WOYWW #505: Altered cheese packaging, a win and a rant

OK, so I managed to lose my first paragraph after linking up and I can't be bothered to rewrite it - it was a rant about Google. Maybe they came and deleted it LOL! Anyway, the long and the short of it is that they've finally killed off G+ and all my comments were lost in the process. I was hoping that they would offer a solution to migrate comments to Blogger but they didn't. They don't care. It was easier for them to delete the comments, so now they're all gone. Forever.

In happier news, look what I've got on my desk!

I've won the  January Craft Stamper prize draw! Yay me! This really brightened up my day and made me forget about my Google woes. Also on my desk: a weathered tag in progress, along with some inked butterflies and my general clutter. That iPhone box has been kicking around for months now - I'm planning to alter it one day. My son's got the phone, I've got the box - and it is a darn good box too, very sturdy! 

Onto my project share today, tada! 

Cheese packaging stuck together with masking tape and covered in book paper (although this step wasn't strictly necessary, it made it more sturdy) with pieces of embossed  paper stuck on (made with Tim Holtz embossing folders), gesso and some acrylic ink (Prussian blue and Sepia, if I can remember correctly).  The magic happened when I added some gilding wax on top for highlights. 

What is this, you ask? I don't know... It could be a stand for something or I could just call it an Artist Trading Coin Block - do they exist? They do now! 

Before I go, I'd like to share this idyllic photo of Oreo enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon by the fire.

My commenting system is supposed to have reverted back to the native Blogger comments - see if it works! Thanks for all the comments over the years - most of which came from the lovely people of WOYWW and some from a handful of faithful followers.  I'm ever so grateful for every single comment and I'm so sorry I couldn't keep them! xx

WOYWW #492: Book of Dreams (part 1)

Hello again, lovely people of WOYWW. I've just settled into my usual routine following a trip to Hungary last week. It's so good to be back! I even managed a short session in my craft room on Monday to start a project altering some recycled packaging. This is as far as I got in the first session:

I used a cheap crackle medium on it, which did not crackle. Seriously, not a single crack! Oh well, at least the underlying collage papers gave it some texture, even though they practically disappeared under the gesso and ink layers. Here's a closer look:

This is still a work in progress. So far, I've added some collage pieces and elements from the Dreamer paper collection. I will do the flip side as well, fold it into a booklet and call it my Book of Dreams. Still lots to be done! This is how it looks right now: 

When I work on these collages I tend to just use scraps lying around - I'm too lazy to get up and look for specific elements, so there's definitely a big advantage in having a messy desk! All those diecuts came from my scrapbox as well as the bits of ribbon. Part two will hopefully come next week. 

That's it art-wise. Now I'll just show you some of the photos I took while we were in Hungary. My dad has been looking into our family history for a while now and discovered that one of our ancestors had a street named after him. He was my dad's great-grandfather's older brother (technically, his great-granduncle) - a bishop and local historian. I took my son to see the street named after him in my hometown, Szekesfehervar. He thought it was cool to have a famous relative!

The following photos were also taken in my hometown. Here's me posing with Kati neni, a well-loved statue in a shopping street. If you rub her nose, it's supposed to bring good luck - hence the shiny nose! 

It was lovely to walk around the town in the evening - it felt like a summer's night, even though it was the very end of October but unseasonably warm. 

We travelled to Budapest a couple of days later, where I took these photos of the Parliament on the river Danube - at sunset and lit up in the dark. 

We did a couple of day trips with my parents as well and visited this new statue commemorating the 1848 Revolution against the Hapsburgs. It is on a grand scale! 

This photo shows my parents with my son at a viewpoint overlooking Lake Velence. You can see that my dad looks a bit like his great-granduncle! 

That's it folks! Thanks for tagging along on my journey - I'll see you again soon!

WOYWW #471: Furniture makeover, postage stamps and some accidental tags

For once, Wednesday seems to have come around much less quickly than usual - unless I missed last week's WOYWW?  No, I didn't! It's just that I've been busy with different types of projects and time seems to go slower when you immerse yourself in a variety of activities.

I couldn't put off tidying my work space any longer, so the desk shot I'm sharing today had to be staged as otherwise there would be nothing of interest on it. Let me walk you through the items quickly:

Two of the projects on my desk have already been posted on my blog. You can find the Passport Journal here and the Tea Bag Collage here - just in case you're interested to see more.

