There have been a couple of sunny but cold days, cold because of some wind or other...so windy that I had to put the ladder on top of the outside storage box to stop the lid lifting and banging and lifting and banging and lifting and....argh. You can just work it out through the window. Good distraction technique huh, you'd almost forgotten about the desk! The ugly box on the right with scrap paper on top of it (which really should be protecting the glass mat) is full of acrylic paints..odds and sods really, I don't have any newer than a few years old and the colour selection is pretty random! I was painting a tin (once containing kidney beans). I'm going to crackle glaze it and then decoupage the hen on to it. The hen is on the napkin at left. For no reason, except I had the medium on my desk and it's a great way to put off working on that workshop which has got me a bit scared! You can't really tell but the bottle of decoupage stuff is in the centre of the glass mat, hidden under a souvenir baseball hat from Salt Lake Bees. In order to buy it, I had to have it filled with ice cream. Now that is taking one for the team is it not! I still use it as a bowl, but for paint and such now.
Sarah has declared that WOYWW Crop is on, so please do consider joining us; it will be great to see Sarah and offer her our ongoing support in person, and of course, it will be great to see each other for real! Challenge number 1 - it may be an old chestnut, but please will you make yourself a name badge that also shows your blog name...in case the two aren't the same!
So that's me, how about you? Do show and tell, send me some card making vibes because I haven't a single one!
I made a few LOs at the Crop over the weekend. I've stopped dragging my file full of alphabets to every crop. It's a ridiculous number of alpha stickers, most of which don't have enough vowels for matching font words, so I gave myself permission to bring untitled LOs home and decide if they need a title or not when I unpack. So that's what I do now, and it hasn't bothered anyone and my scrapbook world hasn't caved in. Amazing what 'rules' you set yourself isn't it. So and anyway, that accounts for the middle pile. At left of the LO is a pile of mismatched paper napkins. Waiting for some decoupage action. Don't hold your breath....am fairly sure that they'll be re-homed reasonably soon, not sure my desk can take many more 'pending' projects! And at the right is the result of bit of a splurge last week...some projects to contemplate and a couple new stamps and some new coloured embossing powders. Nice. 
We are calling these Hot Rock buns. I made the dough for Hot Cross buns and totally forgot to smooth them into bun shapes (distracted by the arrival of my baby gal and her Squeeze). I had already planned to omit the 'cross' part of the bake because last year they were blobby and not crossy, so I didn't think anyone would mind. But there was surprise at the erm, rocky effect....still, they tasted good!
Miss Dunnit and I ventured into our small town for a lovely couple of hours of pottery painting. I painted a Unicorn for my new Great Neice. Of course I did. You can see the sun was wonderful, it was warm under glass and really quite glorious for about an hour. And then it rained so hard I thought we were going to have to stay all night, but it happened, and cleared and we walked home in more glorious sun. Weird. 
....and, I made a Layout! It's for a Chinese Whispers swap amongst the Coven so there's a Post It note attached to it with some notes to help me remember where it comes in the chain. There's gold foil at the back of the desk which evidences Easter egg noshing...and just a lot of detritus from the scrapbooking. I really would like to do a couple more now, I'm in the mood. We'll see. Since the 'children' have left us, I've had a sore throat, so am hoping that it goes and causes no time wasting or temperatures. Or tantrums!
The last week has been quite overwhelming, not for any bad or sad reasons, just tiring and ridiculously busy. Amongst other things, it's been lovely but emotional to move my sweet Mother In Law into her new home. Partial other thing...the process for advising change of address is absolutely a nightmare in some cases and swift, easy and almost a pleasure in others. I've spent over three hours on the phone to a single utility company this week. Arrrrgh. So what you find on my desk...even more images to go on change of address cards. Another 10 needed and a lovely way to ignore the neglected housework and do some cutting and colouring! The desk is almost at the point of being unusable it's so untidy, but that won't last, some very real deadlines for an ATC and a scrapbook page for a Chinese Whispers round means that I need to focus. See that lovely ATC just above the birdhouse images? that's the swap I've received for this month....now you get the motivation, it is somehow embarrassing to get the swap before I've made the swap if you see what I mean! 
