WOYWW 30th March 2011

My work desk today has small bits on it... I am trying to make up some dangly charms so what you can see are my efforts so far!

The little bottles were a brilliant find last weekend when Chris and I went to a new Dollar store that has just opened in Okotoks, which is about 25 minutes away from Calgary. 

You get 6 wee bottles all filled with decorative beads or glitter and each packet was a $1.00!!  Yes, Tim Holtz fans, eat your heart out... these babies were a bargain!! ;)  Bet they aren't there the next time I go...

Short and sweet this week, I have a pile of chipboard squares that need my attention after I finish playing with the bottles and mini books!!

Pop on over to the Queen of the Desks, Julia, for the list of people who reveal all on a Wednesday.

Tea on Tuesday

Happy Tea Day to everyone... I really need my tea today as it is not looking good in the scrap room!

I'm having plain old tea down in the basement surrounded by stuff that isn't going too well...

Honestly, I followed Amy's destructions to the letter - ok, not quite, as I missed out the swearing bits because my mouth won't do that, but I did all the rest and all I have is a bunch of washed out images on packing tape... that can't be right, can it?  Do you think it was the lack of swearing?  No?  Lack of something though... artistic abilities springs to mind!! LOL

On a brighter note the printing onto tissue paper worked!!  I just need to do something with them now.. but I need all the cheering on I can get today... a pile of chipboard 4" x 4" squares sitting looking at me that somehow need to end up looking like fabulous fat book pages is adding to the stress!!

Join the other ladies, who hopefully are having a better Tea Day than I am by going to Kimmie's and following the linky things!!

Spring has sprung all over the world...

Well, in most places perhaps... at least we are all back to the same time differences that I am used to now that the UK has also sprung forward an hour!!  Weatherwise... it really isn't very springy at all in this part of the world... in fact it's downright Christmassy!  Chris was home today so he helped me shovel the snow off the driveway, which was a bonus!!

This is the street one over from ours.. and this is what it looked like Friday morning.

The hoar frost fascinates me and I have now figured out that if we have a foggy night and then it gets cold, this is the after effects if you get a slight breeze...

We drove the cats to the vets 10 minutes up the road for their yearly shots and the world had turned into a winter wonderland of spikey frozeness...

It's so beautiful to look at... but some warm sunshine and some daffodils peeping through the ground would be pretty welcome about now too!

Just shades of white....  oooh just reminded me of a song from youth... a whiter shade of pale... who sang that?

So I woke up Saturday morning expecting it all to have disappeared, as the hoar frosts are very temporary...

but no, everything is still spikey and frozen!

There were long icicles hanging from the shed roof - but my camera doesn't appear to have captured them very well.

All the fir trees are looking very festive... as though Santa were about to pay a visit!

I took this one of my deck to show the spikes... I call it hedgehog snow!! ;)

So here I am with my pastel papers and my little chick hatching out of Easter egg stamp and I really can't get my head around making Easter cards whilst outside looks like December...

Hoodie's Home

I finished the little chair I was playing with and then Donna of Doings of Doone reminded me that the little Hoodie doll she had made was designed to hang so I might have a few problems with her sitting in a chair...

So I thought I would make her a little school room to reside in.. and she will be atatched to a hook in the ceiling so will hopefully sit up nice and straight like a good school girl... ;)

so made sure there was a blackboard and a school clock... and in deference to her origins added a little easel and canvas so that she has a well rounded education!

added her name to the wall with some alphabet stickers underneath..

made her some books so that she doesn't get bored...

The papers are all from Cosmo Cricket Circa 1934 range which seemed to suit the schoolroom perfectly and I used the offcuts of foam board from my light box project to make the 'school room'.

WOYWW 23rd March 2011

Well, I hope everyone is enjoying all the signs of spring... our clocks went forward week before last but Mother Nature obviously didn't get the memo about that.... perhaps she is waiting for the rest of the world to put their clocks forward and the daffies will start popping up all over the place.... but I'm not holding my breath as I need it to shovel snow off my driveway...

