Compendium of Curiosities Challenge 2

There's just a few hours left to join in the second of Linda's CC Challenges - Fragments Basics. Details at Studio L3.

For mine I've had to improvise the fragments as I hadn't come across any Ranger ones yet. These were some acrylic pieces left over from a session of stamping and embossing at our local club. One I've used with some Tim Holtz paper, and the other with an image stamped with a Paper Artsy stamp. I've used water colour paper cut at one end with the plaque die and coloured with a wash of Old Paper distress re-inker. The other stamps I have used are Crafty Individuals, Paper Artsy, Tim Holtz and Wendy Vecchi with Coffee Archival. I've used Frayed Burlap DI around the edges and a bit of Scattered Straw Stickles dabbed here and there.

Weary Wednesday

Well, I didn't think I was going to make it with this post as I seem to be excessively tired at the moment, and have spent two recent evenings sleeping and then still managing to sleep through the night as well. However, I couldn't miss the weekly chance to snoop, and if you don't know what this is all about, go to Julia's Stamping Ground and join in with all us nosey parkers.

My workdesk needs a tidy as it has remnants of recent projects, and ingredients for the next ones (a challenge and some birthday cards) partially assembled. It did need to be tidied yesterday as a certain little puss had managed to pull down that white box with the green spots on the top shelf and scatter the contents over a wide area. The box is full of 'bits' that will be used somehow at some stage.

Those of you who visited last week will note that I have now painted the little drawers, but I still have quite a bit to do on this. Am thinking of doing a bit of stamping and making small UTEE handles.

Happy Wednesday !

Water Stamping Challenge

Linda at Studio L3 has started a series of challenges where participants use a specific technique from Tim Holtz' book "Compendium of Curiosities," so this was right up my street.

Challenge No 1 is to use the water stamping technique. This is my first ever attempt at it. It was fun and I shall be doing more.

I used Aged Mahogany, Broken China, Peeled Paint and Tumbled Glass Distress inks and my favourite TH swirly stamp to do the water stamping. I made the little ticket using TH paper, die and distress ink, and a stamp I got as a freebie with Craft Stamper magazine.

WOYWW

It's that day again when Julia over on her Stamping Ground blog makes it possible for all of us to get into Nosey Parker mode and ogle at other people's workdesks with her WOYWW (What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday). So pop over there and join in the fun.

Well, there's been a change to my workspace. You may remember from previous weeks that by the time I have laid out the stuff I am going to use on my table, I usually end up with a space the size of a postage stamp to work on.

On Saturday when I was at the Craft Barn Extravaganza in Lingfield I passed a shop selling secondhand pine. I put myself in reverse gear and stepped into the shop to see if they might have a small set of shelves. And indeed they had several. So on my way back to the car I made a purchase and you can see it sitting on my desk. There I can put all the stuff I am currently working with and have it arranged vertically, conveniently in front of me. Naturally I made a few other purchases on Saturday, one of which was a dinky little naked set of drawers. I've already started to decorate it.

I have actually spilt out of the work space and on to the kitchen table these past few days. This is because of the meltpot stuff I've been doing thanks to the fabby demos by Suze Weinberg. Decided it would be safer to have a bigger space. Trouble is, it has got left there as I am really into this beeswax.

Till next Wednesday. Have a happy week.

The Weekend

Last weekend was the Craft Barn Extravaganza. I hotfooted it up there on Saturday morning and stayed all day without even a teabreak ! I spent ages watching demos by Suze Weinberg, Jean of Crafty Individuals and Lin of LB Crafts, and ran out of time. I really could have done with going back on the Sunday to see more of the demos by Leandra of Paper Artsy, and the other demonstrators.

I was keen to see Suze demo. I love following her adventures on her blog, and I have a meltpot which I've used, but not used enough, to make beads and embellishments, and I'd never used beeswax. So much to my delight, I was able to watch Suze making beautiful little collage pieces using beeswax, and fabulous pendants using UTEE, and kindly giving these away to members of her audience. We had a fun time with lots of chat, humour, and questions.

