WOYWW #582: Tim Holtz Curio Box

Two weeks flew by again since I last posted. I'm back today for with a project I completed on Monday. I've recently acquired the Tim Holtz Curio Box die and I had to try it! I'd known about this die for a while but I managed to convince myself that I didn't need it, until I'd watched this video that shows you how to make different size boxes with the same die - what can I say, I was sold!

The photo of my desk for WOYWW shows the aftermath of this project though the mess is an accumulative effect of my previous projects for the past few months - I can't even remember the last time I cleared my desk - not since the new year, come to think of it!

Here are a few photos of my completed project: I used some poppy heads that I collected around the house, gilded them and put them in a small glass bottle filled with acrylic gems to keep them in place. The inside of the box was decorated with the blue/gold gelli prints you can still see lying around on my desk, and the outside was textured with some dry-wall tape and paints/gold gilding wax applied on top. Some decorative elements completed the picture: metal corners, crocheted ribbon and a paper flower I found in my stash.

Some of you were missing Oreo from my blog in previous weeks, so here are a few photos of him to make up for his absence (notice the funny way he sits on the fence - he always does that!). 

Then here he is in his favourite position sprawled out on my son's desk while he's playing computer games - the best of buds these two! 

And finally a close up of him looking rather domineering, which he is, of course.

Thank you for visiting - I'll be around soon! Happy WOYWW! xx

WOYWW #580: Blogiversary, Tiny Book and Die-cut Petals

I wanted to link up two weeks ago and again last week - I even had my photos prepared - but just didn't have the time, so I'm writing this well in advance for the nice "round" #580 of WOYWW aka Julia's long standing desk hop, now in its twelfth year! Incidentally, it was my 6th blogiversary earlier this month and as it's customary, I've made a collage of my favourite projects this past year, many of which you probably still remember.

My desk has seen some action in the past two weeks as well. I've made another Tiny Book with the Eileen Hull die (which is not that tiny after all!) and I also got the matching book case die from Craft Stash. I didn't really need these dies but I figured it was my patriotic duty to help the British economy recover, so I'm just doing my bit, as I'm sure you all do too :) My desk actually shows a gelli printing session - it was the easiest way to put paint on my book case and I made some prints as well while I was at it. I covered the Tiny Book with fabric and used the gelli prints on the inside cover and sewed some tea-dyed papers inside. 

The Tiny Book is actually big enough to put something in it, so I've made a sample page featuring postage stamps and die cut rose petals. The petals actually cut very well - they're a bit fragile to work with but no more than tissue paper. I pressed them first for a couple of weeks and they cut just like paper.

And here's a real life petal in a new hanging basket I acquired for the garden - just love that deep purple - hey, wasn't that the name of a band?!

We had this little garden visitor as well - this must be a good summer for hedgehogs as we've seen six of them in just the past three weeks, while none in the previous 3 years!

Thanks for visiting today - I'll be over soon. Look forward to catching up!

Happy #580!

WOYWW #577: Miniature library

Five weeks since I've last shown my virtual face at our favourite blog fest WOYWW. I'm super busy still, multi-tasking between my job, homeschooling, housework and gardening - honestly, I don't know where the hours go! I did have a few hours free last weekend and worked on a little project that was completely unplanned. Just one of those instances when you stumble upon something that you just have to try! It was miniature books this time - and of course, I'd known about these for a while, but I had never felt compelled to make my own until now.  This was the state of my desk during the proceedings, still messy from previous projects weeks ago. The water actually evaporated from my paint pots!

You can see one of the miniature books being glued, the others are already installed in the mini book case that I've had for years and never new what to do with. Plenty of room for some more! There's also another book on my desk that was cut with the Eileen Hull Tiny Book die - though it looks positively giant next to my miniature ones! Let me show you my miniature library - so far I have made seven books. Here's a download of the covers I used courtesy of Thicketworks. I just printed the covers, reinforced them with cardboard, tea dyed some paper strips for the inside pages and accentuated the covers with some gold ink and gilding wax. 

Here's a closer look at my not-so-tiny book as well. This was cut from grey board and covered with an old metallic gelli print and embellished with gilding wax. The 'Map of the World" strip is an off-cut from a Dufex print that I framed as a present for hubs for Father's Day from our son. We printed off a card from the internet to go with it - as a quick fix. 

I also have a new addition to my plant stash. I have since managed to nearly kill it with TLC (too much or the wrong kind of plant feed?) but it's recovering nicely in its new position in the flower bed outside. I learn as I go along! 

Happy WOYWW - stay cool on this hottest day of the year so far - although it's said to get even hotter tomorrow. Luckily it won't last long - a couple of days of this is all I can bear. It's quite pleasant in the house still - glad I don't have to go anywhere. xx

WOYWW #572: Moulded shapes from toilet paper

Sheesh, has it really been 4 weeks since I last blogged? I've been incredibly busy with work and homeschooling but managed to find a little time to create something last week. I'll show you later, but first here's my my desk as it was last weekend, getting a bit messy!

I've been experimenting with moulded shapes made from toilet paper. Now that the toilet paper craze is over, I have enough supplies to waste it on this non-essential activity. Basically, you have to soak the toilet paper, blend it and then press it into a silicone mould and squeeze out the water. Once dry, it's rigid, very light and easy to paint. This was my prototype: 

I simply stuck it on one of the inky backgrounds I showed you last time. I made two others while I was at it. The face was also moulded from toilet paper - and yes, I realise it's a bit freaky! The skeleton leaf for the third piece was just lying on my desk and I thought why not use it?

