the 'technique'. I think the idea was originally Neet's. It most certainly wouldn't have been mine. The photos are of the Bees Stadium in Salt Lake City...I was going to make them the next page to do, but they didn't speak to me as much as the photo I'm currently shuffling around the page!  It's not a very dark early morning, more a late night shot. This post is scheduled because I was massively silly and made an appointment for first thing this morning and I don't trust myself to be on time if I start blogging and desk hopping! So..when I get home, please let me find you've linked your desk and its weekly story!

Whats On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 459

Since my last snow day at the weekend,(ahead of the day on which it actually did snow and cause some difficulties), I've managed to get to the scrapbook page I was whining about.

Oddly, neither the finished LO, cast aside at top right, or the one I'm just about to finish are the one I had plans to get to when the pile at left was ridiculous and I was making cards. Now the cards are part of the pile at left and the photo I was planning to scrap has been relegated to the big envelope again. It wasn't speaking to me after all that! The photo on this LO proves that I don't work chronologically...this is Miss D at almost 3. This year, she's actually 25. I'm enjoying doing more scrapbooking at home, although it does cause the floor to be covered in boxes of stickers, gems, embellishments. I put them back into their cupboards after supper last night because I had to do some work on the PC and found the amount of floor space for the wheelie chair was just too restricted!
Show us your self imposed restrictions by way of stash spreading....photo, post and link. Good of you.

Doing the twofer..

I gave myself a snow day on Saturday. The forecast was for cold, seething winds and snow. So I got up early, hit the supermarket at 8.30am and was at my desk by 10am. Wonderful. It actually snowed too. And then it melted. But hey, I was in the zone.
I was making cards with Mary's stamps, for a workshop. I realised that I'd picked one stamp that could be described as blooms, so I made a second card with it, and will enter them into Darnell's twofer challenge.

One is on a Hero Arts C6 card and the other on a pin striped pink card, both from Mary's collection. Both images are embossed with hologram embossing powder and coloured with the old Wink pens. The other thing you cant really tell is that the blooms are raised on foam pads. I like them like that. The border on the C6 card is actually some printed tissue paper that I'd saved from a present and glue to a sheet of white paper, intending to use it as a master-board base. See, I'm not only using NBUS, I'm excavating my scraps box too! Mind you, at the rate of a half-centimetre strip every month, it's not destined to clear out much! 
So yesterday was my snow day and today we actually have 3" of the stuff on the ground and freezing nicely, I've tried really hard to do chores. Now though, my one true love has turned on the TV to watch sport....so,well, here I am, and say no more!

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 458

My desk is a shock, even to me this morning!

At the far end are the last of the sleeves for the dies that I've been cutting. The last of the des are in that yellow basket. Each cut has been sellotaped to the back of the die so that they are identifiable. I've photographed them and will upload them for sale when I'm feeling strong. The (over exposed) pile on the near right are already photographed. Right now, I want to tidy up and consider my next move. There's a scrapbook page waiting to be rescued from under the blue files, maybe I'll spend some time making that up as a reward!

On a point of order, there's a 9th WOYWW Anniversary looming. For heaven's sake! It will be week number 468 and that, I calculate, will fall on May 23rd. Shall we do an ATC swap again? If not, anybody want to suggest some other way of having some fun to mark another year of keeping in touch? Let me know!

Meanwhile, show us yer desks! Link here and we'll visit. Gimme a chance please, lots of visiting and miles to drive today!

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 457

Well, after my previous post, Sue is sort of expecting a tidy desk. Don't look Sue, I've moved onto to something else, and it makes a mess!

This morning my desk speaks of die cutting. Among all the treasure that Mary left us is a large collection of QuicKutz dies. In order to sell them, I need references for them because they've been filed in QK pockets and folders rather than the original packaging that shows the font and patterns. So, I'm die cutting each one and sticking it on the back of the die. It also helps to double check that each set of numbers or alphabet is whole. I'm not using the Squeeze and cutting them one at a time - 8 dies at a time on the big shot plate is slightly more efficient. There's many to do, and I think this is the first time that most of them have been cut. Wow. So that's me, what are you doing?

Snow Days

In the UK, the last week has been horribly cold and snowy. We don't cope well with it. It doesn't happen often enough for tax pounds to be spent on the necessary amount of ploughing and blowing equipment that might be warehoused, unused, for years at a time. So the economy falters and lots and lots of us have Snow Days. And judging from my Facebook feed, lots and lots of us took the opportunity to be crafty. I did, even though I usually set aside the last week of the month for book keeping and other fascinating activities. I had that feeling you get when it's Christmas - everyone is on holiday, so I want to be too!

I did a couple of real LO's , then made up a couple of pocket pages with pictures from our trip last summer. We visited several National Parks and have a lot of pictures of rocks. Well, Canyons and such, but I think to anyone that hasn't been or experienced the size, the colour, the power of these places, they are just photos of rocks, lots of rocks!

 I also spent some time playing with my Scan&Cut. Something I need to do a lot more of, but am definitely happy to have it. It's not as intuitive as Cricut, believe me. Nor is the manual (online) a match for the machine in every case which is frustrating! The most frustrating part though is that each time I use it, I have to re-learn the icons and symbols! Ugh, memory!
Another advantage of these Snow Days has been that I've tidied up as I've finished. Yep. And yesterday, while it was still light I decided to do dome sorting and consolidating of stash. Namely alphabets and word stickers. Alphas into colour and size order and stickers all in one place. Next, I'm going to tackle gems and stick-on embellies, and then journaling cards and tags etc. I've got a right old bug for being at my desk, whether being 'creative' or being a tidy bug. I cannot explain, but I think it's part of my determination to use stuff. Because even Snow and freezing temperatures can't change really change me, can it?!

Bragging and Promoting

On Wednesdays, I am quite particular that people take part in WOYWW for reasons of community and not promotion of whatever they make, sell, believe. I don't think that I do a lot of promotion. Although blogging is in essence just that I guess. Anyway, I want to tell you about our daughter since she's grown up and left us.

She's been at University learning to be a Prop maker. The course has been quite amazing and from the parental perspective, looks like a lot of fun and creativity.

I've recorded quite a lot of her Uni days in scrapbook form, but not many of the actual work..doh! Prop making isn't just for theatre and film...think photographers, themed restaurants, bars, festivals, school décor, shop displays...endless list. Endless. Miss Dunnit has spent time learning puppet making, latex, glass, rubber and other moulding, carving, other woodworking, a bit of chemistry to make the fake blood and guts (yuk), welding and all sorts of imagination pricking skills. There's also been project management with a real commission to force a structure of quote, make, deliver; sticking to budgets and delivering on time are after all, a serious part of making a living in any creative industry.

Now, as the end of her course approaches, it's time to get serious and look for work. strength in numbers and strength in recognising that another person has a skill you haven't, has meant that she and several colleagues have formed a freelance collective. Great idea, one stop shopping for erm, objects!

I asked her that if I was to blog about the collective, (which has launched on Facebook) what should I say? Well, I'm going to quote her verbatim, because she doesn't need my editing 'help':
'We are a collective of freelance makers, with a wide range of skills that include scenic painting. At the moment we're doing soft prop and carpentry projects, and our approach is always the same: the aim is to make quality objects and to challenge the way our industry works; to make an effort to make it more responsible to the environment and to the people that work within it. We're the next generation of prop makers and we want to set new, high standards for ourselves and our industry'.

This won't be the last promotion you see on this blog. But it is very likely to be the one that I am most proud to do!