WOYWW # 298

Today is "What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday?" once again! we are closing in on 300 posts over at Julia's page, where this all started! If you want to find out what this all is, go HERE!

Well, after last weeks horribly messy workdesk, where I had about 6 square inches of space to actually work, I decided to do something. Here's a reminder of my desk last week:

So I got to work, and cleared EVERYTHING off my desk, and started over. I'm in the middle of the cleaning frenzy (as I do have other things to do!) but finally I have more than a tiny little space to work!

I am working on my Donna Downey Art Journal page from her workshop that I am taking, not quite finished yet, but at least I can open the whole book and still have room!

This is the view to my left, that matches the "before" photo above:

And to my right:

 I now have both my Lazy Susans at my sides, before, they were awkward to get to. I even cleaned them out and re organised them! My big guillotine (under the clipboards) was supposed to stay uncluttered, I moved it away from right beside me where I have tendency to pile things up, but it has disappeared under clutter once again, but hopefully not for long!

Here are two cards I made, one for my brother's birthday, and one for Valentines day for hubby! The wolf is "Stampin' Up", an old set, and one of my favorite stamps that I use every year on hubby's card is the "amour", with "I love you" written across inside. I don't remember who makes it. I used one of my Pinterest pins for the idea for the Valentines card, but of course, it doesn't look at all like the pin!

Well, that's it for today! I will visit anyone with the last number the same as mine, and hopefully a few more if I have time! Have a Wonderful Wednesday!

WOYWW #297 What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday

(If you don't know what WOYWW is, please click on the paisley button on my sidebar! All will be revealed!)

Well, it's been awhile since I've visited my blog! My 10th blogiversary has been and gone (Feb 5th). I had all kinds of good intentions for that day, but nothing happened. Oh well. I've been in a bit of a slump recently, but I am now hopefully coming out of it.

Today I am making my mother a Birthday card - she is 80 on Thursday although you would never know it.

She is a wonderful, kind and generous person, who is also an artist, a writer, and a book editor! Here is the LINK to her website.

Anyway, here is a peek at my workspace, with the card in progress (I still have to finish it today!)

It is using a burlap heart I got at Michaels, that I sprayed pink with Dylusions Spray. Then I sewed it onto the background with red thread, (next time I will use a contrasting color), and glued a metal heart to the center. I stamped a flying bird holding a piece of paper, cut it out, and it's going above the heart. That's all so far!

You can see the mess of my desk, and the small space I have to work on. This distresses me! Here are 2 more views of my desk - to the right:

And to the left:

I feel like I can't breathe!! I did spend the last month and a half 
RE-organizing all my stamps. I did this 2 years ago I think, thought I "had" it, and 2 years later realizing that no, I didn't. So I set out to fix my mistakes. It didn't take as long this time (only 1 1/2 months instead of 4!), and THIS time I think I "have" it!  I will write more on this in my next post, if you are interested in how I finally organized all my mounted stamps, AND my unmounted stamps, please bookmark me and check back in a few days! My next step will be to re-vamp the whole room!

Thank you for peeking at my very messy and disorganized space! I will now go and peek at yours!

WOYWW #287

Another week has gone by, and here we are again to peek at what everyone else has been doing this past week, with the help of our leader, Julia. You can find her, and instructions to join WOYWW here.

This week I did nothing. No time!! We went to a Christmas Party near Toronto this weekend, an overnight trip for us. It was fun and I got to give away a few cards. Luckily the weather was good both to and back. I remember having to make this drive in blizzards in the past!

So here is what my desk looks like this morning:

So, with nothing to show for last week, here's a tour of what I see when I turn around in my chair and look slightly to my left:

Here I am looking right behind behind my chair:

And when I look slightly to the right:

As you can see I like having everything within my reach!

That's it for this week, hopefully I will have more to show on my desk next week! Thanks for looking, and I love your comments!! Thank you!

WOYWW #286

Hello again! Here we are at WOYWW #286, if you want to know more about how to peek at other people desks, click on the paisley button on my sidebar - it will take you to Julie's blog, and she will tell you all about it!

Here is my workspace this morning. It shows my most recent journal page that I haven't quite finished yet, I call it my Hot Mess. It uses lots of sprays, stencils, paints, and collage images.

This wall is directly to my right and stores some of my wood stamps  in the labeled boxes:

Here are the 2 journal pages I made last week: This is the one I started last week - I like how it turned out!

This one was made from a Collage page that Lynne Perella made for Stampington many years ago:

I'm happy with this one too!

Well, that's it for me this week - I'm off to see what everyone else is doing now! Thanks for peeking - and thank you for your comments! I love 'em!