Gardening news: I was so looking forward to my rhododendron blooming as it had two dozen buds from last year. I didn't realise that only one of them was a flower bud and the rest of them were all leaf buds!  You can see them here:

Then just a few days after we planted it out, a hard frost came and all these new leaf shoots perished. I was so sad! I just hope it will still bring new shoots this year. I could have easily kept the plant in the pot for a few more days and put it in the conservatory if I had known that the frost was going to be so harsh. Well, you learn from your mistakes.

I'm also looking after these little trees shown below. I grew all of them from seedlings and it's so rewarding to watch them grow. That big one on the right was just a tiny little thing a few weeks ago. I think it's a Mountain Ash tree. There's also a chestnut tree that grew out of a sprouted chestnut my husband found on the ground, a couple of lemon trees that I started growing last autumn, a Crimson King that's probably from a seed that got blown over from a neighbour's garden two doors down and a few other unidentified species - we'll find out what they grow into - it will be a surprise! 

We even made it to the garden centre last weekend when they first opened after the lockdown and picked up these cute little flowers. They're some sort carnations, so pretty: 

Just one photo of Oreo left to share - doesn't he look handsome? It took me a while to get him to sit this way and look in the camera. That's a Japanese Maple in the background that also got planted out a few weeks ago - we bought it last year, but I kept it in a pot over winter. 

Hope everyone's doing well and enjoying the summer weather - hard to believe I wore my woolly jumper just last week!  I may not be able to visit everyone today, but I'll definitely do so later in the week. Take care and stay safe - or shall I say Stay Alert - those of you in the UK will understand the reference LOL! xx

WOYWW #568: Two in One

Last week, I clean forgot it was Wednesday and missed linking up, even though I had all the photos prepped and ready to go. I blame Easter Monday, which masqueraded as a Sunday and totally confused me. As a result, I have now two-weeks' worth of projects to show, but I'll try to be quick, promise. Here's my desk shot taken on Easter Monday:

I was playing with some inky backgrounds, cutting them into smaller pieces for collage or whatever else they can be used for. I'd also just finished decorating my little die-cut drawers you saw on my desk 'au naturele' last week. I decided to just paint them a rusty orange over crackle paste, and later added some washi tape for good measure as well. It ended up a little warped so next time I'll use a better board. Here's a closer look:

This week I continued experimenting more with painty/inky backgrounds inspired by this free tutorial by Jeanne Oliver, titled mini abstracts. I used a cheap file folder as my substrate. 

I took it a step further and added some washi tape, old postage stamps and found words to some of the little pieces:

So that's it art-wise. It's good to be creating again. How is your lock-down going? Looks like it won't end any time soon. I still find myself quite busy between my job and homeschooling. My son's learning about the Cold War, which I find fascinating as I lived through the latter part of it on the other side of the Iron Curtain. It's interesting for me because I never knew about the Berlin Blockade, for example - somehow it was glossed over - or rather omitted completely - in my old history books! My secondary school education was still very much dominated by the Soviet doctrine. Anyway, I'm rambling...

Bear with me, I just have a couple of more photos and a video left to share...

The pharmaceutical committee I work for sent all the team members a bouquet of flowers to thank us for our hard work. It's nice to be appreciated and a far cry from the treatment I got in some of my previous jobs working in retail, if you remember - now that I think of it, I guess I just didn't belong there and I'm grateful that I've finally found my place. 

The old apple tree down the garden is also in full blossom - I always look forward to the time when these little pink/white petals make an appearance - a sign of renewal and hope - especially in the current circumstances. 

Sometime during Easter week when the weather was so warm, we had a little bonfire down the bottom of the garden at night. We were scaring each other with ghost stories in the dark LOL. I hope my son will grow up to remember this as one of the precious family moments of the lock-down of 2020. In all this madness, we have to find the positives and make the most of this unprecedented situation. 

Hope everyone's keeping safe. Take care folks and see you soon! xx

WOYWW #566: I'm back - kind of...

I thought it was time for me to show my face again on WOYWW and let you know that I and my family are okay in lock-down. We haven't left the house in more than two weeks. Luckily, I can work from home - and I'm quite busy too as I'm part of a team that works with pharmacies. On top of that I have homeschooling responsibilities for my son who's in year 10, studying for his GCSEs next year - currently on his Easter break. So it's hardly a holiday, but we're actually having a nice time together as a family. We can spend time outside in our garden enjoying the spring sunshine, so we don't even miss going out much. We could go on like this indefinitely, but of course I know that things will have to get back to some sort of normal soon as not everyone is having an easy time of this.

I even ventured into my craft room at the weekend inspired by Roben-Marie Smith - and not for the first time rescuing me from a creative rut! She's taking part in the Virtual Art Summit which runs until the end of the month. It's free to join with a voluntary donation. Roben-Marie's lesson inspired me to get inky again with the following results:

The book on my desk is destined to become a "Transitions Journal"which is another one of Roben-Marie's free courses. That's a longer term project for me. You can also see those little cardboard drawers on my desk - I used the £5 off voucher from Craft Stash for Mother's Day to treat myself to the Eileen Hull Scoreboards die that cuts them. Potentially, I could build an Advent Calendar at the end of the year, so could be quite useful.

Hope that was sweet and short and to the point. I have just two more photos to share: yet another stunning sunset experienced on Saturday and a photo of Oreo (aka pocket panther) sunning himself in the conservatory, which really comes into its own at this time of year.

Hope everyone's keeping safe! Will be around visiting soon! xx