What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 538

Seriously, this marking of a mid week seems to hasten the weekends which hastens the midweek - who can I blame?

Here it is taken in the gloom - it is untouched since Monday evening. And the reason for that is  - well obviously I didn’t clear up, but yesterday was spent with our Margaret! Her travels brought her to Gloucestershire so we each travelled and a little and met in north Wiltshire. At a Garden Centre which was a shopping experience of gifts and clothes. We didnt actually step out to look at the plants - oh my, the rain! We talked and talked and talked. Her ‘sabbatical’ draws to a close at the end of this week and so we shall see her when she’s caught her breath. I am really looking forward to the diary and photos.

I was wrangling with a Christmas card at the table, and top right, using my lovely WOYWW gift from Annie to make notes because this is Card Marathon season and I need to know which ingredients I’ve used for each card so as to avoid the need to buy doubles!  Anyhoo dear Desker, share your current space please, it’s time for a large coffee and a browse. Please put WOYWW in your post title and link here as always. I seriously thank you.

Review. Unsolicited, no gain here.

If your memory is like mine, you won’t remember that some time ago I purchased an App to enable me to blog using my iPad, and I said I’d talk about it after testing. It’s taken external prompt on Facebook to remind me  - I went into the cobwebs to discover that it was January. I think eight and a half months is a good trial period. 

I was always frustrated that through the browser, blogging on a tablet was impossible. Even editing an existing post was difficult. More than once I’d swear that Google and Apple were going to cause me to do something really rather rash in a fit of temper.

I’ve tried a couple of Apps - the Blogger one, which I didn’t get on with, and another free commercial one which was pretty good...but relied on symbols instead of words to navigate and as I only needed it when we were away with no PC access, I could never remember which meant what!

Enter the App that I’m using right now. Blog Touch. I’m using the one for Blogger, for that’s my blogging platform.There’s a BlogTouch for Wordpress users too. 

It’s available from the App Store and cost me 6.99. Best nearly 7 of Her Majesty’s pounds that I’ve spent on my gadgetry for a long time.  The set-up process, which created the link to my blog, must have been easy and relatively painless because I can’t remember it. I was born under the sign of Cancer which means I can hold a lifelong grudge, and these traumas over technical stuff come under that category, believe me.

 If you (try to) blog on iPhone or iPad, this is an enabler. The symbols cross from iStuff to Blogger stuff and words are used where necessary. If you can operate your blogger dashboard and write messages on your iStuff, you will be familiar with it without much effort, it just takes a tour and a dry run or two. 

Adding pictures, links, setting a scheduled post...all easy and obvious....and the designer has used Blogger colours for text so you’ll immediately feel familiar! I really do recommend BlogTouch and I congratulate Denk Alexandru for coming up with what Google or Apple seem incapable of.

If you don’t use iStuff, I suspect this review is useless to you. But if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll be used to that.

What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 537

Look familiar? I sat down to make a card and the whole afternoon went by. I got the card done though.

The paper pad at right is there because I finished a scrapbook LO and neglected to put that part of the stash away...I must have been keen to just clear the desk and start on the card! On top of that is the empty hot chocolate powder drum that I use as a bin. I haven’t covered it yet. It’s doing the job, see, so there’s no rush! In front of the acrylic drawers are some more silicone moulds filled with the foamy ‘clay’ stuff. I spent a very pleasant five minutes kneading and squishing. There will be swirls, feathers, stars and flowers. I hope, anyway. The trial I did a couple of weeks ago worked perfectly well...but I can’t find them. I probably threw them away on a wild tidying up spree. The mini guillotine at the front of the pic isnt as precariously balanced as it looks, its actually sitting flat on top of my ‘everyday’ dies storage file. It will be magically tidied at lunchtime today, I have workshop kits to prepare and I need to stick to my plan of trying to make at least one decent card a day! 

I’m incredibly sorry if my name didnt appear in your comments last week...the days just got away from me. Whilst we come to terms with the speed of time, please post your WOYWW and link here; thank you very much.

