It quickly became obvious that this was going to be a more than one coat job, I don’t know if the acrylic paints (which are new) are just lacking opacity or if they were too cheap to be any good. I thought they were reasonably priced rather than cheap, but neither are they Windsor & Newton! While I was coming to terms with the need to sand and re-coat, I pressed on, and by the eighth egg, had decided that these damn things aren’t actually egg shaped. They’re just ovals. And they’re much bigger than I thought, too.
See what I mean? I wasn’t quite sure quite how big they are in terms of display and well, taste. I know, that sounds daft, but who wants to have to use an actual bough to give a handful of wooden eggs the right perspective for an Easter table display? Yeah, now you get it. I did some very technical research. A real egg for control and a creme egg for back-up:
I was right. The wooden eggs are just ovals. And they’ll be definitively too big for a sweet twig of catkins in a jar that was to form part of my *cough* Easter display. The real egg is a large, free range, so there’s a little more perspective on the size of the wooden ovaloid. Both make the creme egg look positively sad though don’t they? Creme eggs are, I have discovered, a bit like marmite. You love ‘em, or hate ‘em. Don’t worry, there are takers for both types of egg in this house, this technical comparison was created from erm, goods in stock. Now, to finish the painting. Unscrew the hangy bits and just toss the lot into a glass bowl, that’ll do till I can find some daintier, less clumpy actual egg shaped eggs to decorate! Easter 2024 at this rate.
See the Hero Arts floral stamp set at left? I inherited it from Mary. It was unused, and by my estimation, it’s probably 18 years old. Those wood mounts and real rubber, ah…they stamp crisply 
This was Tuesday afternoon, and it has changed since, but it involves a Mother’s Day thing, so I can’t show you. My sweet Ma-in-Law doesn’t read my blog, but it doesn’t seem like a surprise if she’s not the first to see it, huh. Technically she’ll be the third though, because after I’ve made it, Mr Dunnit has to at least write his name in it…! So you can see paper piecing going on…the plastic tray is holding some body parts stamped and cut out of the clothing brochure which I’m now cutting up and sticking onto the original image. Very fiddly, but a nice effect, and a good way to soak up some sunshine! I made a card with it too, very basic after the scissoring exertion, can’t show you that yet either! 
Accompanied as always by my two faithful past times, the stitching and the reading. Of course Mr Dunnit is here too, my easily bored let’s-do-something all the time life companion. It’s nearly 38 years so we’re well used to each others holiday requirements; indeed as I type this he’s settled with a cup of tea and some frightful sudoku. I’ve got about forty minutes, I reckon, before we have to go for a walk!
So my real desk is this towel covered sun bed. The fancy spa slippers are to stop my feet being cold on the marble (?) floors of the apartment. I really appreciate this because I hate cold feet and barefoot on these floors causes just that. Cold feet. In just 2 short hours though, I’ve discovered that these little slippers are absolutely lethal on the inside floors. So, for a while, I shuffled. But still came close to breaking myself with some impressive slip-and-recover moves, so am now silently gritting my teeth and wearing sandals all the time. So ya see, it’s not all sun and Sangria! OK it is, but the story of the slippers may save you a similar problem where your next trip involves marble or tile floors! No need to thank me, just show what you’ve been up to whilst I’ve been slumming it in the sun!!
I unpacked all the stash, put away everything except the file full of alphabet stickers. When I bought my Scan N Cut I stopped buying alphabet stickers. I cart this huge file to every crop and for at least a year, it’s been very difficult to make up whole words from matching alphabets because of course, the vowels are always used up first. This will come as a surprise to some I’m sure, but despite my slapdash and haphazard approach to almost everything, I really don’t like mismatched fonts. I find them difficult to read and they make my teeth itch. So, the next job is to go through this ridiculous pile of alphabets that aren’t whole and come up with a plan. And the end result will be, I hope, a satisfactory and manageable pile of useable, and a marvellous idea for the unusable….I feel a masterboard coming on. 
I’m getting ready to leave! A weekend of scrapbooking with The Coven is in store. Really looking forward to it. AsI haven’t had time to sit at my desk for any creative purposes, I’ve rushed in and out and put things on the desk each time I’ve thought about something specific I want to take. So that involved hauling out the boxes and files that whatever I was thinking about are kept in, and so the pile has become quite serious! Mind you, it’s nowhere near complete…last year I managed to take my trolley too, and I’m considering doing the same again…depends how much room is taken up in the car by non essentials like clothes and food! Hey, apology again for last week…I said you could see lovely LLJ on my phone in the picture. You can’t. Turns out that the picture I see in the blog post is bigger than the one that is actually posted by the App! Strange. It was such a pleasure to roam around your desks last week, please post again!
