WOYWW 77

Push back and pile high is a technique many of us use to reclaim a bit of desk surface to work on. Well, how's about this for a way of being able to cram more on. For some time I'd fancied having one of those tiered wire basket sets, and now I've got one, it's just brilliant for chucking stuff into. It can be stuff I'm currently using or stuff I need to put away. Of course, we all know what could happen. The whole lot could collapse under the weight of accumulated stash. For the moment it lets you see a bit of bare table and what I'm currently doing.

On the left is box with a drawer in it. I made it at our stamping club last week from card covered with paper, and I did some stamping on the top. It is now waiting for further embellishment and to have some ribbon attached as a handle for the drawer. I've also been playing with dies, making frames and rosettes. The frames are for photos in my yearbook, and I'm hoping to incorporate rosettes into some of my Christmas cards and gift tags.

For the opportunity to have a nosey round a multitude of crafters' desks, zip on over to Julia's Stamping Ground blog. Happy Wednesday.

CCC 22 - Alcohol Ink Splatter (in autumn !)

I love this technique on page 52 of the Compendium of Curiosities. I first tried it when I found a can of air on special offer at a local stationers, and am hoping to use it again to make some Christmas cards, though I fear there may not be much more air left in the can ! CCC is my favourite challenge, and I am hoping that when we have got through all the techniques, Linda at Studio L3 will have devised a way of letting us do it all again, or Tim will have produced another book !

I wanted to make a snowy icy Christmassy page using blues and pearl and silver mixative. However, when I got to the stamping stage, you will see that I'd been a bit heavy handed with the silver mixative in places where I wanted to stamp.

So back to the drawing board, and time to try a design for a Christmas card with different colours and this time some gold used more sparingly.

As we're well into November now, and even though I am still enjoying the autumn colours, I have let myself start to think about Christmas and got my box of festive stamps out ready to start on cards. We've had lots of disgustingly wet and windy days, but these have been interspersed with beautifully clear dry sunny ones.

On one recent walk to enjoy the autumn colours, when I climbed over the wall at the top of my garden, three sheep were staring at me, but two decided to make off.

Then the third turned her back on me and strode out across the field which is strewn with fallen oak leaves.

Here there are oak, hawthorn and holly trees. A couple of frosts towards the end of October started the turn of the leaves on the deciduous trees. Some oaks have lost their leaves, which I think have mostly ended up in my garden !

On some the leaves are brown and look golden in the sunlight.

On others they are still mostly green and clinging on to life.

There are plenty of holly berries at the moment, but by the time I want some for Christmas decs, the birdies will have devoured most of them.

We lost many of our old oak trees in the Great Storm of 1987 when they blocked our road for two days while local people worked with a chainsaw to remove them. The devastation was indeed a sad sight. But there are lots of young oaks growing.

When I first saw this young oak uprooted, I felt very sad.

Then I took a closer look, and realised that it still had roots in the ground and was very much alive.

What were limbs now appear to consider themselves trunks and are reaching for the sky. An amazing sight. What will happen? Presumably at some point their weight may prove too much for the root system, but I guess if it does succumb, it may not be in my lifetime !

Another tree common in this area is the silver birch. The sunlight in this one drew my attention and admiration. A real metallic look: the silver bark and the golden leaves.

From the field there is a fine view of mixed woodland where it is so peaceful to walk.

More autumn scenes.

WOYWW 76

Eek ! Wednesday already and time to show the shameful mess that is my desk this morning, and join Julia and all the WOYWWers for a snoop. Find all the details at Julia's Stamping Ground blog.

All this is left in the wake of me having taken delivery of some new crafting goodies and having a play, having made some cards which still have to be sent, and having done some general dabbling.

The two pieces of card on the bottom shelf are pieces of glitter card I've run through the Big Shot in an embossing folder with a view to making my first Christmas cards of the season. I'm quite impressed with the card which seems to have some fabric in it.

Right in the centre of the picture are some little hearts. One of my new toys was a mould. I pressed some clay into it, and now I have to bake and paint the hearts to turn them into sweet little embellishments.

Someone asked before about the blue bag that hangs off the top left of the shelves. It's a lovely little hessian bag that once contained a birthday present, and I now use to hold stamps I am currently working with. These have spilled over somewhat on to the desk. Talking of spilling, I have just spotted a little pot of painty water. Must remove before Nosey Paws sends it flying.