My work desk this Wednesday is looking a little weird... yes, you might ask why I have a little chair on my desk and why am I painting it?  Chris asked much the same thing when we were in the dollar store and I swooped down and picked it up with a big smile!!  You see, Donna, of Doings of Doone, made me a hoodie doll... the cutest little hoodie doll ever and I thought she might like a chair to sit on after the long flight to get here.. because I promised to give her a good home if Donna made me one!
On my other desk is the result of my mailbox altering.... the one I wasn't sure I should touch as someone had obviously spent a lot of time painting the farmyard pictures on it... but you lot said I could.... so I did!!

This is before I got the paints out...

I painted it brown, then gave it a coat of crackle and then painted it black.

I got my new Graphic 45 papers out and lots of bits and pieces... love those metal Graphic 45 flowers.

What a work up it was getting that door knob on the front... it appears that in a case of about 7 hundred drill bits of various sizes and shapes not one of them was a countersink drill bit... so we improvised and in the end we made it fit nicely!!

and inside is a lace wrapped bundle of 'love letters'...

The metal trim around the bottom are 7Gypsies book trims and I cut them down the centre and glued them on, think they look pretty good!!  Oh and Elizabeth should be super impressed as I actually dyed the lace with tea!! I was amazed at how well it worked and it does make it a nice vintagey colour.

Don't forget to head over to Julia's for the exceedingly long list of amazing desks to snoop about in... I don't think there has been a week when I haven't learned something new.

Tea on Tuesday

For my tea this Tuesday I am having Hibiscus again... a different brand though.  This is a packet I brought with me from Saudi Arabia.  (Yes, Elizabeth, I will save you the packaging)!

It's such a pretty ruby red colour, not sure it shows up in the photo though.

My serviette makes me smile... (decorated paper napkin for Elizabeth)

and I thought I would share the instructions on how to brew your cup of Hibiscus tea...  which looks a little odd.... place teabag in cup for 2 - 5 minutes.... add water from kettle.... boil kettle of water.... eh? LOL

Now think Arabic and read from right to left.... still not sure why a man = a teabag? 

and now I have enjoyed my cup of tea I must go and shovel snow from the driveway and path... this little lot arrived last night whilst I slept.

Spring?  Did someone mention it's now spring?  Daffodils flowery, crocii peeping through the ground?

My neighbours reindeer still have their little feet frozen into the ground and can't be removed!!  I told him not to bother, another few weeks and we will no doubt be decorating for Christmas again anyway!!

Tootle over to Kimmie and check out the ladies that 'do tea'... they will no doubt have lovely springy pictures of flowers in bloom and be residing on their terrace in the warm!!

Box for Beads

Well, the other box was sitting there on my desk so I figured I may as well get on and pretty it up as well!

This one has birds on it... though they are quite hard to see so I got the embossing fluid and outlined the one at the bottom to give him some definition.

I think you can see it in this picture but the colours are off a bit... oh for some decent light!

I decorated the inside lid and made the satin liner the same as yesterdays button box.

and now it is full of my wooden beads... they are great for feet on boxes or for putting on the o'wires of my BIA books.

So now the matching pair are residing on a shelf and I like them much more than the plastic boxes that were there before!!

Finished Button Box

I was amazed at how many people also had lovely memories of rummaging and sorting their Grandmother's button box!  I always had a theory about scrapbookers... if you ask a scrapbooker what pretend game they most enjoyed when a child the majority will answer that it involved playing with stationery...  pretend games of being a post mistress and doing a lot of stamping and thumping of envelopes and selling stamps etc, or being a teacher and having lots of little homework books to mark or a secretary with all the memos and things and they all stationery and the playing with it in common.  Next time I ask a scrapbooker the question I am also going to ask if they liked to sort the buttons in their Grannies button tin!!  Stationery and buttons obviously lead to a love of crafting in its many forms...

I finished the button box off yesterday and it is now residing on a shelf looking pretty happy with itself!! ;)

After so many questions about it I thought I would add some details on how it got the way it did. So it started off as a normal lidded box.