Last week I stamped a few sleeping ducks (I really did, no euphemism here!). They sat untouched until the weekend, and on Sunday I turned them into cards. Cute - it's an old image but I do like it. The card you can see is one of four the same, the other two are new baby cards. 
Whilst I was having post lunch coffee, I bashed out a few of these little sleepy duck images, painted them with the glittery paint pen things (can't remember what they're actually called) and left them to dry while I went out to paint. I hope that each is slightly different, the bottom left image is really quite paint heavy so have pretty much already ruled that out for use. So this is yesterday's desk, but totally untouched this morning, and will be till much later! You can see the Paper pad in all its glory....I've rifled through it at least twice now. One day I might use something from it!
I know that Spring is around the corner, but I really would like to see more of it, NOW. Impatient, much? It's been a long and wet winter and I'm very over it. So, I got myself on a mission. A bit of colour please, and maybe use a stamp or two that I don't naturally turn to. Can't fail with flowers, huh. These two cards are made with a Basic Grey stamp set and the vertical text stamp is a wood mount from Magenta. Both I've had for years and never used. I'm not a huge fan of vertical messages because they aren't, to my eyes, immediately readable. Nonsense probably, but I can't get over it now, I'm too old. In order to layer all these images, I used Distress Oxides. They do not like being used to ink stamps, especially the clear stamps. To stop the ink beading on the stamp I used an emery board to rough up the stamp surface a bit, particularly as they were 'new'. (Cough, I've only had them about ten years). I stamped birds in three colours and in the end chose to use the purple ones, feeling that they needed to be a strong-ish colour to sit apart from the flowers. You can just see the large text stamp in the right bottom corner of the pic- that's an old Hero Arts stamps. Simply says 'enjoy' in about 1" high letters. I stamped it inside both cards. Keep it simple, to kind of reflect the style of the front. The thing I like about a single word greeting in the Oxide ink particularly is that I can let my big sprawls writing go over it if I get carried away, it'll still be visible. So that's two for the finished drawer, an old set of stamps finally used - and enjoyed and a quick test of my collection of Distress Oxides which thankfully don't need re-inking or discarding. Not a bad session!
As I was running about with the hoover and some clean bed linen this morning, I realised that I hadn't even got around to making my single monthly commitment- one ATC! Karen chose 'Red' as the theme . I wanted it to be a bit Spring like because it might hasten the arrival - you never know! So, I pulled out every red ink pad I won, red embossing powder and set to. I was going to make a complicated background of layered coloured images which is why the stamp set on the left is open. I put myself off that quite quickly when I discovered that actually, a lot of my red ink pads are similar and don't offer much contrast. The tulips stamp is a solid one that I've had for years. So many years that it benefits from a time when I used to varnish the wood on the rubber side to protect it from ink staining. I did get over that quite quickly, but the few of that era that I still have really do still look as good as new! I only used two reds in the end, and the embossing powder, and if you look closely, you can see that they aren't on the desk. Gentle desker, I had already put them away when I thought to take this photo. I know. I'm not I'll, but when pressed for time, even I recognise good housekeeping will help! It was nearly lunch time, so the inevitable cup of coffee joined me at the desk, and then turned into a glue stick holder. It's not still there, promise! The Easter decs are still unfinished and shoved, not even pushed back. Luckily for me, Easter isn't till the end of March. So that's me, off early to collect paint and wallpaper today, so bear with me if I don't show up just as the first need for mid morning coffee strikes!