WOYWW #285

Still doing great - 2 WOYWW weeks in a row! Yay! If you want to know more about WOYWW (What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday) go on over to Julia's blog and see what all the fuss is! Today we woke up to sun! What a nice change! Although we are supposed to get snow later on today.

Here is what I saw when I woke up this morning:

I really hated my journal page until I put those strips of paper on it!
Those 3x5 cards come in handy almost every day!

 Close up of the hated page
But wait - what did hubby bring home for me last night??

What I guy! I'm liking this page more now!


This is directly to my left. I finally have a permanent spot for Ms. Big Shot. Don't know why I didn't think of this before!

Finally got around to labeling my spice bottles. . .

 But what the heck are these called? Anyone know?

 And now for a peek at my latest journal pages:

Oct 15- Just started going through my paper stash. . .

Then I went through my ephemera savings and found these two flower postcards, the sticker tag, and the license plates. I also used Dimensional paint on the dragonfly wings - first time!

Wanted to use my new bird stamp on a page, then found this awesome lace - great dimensional addition!

This time I looked through my stash of pre-stamped images for inspiration and found this "ART" piece. I love the blue-red-yellow color scheme! Quite accidental of course!

And that's that. I'm sure today's page will show up in a weeks time on the next WOYWW!

That's it for today! Thank you for your wonderful comments!

PIMI Part 2

I did try another PIMI card with same original, and then did some experimenting, and this is what I came up with:

 This one I did pop the middle up, and it worked well. What I really need is more green cardstock of the same colour!

Then I started experimenting with the embossing, and found how to emboss a piece of paper leaving part of the paper un-embossed. I found it here but I didn't have the frame folder they used, so I just cut a rectangle out of cardboard. After a few failed tries, and running up and down the stairs to keep checking (I have a new router that will now hopefully reach my stamping room!) I managed to get an effect not as sharp as in the video, but still nice:

This was my first one

And my second one (my fav)

The embossing didn't show up when I straight scanned the cards, so I had to get an angle to get it to show. As you can see, the edges of the openings are soft, not hard lines, which I liked on these 2 cards!

Tips that I learned the hard way for this technique: 
1-the bumpy part of your embossing folder should be on the bottom - feel! 
2-it's the FRAME you need, not the cut out piece!

So that was fun, from one PIMI I got 4 new cards!

Thank you for visiting, and remember,  I love your comments!

PIMI #1

PIMI -Pin It Make It! No I didn't think of this all by myself, I saw it as a challenge somewhere, and thought I would try it. I can get lost for hours pinning and pinning, so what about doing something with those pins? I usually just make recipes, but I thought I would start using the card pins that I've made as well! Here is my first one. This is the card I pinned: 

Beautiful card from Lynn

Here is mine:

Not quite as beautiful, but I like it. Next one I make I have to pop up the wreath. Thank you Lynn for the inspiration!

WOYWW #284

I've missed so many WOYWW (see paisley button on sidebar for more info) since my accident in August, but I'm happy to say I'm back! I've been working hard on Christmas cards all October and November, something I've NEVER done before! I usually start Christmas cards a few days before Christmas! Now I'm all ready to send them - that will be the test - will they really actually make it to the mailbox?

Here was my uncommonly clean desk this morning:

You can see my new bird stamp I got at Micheal's at a 2 for 1 sale on stamps - who can pass that up! Below are my Christmas Cards,

I was greatly influenced by Hermine who really got my card making Mojo going!

Here is the card I made with my new HA stamp:

I also discovered (during the last few months) a new way to store my Distress Inks- in a single layer in a plastic 3-D frame (I used to have my stamps in these). I have 4 of these full of Distress Inks. On the back of each is a distress pad, one for each color, velcroed to the bottom, and the distress ink tool is velcroed to the shelf for easy use. I got this idea from an art journalist called Aaron (watch his You Tube videos called Imperfect Impulse), who in turn got it from someone else.

Well, that's all for now! If you want to see my last journal pages for Journal #12, go back one post! Thanks for looking!

I'm Back!!

I've been away a long time, I know, and I'm sorry. At the end of July I had a fall, and hurt my arm, quite badly as it turned out, as even now I'm still on pain meds and in pain a lot of the time. I've only JUST started to get back to driving.

It took me awhile to get back to making art, it's amazing how much I use my left arm when I am right handed! I didn't think it would hurt that much! But now, finally, I can create without a lot of pain.
Here are a few journal pages from a few months ago.

The week of my fall, left side, right side

 with some new stamps I picked up at Joanne's in NF New York. New store for me!

The following week - I had many of these backgrounds already made before my trip to Niagara Falls

 

And the final pages for August and for my journal!

The background on the page with the license plates came from an ad in the Niagara Falls newspaper. I couldn't pass it up!

The end of Journal 12. On to Journal Number 13!

Thank you for being so patient with me!