What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 536

Well, how do you like these onions? It’s not quite going to er, plan. I’m just transferring some Christmas stamps into a basket that takes up less than a quarter of the floor space in my room. It may help my Christmas mojo mood. Also, I need to get them ready for re-homing. And loads of other stuff...the floor in this room has to be partially pulled up by the electrician in a couple of weeks and I want to be in charge of my stuff rather than leave it to Mr Dunnit and the Sparky to do it. Perish the thought that Mr Dunnit realises quite how much is crammed into this room! So it’s sort of official, with 15 weeks to go, I am definitely making workshop cards on a Christmas theme. Or I will be just as soon as I free up the space to actually use my desk. Watch this space? I’d rather watch yours! Put WOYWW in your post title and link here please. Thank you, and enjoy, it’s a visual feast!

IWSCS

It Was Something Carol Said -  probably without knowing the impact her words would have on me. Describing a small pile of stuff to be put away as a pile of ‘goodness knows what’. Well if that isn’t an acronym waiting to happen! It nearly made me spit coffee at the screen, it so totally sums up how things accrue on my desk.

The good thing is that as soon as its tackled and dealt with, it becomes individual things and I know why I got it out in the first place.  I’ll probably never be able to explain why I didnt put it away when I decided not to cut it up, stick it down or turn it into ‘art’, that’s for the psychologists amongst you to explain. It’s not just idleness though. I think it’s about being in the erm, throws of inspiration and the need to create rather than tidy. Isn’t it? You get that, I know you do.

You could just stick it all down in a random fashion....

That tidying up thing; where there’s a pile of GKW that breaks down into fifteen pieces of YNKW (You Now Know What) and that requires fifteen different boxes, cupboards, pots, drawers, boxes to be opened. Sometimes, it’s just easier not to. After all, as soon as you YNKW, you can perform an assessment about the likelihood of needing it tomorrow - and there’s always that likelihood, n’est pas?

This logic is brought to you as a public service. The acronyms....well, another of the hazards of reading this blog. 

What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 535

According to my diary, this is the first Whizday of September. I dont know if I have a legal case or not, but I would like to argue that it’s occurred too soon. TOO SOON! That’s my mood today, sort of capital letters day!  Luckily, you wont have to suffer it because this is a scheduled post. Im off for another day with Miss Dunnit and her Current Squeeze. It will involve Ikea, so think of me as you settle in with a cuppa and your feet up. Particularly as I’ve decided to swing the camera round and show you what a bit of tidying and trying to sort out has done to me. 




I’ve tidied my desk in an effort to shake off the ridiculous number of erm, ‘drafts’ that I ended up making before the card with the houses on came together. I want to use house stamps, really like them. Turns out I can’t do a thing with a solid house stamp! And I’m trying to organise the scrapbooking cupboard ahead of a crop at the weekend..which is why the plastic boxes are teetering...they contain embellishments, ephemera and erm...GKW.  And then spin again and a box of card stock is supporting the box of Christmas stamps. I cant even recall the contents of the baskets; good grief. No wonder I’m running away to Southampton for the day!

Make my day by sharing and telling just as I have done won’t you please, put WOYWW in your post title and link your blog here. Job’s a good ‘un.

This...

This. This. THIS is what happens when I tidy up.

All I wanted to do is create some space for the next splurge of inspiration. (!).

Cue a lot of sighing and eye rolling and some wishing that there was someone else to blame, stamp my feet at and generally be childish. These silly candy things have lain unused in a draw for I don’t know how long, but long enough for me to have forgotten that the bag was open. Even more annoying, I wasn't looking for those, I just picked them up to move them! Fret not though, gentle reader, I really have sifted them from the rest of the dustpan contents and put them in a ziplock and they now nestle nicely in a box marked ‘donate’. And clearly I was in a bad mood, because I then made this Layout, and it appears that I shouted on it.

But you really can see why, huh. I would have shouted at the time, but I didn’t have the breath. 

It’s OK though, that was then and everything’s fine now. Really.