I collected a couple of second hand stamp sets over the weekend and actually moved them from dining room to Workdesk last night. That's it, the full extent of this weeks creativity at my desk! The highlighter pen is a remnant from sitting there to read through some legal paperwork. The purchase of Ma In Law's new bungalow has at last completed, and so I've been wallpaper stripping, masking, painting, dismantling fitted wardrobes...all sorts. Still a way to go; todays delights will include filling about a million screw holes in the wall from which I dismantled a fitted wardrobe (we're changing that bedroom into a lounge), and having a little go at the skirting boards. I figure I'm Ok for basic Do It Yourself chores, but don't want to
My space is actually clear! I'd just finished a page and was tidying up in between so that my mess didn't encroach on other spaces. My trusty cutter is at left of my space, in a sharing position. As always, we had a lot of fun and I made a goodly bunch of LOs which is very pleasing. We all did, actually. Also, of pleasing-ness to me is that I am using up stash, and because LollyScrapper shared her YouTube find about using up patterned scraps, I'm actually working through that lot too, and that is satisfying! 
I think these will do the trick. The house purchase completes on Friday so I need to just get on with them really. Not a scary deadline because Grandma isn't actually moving in on Friday, but nevertheless, they'll make a good start! I'm using a Stampin' Up! Set and keeping it relatively simple. I've plonked my coffee mug on the desk and from this angle it looks empty, ( the mug, not the desk,) but fear not, I'll recharge it and settle in to visit your desk. Please forgive me for tardiness and not getting to you last week...it went a bit pear shaped for a couple of days!
This might be just me, but there's also a small element of challenge involved in all this cherry picking. After all, being able to effectively include a piece of ephemera or paper that someone else has passed over is satisfying; even more so when its admired as though you planned it! One of the things I really like about it though, is that your old stuff, in other peoples hands most always turned back into a really effective treasure. I look at pages made with some of my of cast off pieces and wonder how on earth I didn't think to use them in such a way. I think it may actually be because we all have so much that we overlook and stop really seeing what we've got. But that's a deep and scary theory that touches on the hoarder element of this hobby, and I don't want to discuss that!
So...new to me Stampin' Up set at far right...wood mounted...bliss! Above that, my file full of black alphabets. I don't buy any stick on alphas anymore, so it takes a lot of going through each file to make up a word, vowels are very thin on the ground. I'll use them all up in one way or another. The pizza box contains my Coven Secret Santa gift, some scrapbook paper and ephemera that I am thrilled to have. I haven't treated myself to anything new for ages, so this is a lovely treat. I've transferred my most used colour pens into a pot to sit on the desk...I have a collection of coloured rollerballs and chisel tips that I like to journal with and they are so much easier to access in a pot than rummage through them lying flat in a basket. Little wins! At left you can see the word 'masks', which is a set of alphabet sticky masks, most excellent but not often used. They are sitting on the file they came out of...stencils. I don't have many. They were out because I was making this month's lone ATC for my swap with Karen after finishing off some LOs that needed this and that after last weeks crop. This week is a bit quiet on the desk front so far, but never say never!
This week I have to differentiate between being shocked that it's been a week already, and being shocked that it's Wednesday already, honestly, the first is bad enough, but I'm really worried about Monday and Tuesday, where did they go?
This 
It's no help, to be honest, and I'm sort of gently achieving a couple of pieces a day. Mr Dunnit has done the majority, his patience for colour matching is incredible! It's harDDD! So, I'm being very enthusiastic and encouraging of the door liner work in my workroom, I very badly need some desk time. And I won't be using purples and lilacs on anything very soon! 
I'm de-decorating and at the same time, doing a bit of de-cluttering. In a bid to avoid 8 kerjillion unnecessary steps, I corral everything onto the dining table. This really helps avoid that moment in a March when I notice notice a stray decoration hanging from a door handle or on a window cill! We have two Christmas trees up and there is a plastic toy box standing next to each one, waiting to receive the baubles and doodads. It's not a brilliant system, but it gets everything back into storage as quickly as I like. The decluttering at back right of the table is cupboard emptying of stuff we haven't used in the last two years, so it's not staying. Man I'm tough. And then, there's the 
I have had desk time over the holiday which has been lovely, I made some thank you cards and did some scrapbooking. No longer evident now because regretfully, I'm now in the process of making sympathy cards. There's evidence of a Christmas gift from my gal and the current squeeze..a little tower of Washi tape. And you may just be able to see my bargains from Hobbycraft at far right - two pads of card inserts for a pound each and a packet of gobbly eyes because you never know when the need will arise! 
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