You will also need pretty serviettes (decorated paper napkins) and Mod Podge and a couple of brushes. Paint the box with the Mod Podge and then add your pieces of serviette, making sure you cover each piece with Mod Podge as you go along. The serviettes I used were in two layers, so I removed the back layer which left me with the tissue paper thin design layer only.  The pieces look better if you keep the edges of each piece curved or wavy... straight edges show up more.  I used two serviettes for my box as I have about 5 Eiffel Towers on the top of my box as they are layered one on top of each other to give the required depth of colour.

Decorate the top of your box as you wish, I added buttons and a flower with a chipboard button as its centre and some lace down the border.  I wanted my box to have a hinged lid so I cut through the two corners and gently moved that side piece back and forth so it would lift easily.  I hot glued it to the base and then added three black brads to make sure it didn't come loose.

Add your letters down the side and Mod Podge some more serviette into the inside lid and bottom of box if you wish.  I added satin material to the bottom of the box and attached it with double sided tape.

Fill with buttons and stand back and admire!!

WOYWW 16 March 2011

The weeks just keep flying by and finally I have snow melting and positive numbers on the temperature gauge!!
I have been playing with some pretty serviettes I bought so you can see what I am in the middle of on my desk this week.

I have a button box which is a plastic one and I was looking at one of the boxes in my collection of them stuffed in a cupboard and thought I would make something a bit more pretty to keep them in.  I remember as a child spending ages with my Grandmother's button tin, sorting them into colours and then sizes and having a lovely time.  She was a very special person, she even 'turned' my Grandfather's shirt collars when they started to wear thin on the inside... I can't quite imagine anyone doing that in this age of throw it away and buy new.  My Mum had a button tin also, I am not sure if she had my Grandmother's, or one of her own, but I can picture the tin now, round and gold coloured with roses on the front. At least now I will have a pretty button box to rummage around in, even if it isn't anything to do with sewing new buttons on a shirt!!

I used satin material to line the inside and used another serviette to decorate the inside lid.

Inked and heat embossed the letters to spell buttons down the side of the lid.

While I had the modge podge and serviettes out on the desk I decided to have a play with a small canvas and used my new Tim Holtz hanging sign die and then turned it over and decorated the back adding the Tim Holtz bird cage to the inside.

So if you get bored with the front.... you can just turn it around! LOL

Don't forget to pop over to Julia's for the ever growing list of like minded souls who bare their desks every Wednesday.

Tea on Tuesday

You know when you get one of those days when you wake up and the sun is streaming in through the windows and everything seems so much nicer?  Well, that is today!  The Chinook wind has warmed us up into positive numbers and the snow is melting big time and maybe I will make it through this first long winter in Canada after all!!

Now, you can see that I am really trying quite hard for Tea on Tuesday... as my cup of tea this morning is perhaps the only tea not made from tea leaves that I like!  I first tasted it as a cold drink in Egypt and was most surprised that it was nice.  It also has the prettiest colour... a deep velvety red which might be interesting for dumping lace in to see how it would turn out.  Just behind my tea cup you will see my Splender sweeteners, which brings me to ask a question of anyone living in North America.... why can't I buy those here?  Why don't you have them?  All I can find in Splender are little paper sachets that are messy and not very eco friendly!!  My little box of Splender contains 500 dinky tablets that dispense through a hole in the bottom... neat and easy and even though Splender is an American company they don't do the tablet dispensers here or in the States... only in the UK!!  Why? 

Kimmie, the hostess of Tea on Tuesday can be found here with the linky thing so you can go check out the other tea ladies.... hmmm, why does that not sound quite right?  so you can go check out the other ladies that drink tea!!  Yes, that sounds better!! ;)

More Cotton Reels/Spools

Finished the one that was on my desk, using Graphic 45 papers.

This is the top with all the sewing bits in place.

and this is with the lid removed showing the inside.

More Grpahic 45 papers for this version.

Showing the decorated top.

This version used the bottom half of the large Bisto tub so I had to come up with a lid that would stay on... used a circle of chipboard raised on foam pads which works a treat!

Here are the three completed ones... now just need to get the sewing machine out and make the snippet rolls!