I've also started on a new journal cover, but I didn't get far. I'm waiting for inspiration to strike before proceeding. The piece of cardboard I use as "underpaper" has got a few more layers of paint on it - it will be interesting to see how it shapes up later. The "scrap box" on the right has ended up with most of the junk I cleared off my desk, so it's now pretty full with bits and pieces that will be used in various future projects.

The "accidental" tags are actually the results of my clean up operation - I did not intend to make them. I set out to tidy up my desk and I ended up making these tags from the scrap pieces lying around. I couldn't help it - inspiration just took over! They're not even on proper card, just flimsy computer paper with some random paint marks cut into tags and decorated with whatever scraps I could find on my desk. I don't let anything go to waste! Here's a closer look at them:

You might be wondering about those postage stamps too - I bought a pack of 1000 on Ebay for £5.99. There are some very interesting old stamps in there - they might even be worth something. I plan to use them in my art, but now I'm thinking I'd better research the unusual ones to make sure I don't destroy something valuable. I had lots of fun sorting through the pile - they're from all over the world, many of them from the 50s/60s/70s and some of them dating back to WW2 and even earlier. A couple of them could be as old as 1890s if my preliminary research is correct. I can see a new obsession developing! I kept thinking about all the stories contained in the letters that once carried these stamps - or was it the stamps carrying the letters?

And if that's not enough, look what I did on Saturday! I had this ugly, depressing, dark brown little table sitting in my craft room that I turned into something happy and bright! I used antique white chalk paint as the first layer, followed by turquoise blue acrylics and sanded it down to distress it - although the haphazard way I painted it already gave it a pretty distressed look! Here are the before and after shots:

And here it is in-situ, re-installed in my craft room within an hour of painting it. It makes me happy just looking at it. The cup sitting on it says "Enjoy the little things" which could be my motto these days! 

There's only one more thing to share - yes, you guessed right - the shenanigans of Oreo! He gets into every nook and cranny - here he is sitting on top of my scrapbooking paper collection. It's usually piled all the way up, but I had to get some out and he took his chance to squeeze in on top. It doesn't look very comfortable! Are you not feeling claustrophobic in there? 

Thanks so much for your visit. I hope I didn't take up too much of your time!

I appreciate every visit and comment. 

Happy #471! 

WOYWW #439: Mixed-Media House

Morning Deskers! It's not as chilly as it was on Monday - brrr, that really got me! It was the first touch of Winter without the heating on! It's nice and toasty inside the house now, but we don't know how much it will cost to keep the house warm - we've never had oil heating before. We'll have to keep an eye on the consumption and find a sweet spot where it's still comfortable and affordable. The 14C on Monday was NOT comfortable! I felt like a Michelin man wrapped in layers and layers of clothing - I could hardly move, LOL!

I'm sharing a shot of my desk for WOYWW again today. It was taken at the weekend as that's the only time I have for crafting these days. Do you recognise this packaging? It's a new product that my son loves as a snack. I was about to chuck the empty box in the recycling bin when I had this sudden realisation: it looks just like a house! So I abandoned my plans to make washi tapes and I made a mixed media house instead!

I started out by sealing the box with some masking tape and then applied a layer of gesso. I then stuck on some wooden window shapes. At this point, it looked something like this, already very much resembling a house:

In the following steps, I added a layer of burnt umber paint, followed by crackle glaze and another layer of gesso and waited for the crackles to appear. When it was dry, I coloured the walls and the roof with distress inks. I used Broken China for the walls and Rusty Hinge for the roof. Later, I repainted the roof with Quinacridone Gold fluid acrylics, as the distress ink went a bit pale over the gesso, which was fine for the walls but I wanted something more vivid for the roof.

As a final touch, I added a few bits of ribbon and some wooden numbers to jazz it all up a bit and voila - it was ready! Here's the final look:

It was Halloween last night and we carved this pumpkin - I was planning to make pumpkin soup from the flesh, but I don't think this pumpkin was meant to be eaten. The flesh looked very pale and unappetizing - perhaps another time. However, I did save the seeds and roasted them, so it didn't all go to waste.

Happy WOYWW! I'll be doing my rounds later today!