Interestingly, having decided against sections per month, I seem to be keeping them all clumped. They are not dimensional images, I need practice and more experience. They are totally freehand though, which is why the scale varies wildly. And, I’m happy to accept that some of these little images are in need of description. So I bought a cheap diary, and each time I embroider an image, I enter it on the day’s date in the diary with a really brief description.
I’m enjoying it! It takes longer to decide what there is about any given day that needs recording in a single image than it does to actually embroider it. And of course there are days that are so ordinary that it’s a bit of a stretch. But as I can’t imagine 365 images actually fitting on this erm, canvas, it won’t matter I think, if I leave off the days where all I manage is more domestic stuff. Having said that, I have only recorded WOYWW once so far and you can see an iron…I did actually spend a long day doing nothing else in the early new year, catching up after a houseful at a Christmas! 
Close up you can see that despite washing my hands, the fabric is already grubby at the edge where I hold the hoop. Now I use that little piece of felt to protect the fabric from my grubby left thumb. You live and learn. And as for freehand…I have help. Lolly found this fab site called the Noun Project which has probably millions of icons of well, almost every noun you can think of. Very very helpful. Doesn’t mean I can stitch them to look familiar, but it helps. Ask me again in a couple of months, see if I’m keeping up! At least with a diary, I can enter the intended idea and do a catch up session if necessary- although that starts to be work rather than ten minutes with a cuppa I think. Are you doing a year long ‘thing’? I’d love to hear about it. 
You can see Jan on my phone, we had a lovely video chat whilst I tidied up after the little album caused me to make an incredible mess. That’s done and will be posted today, so whilst chatting, I staged and snapped this pic because I thought I might start on something else and make another mess and then I wouldn’t have evidence of a clear up in between! You can see some new stamps that Neet caused me to buy out of sheer FOMO. So the stash diet lasted 27 days. Hmmm. Although, as stamps, these weren’t necessarily on the diet list, that was and remains about scrapbooking stuff. That black thing on the floor at left is my scissor sharpener, and like so many things, I’ve only noticed it because I took a photo! As I won’t get to my desk again this week because of month end and loads of diary stuff, please let me be vicariously crafting by showing me what you’re up to. Grand!
I’m making up a small album for my sainted Aunt, filled with pics from her birthday party last summer. It was such a lovely day and it’s been lovely to look at pictures that remind me about the possibility of really good weather! It’s not a huge album and the inserts are split, and I have a finite number of pictures, so I thought I’d steam through it and have it in the post by now. I started it at crop on Saturday, spent a couple of hours on Monday evening and a few minutes while supper was cooking on Tuesday and reckon it’ll need two or three more before it’s ready to send. Colour me surprised. So what can you see? Well, there’s me reflected in the door (gosh, I may consider a blind…). There’s the orange glow from the electric heater. There’s evidence, if you like, that I haven’t been at the desk for very long - only two pairs of scissors in view. I can’t actually say that the others aren’t buried under the stuff, but a quick glance in the holder at left makes me think I’ve been quite erm, disciplined! You can see my box filled with stickers, very useful for embellishing and decorating these small pages. They date back years, some I’ve had to add glue to because they’ve lost their sticky. Can’t chuck ‘em though, they are still vibrant and fresh on the picture sides! 
Largely tidy desk, not too much of an eyesore, for a change! Actually, there is an eyesore. I’m still playing with cups and other images. You can see some small cups stamped in a very limey green. I thought I’d fill them with violet and yellow pansies. Had to use the magnifying lens to be able to colour them. As if that’s not ridiculous enough, the flowers now need fussy cutting out. And me, my eyes and my podgy fingers are just not up to it. I shall seek inspiration from my folder full of dies. Pretty sure my change of erm, artistic direction won’t hurt anyone! Very much in evidence is a new project that I’m undertaking. The family cookbook. It’s not a ‘get it done’ job, I shall work in it as and when; it’s definitely a journal of sorts, and this way, I can do handwriting, stamping, colouring, whatever…all without wondering why, or getting tied in knots about everything being contrived. After all, it is totally contrived! I’ll prolly show you some more about it at some stage, it’ll certainly be on or next to my desk for a long time to come!
You can see that I’m erm, playing with some Gentlemen. Primarily to repair a package that I posted about six weeks ago that came back to me yesterday. With all the disruption to our postal system, I’m rather surprised and grateful that it found it’s way back. I’ve also had a some fun with teacups.
I haven’t finished yet, turns out I have a few teacup/coffee stamps and dies that I feel the need to binge use all of a sudden. Strange how that happens. I’m grateful though that I feel the need to use what I’ve already collected rather than having to sit on my hands and wish I hadn’t imposed a ‘buying new stamps’ ban! 
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