Remembrance

The challenge over at Rainbow Lady's Challenge blog is entitled Lest We Forget - Thinking of You. It was posted on Thursday 11 November, Armistice Day, a day when we all stop what we are doing at 11 am to observe two minutes silence to remember the fallen in war.

Today is 14 November, Remembrance Sunday, when there are gatherings and parades in honour of those who lost their lives in war, and at this time I remember Tommy, the great-uncle I never met because he died at exactly this time of year in 1916 in foreign fields. We don't know whether he died on 13 or 14 November. He was only 22 years old, but only a few days away from his 23rd birthday on 18 November. He was the seventh of nine children, and thankfully his three elder brothers all came back from the trenches alive.

The Seaforth Highlanders wore the kilt. You can see a photo of a young lad in uniform here, and of a group here. In the second the soldiers are wearing covers over their kilts and their Glengarrys (hats) to protect the material from dirt and damage.

So I think of Tommy, and feel pain at what he and so many suffered at the Somme, and the many other dreadful battlefields of World War I. I hope that one day I will find that someone in the family has a photo of Tommy, and I hope that one day I will be able to go to lay flowers at his grave.

I've spent a number of years researching family history, and one of my projects is to find out more about Tommy's army service, and make a little booklet to attach to my piece of work of today. In the meantime this little shrine is to commemorate all the lost Tommys.

The base is wood primed with gesso, painted with white acrylic and dried with a heat gun which produced bubbles where the paint was thickest. The barbed wire stamp is Tim Holtz, and I don't know who made the poppy stamps. Images coloured with red and green water colour pens. Text on paper coloured with Old Paper DI.

Tag It On Challenge - East

Jo of the JoZart blog kindly drew my attention to the Tag It On East challenge which can be found at the Tag It On Challenge blog. Jo is guest hostess, and has been working with some beautiful oriental stamps which she has designed herself. I am so impressed with the stamps and the cards she has created. Fabulous !

I do enjoy working on tags, so I set to work on this challenge last night. My plan was to do a collage using some rather nice Japanese paper that I had squirrelled away, along with toning distress inks, my Crafty Individuals Japanese lady stamp and some Tanda oriental stamps. However, as often happens with me, I didn't like the effect of the paper, so abandoned my original idea. I did press ahead with the other materials, and the colours I had in mind, and completed a tag. I wasn't very happy with that so I did another. The DIs are Antique Linen and Stormy Sky, and the stamping is in Coffee Archival. The Archival was taking a bit of time to dry, so I brushed some Perfect Gold Perfect Pearls over the circular flower images at the top of the tag, and found it gave a pleasing effect. The flower was a bright pink wooden flower that I came by some time ago. I didn't like the pink and painted it brown. This was ages ago and for a specific project. Of course I then decided it wasn't right for the project after all and popped it back in the embellishments box. You see, it all gets used eventually !

This morning I decided that my first attempt wasn't too bad after all, so here it is. Japanese grunge !

Tag Tuesday and What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday

For some reason last night I migrated to a small coffee table in the living room, and this stuff is still lying there this morning. Acrylic paints and special paper, craft mat, cut 'n' dry foam pads, inks, Stickles, Glossy Accents, alphabet stamps and box of embellishments. I did the initial steps, the embossing and cutting of the tag on the Big Shot upstairs in my craft space. This is all on show because of Julia. Find out more by whizzing over to her Stamping Ground blog.

This was to produce a tag for the Tag Tuesday challenge organised by Louise at Kard Krazy.

Compendium Challenge 21 and Simon Says Stamp and Show

This week's challenge from Linda at Studio L3 blog is on page 38 of Tim's Compendium - Perfect Distress. I love this technique and it's one I've done a lot.

I used Wild Honey and Forest Moss distress inks and Green Patina Perfect Pearls. Not going to tell you how to do this one. You have to get Tim's book and see for yourself.

When it came to the stamping, I decided to take up the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge and use my favourite Tim stamp. I've used three stamps. So which is my favourite? Well, I love all three and can call them all favourites. The feathery swirly one and the 'What you do today' one are from the Fancy Flourish set which I've had for ages and use lots. Brolly Man is a more recent acquisition, and I love him too. If I had to pick one of the three, then I think it would be the swirly one.

As usual it's been hard to get the Perfect Pearls to show up on the photo, but at least you can see a little bit of the shimmer.