Suze had said that wood was the best surface for beeswax, so when I got home I had a rummage in the shed for some offcuts of pine that I had though might come in handy for chicken shed repairs. However, I also came across some pieces of an old panel fence that a thoughtful friend had brought me to use as kindling for my fire. They were of a similar thickness to the wood that Suze had used, and I loved the shapes and weathered appearance, and the idea of recycling this into something I could put on the wall, so I sawed some lengths into smaller pieces.

I wanted to make something that would mean something to me, so I've used family photos printed on to photocopy paper. The first piece is of my grandmother at the time of her life when she ventured away from her home village to the big city. Apart from the collage elements and beeswax, all I have used is Perfect Pearls and green Inka Gold. I should have waited to get photos in natural light as the Perfect Pearls reflect and it's hopeless trying to get a good photo. However, I can't see myself having time in the daytime.

The second piece is a recent picture of yours truly (tee hee), and this time I've added some little pieces of swirly, coloured with distress ink and layered with flowers, and again there's Perfect Pearls.

I have more pieces of wood and more collage pieces ready to do more, and have also found a mirror with a wide pine frame (in a charity shop) which is just asking to be collaged upon.

Since Saturday have also made some cards with Crafty Individuals stamps and house shaped board. Jean also made some gorgeous tags stamping on tissue paper and sticking the images to the tag. The next thing on my list to try - between beeswax sessions.

At Lin's table I saw the wonderful treasure chest pictured in her blog post of 11 June and had a peek at all the treasures inside. As usual Lin had some new techniques to show, and I've already had a go at a die cut Paper Artsy bird cage under some metal tape with the bird cage stamp on top and workings with the metal tools to decorate. No hope of a pic of that tonight with the shine on the metal. Next to try will be using corrugated card as shown in Lin's post of 14 June.

Leandra was producing lots of different flowers using her PaperArtsy dies and stamps. I had made metal and tissue flowers at the Artsycraftsy weekend, but as usual Leandra has come up with lots of new ideas for different flowers.

Countdown

Linda over at A Crafting Journey is counting the days till Ranger U by creating a tag for each day, and has invited others to join in the tag making. As we are all so envious of the fantastic experience Linda is about to have, I had to choose green as my tag colour.

I stamped one of Tim's swirls with clear embossing powder as a resist and put Forest Moss, Peeled Paint and Crushed Olive distress inks on top. Stampotique's Topknot and Spider are stamped on card with black detail embossing powder. The Ideaology framey thingy and brads are coloured with Meadow alcohol ink, and I've left the pin its original silver colour. I used my Ally Pally bargain alphabet set for the Green with Envy text. The tag has its own topknot of black ribbon and green fibre. Sorry about the excessive shine on the embossing in the photo. Couldn't get the light right.

Wednesday

I've been working on using numerous greens on resist stamping on a tag, and then embossing Stampotique images, but it's still in progress. What I thought would be the finished article, is not what I want. Have some ideas about adding some metal. Or I may just go back to the drawing board. Tried photographing what I'd got so far but it doesn't look very interesting , so I will show instead a couple of pics of the workdesk for Julia's What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday entertainment on her Stamping Ground blog. Zip over there and take a look.

A view of some of my drawers. :D

As I write I have a young pussycat initiating a game of fetch. She chooses a toy, brings it to me. I throw it and she fetches; and this can go on all day or all night. As she's so fast, I haven't yet managed to capture in a photo that oh-so-cute scene of her approaching toy in mouth, so I will leave you with an altogether more peaceful view of the feline pair comfortably positioned on top of my clean washing which I had laid out ready for ironing. I believe there are among WOYWWers some specialists in ironing who would be only too happy to come round and deal with my pile.

Have a happy week.