WOYWW - Slow n steady wins the race

I'm conscious of how often I use the word bombsite but I really do have a talent for making a mess. Last month or so I've been furiously attempting to fill up my stocks in preparation for my first craft fair next month but I seem to have slowed down considerably in the last week! I also have mutiny on the craft robo front, he's chewing up almost everything at the mo, wasting card left, right n centre :( So after two hours in here last night I only produced one card but I'd better not show it to u cos it is still only September and some of you might get an attack of the vapours!

WOYWW 110 – What Of Your Windy Wedding?

Hmm, yeah ok I could’ve done better there but I do intend to make this post all about THE wedding and it was a fairly windy day. This is gonna be picture heavy, guys, if thats no good for your browser, please look away now!

Now before you get all excited, it wasn’t my wedding – in fact it wasn’t even a member of my sprawling family, I commented to my friend that it would be the my first day out in a loooonnnng time where I wouldn’t be referred to as Aunty Jody!! – it was the long awaited wedding of a good friend of mine who let me bully her into making things for it! You may remember I asked your advice on the invites all those many moons ago, finally settling on this design (below,left):


The theme of the cupcakes came from the happy couple’s decision to go for a stack of cupcakes rather than a traditional tiered cake.
I sourced a number of images while I was making the samples and they plumped for a similar design for the order of service booklets (above, right) …I wonder if anyone noticed?!

We toyed with the idea of making cupcake shaped favours for the tables but in the end economy won out and she stuck to organza bags filled with sweets. The tables also had gorgeous Victorian style sweet jars filled with traditional sweets which lent their names to identifying the tables:

And there was a fair bit of bartering going on between the tables too!

Sticking to the theme of sweets – and its not the first time I’ve been told I’m hard to buy for -  look what was delivered on the Friday before the big day. A complete surprise, I was so chuffed:

and in return, my gift to them was born from an idea of recycling the extraneous materials I’d collected during the make but ended up being made from scratch with the help of Robo Cop (right). I also made the table plan and the name cards (complete with the individuals menu choice on the reverse which proved handy!) but of course I forgot to photograph them so I’ll leave u with some shots from the day…

The Happy Couple	The Bride & Her Maids
Me & My Plus One, lol	The Bride & Me

Thanks for looking & happy WOYWW!

WOYWW 107 - The Debris Of An Evil Tuesday!

Does anyone remember when I first joined WOYWW, how tidy I was? Well, you know its only polite when u've got guests coming round isnt it? On my desk is a nearly finished blue version of my previous post, the inkblot butterflies, on which I have managed to smudge the sentiment, crease the vellum and glue down upside down... r u feeling wot kind of Tuesday I was having?! You may just be able to see the other colours... I think I'll leave those til I've calmed down a bit!

Following on from the theme of my last couple of WOYWW posts, on the windowsill is yet another canvas that I have painted a seaside theme on, this time with Paperartsy Fresco paints. Then I tried the Mod Podge transfer technique I asked about last week... n it didnt work! I did it Monday night, left it dry and out-of-the-blue on Tuesday, at work, it hit me that applying the water to get the paper off was gonna degrade the paint underneath and I was right. So.... back to the drawing board for how I'm gonna make my huge canvas that lil bit more adventurous....

WOYWW 66 - Good Job Its not New Year!

Well I had every intention of blogging something this week as I've been so lax lately but as you can see that didn't happen till last night when I was preparing this - I even missed WOYWW last week, altho I did make it around to viewing a fair few. This week (altho the pic was taken Tuesday) I have a visitor in my 'studio'! My best buddy Stace is here working on her pregnancy/baby journal - one of the mini books I made couple of weeks back - and she has had her first experience with the cuttlebug but I'm sorry to report that after the initial wow, she gave up on it pretty quick sayin it was time consuming!

 And as you can see, I tidied up before I took the pic again DOH! but I have replaced the falling down shelving with something more desk based - a bathroom trolley from Asda that I put together upside down so the legs wudn't fall down the gaps at the back of the desk! Its already full tho so I might have to look at getting a second one - at £7.50, I think I can just about fit it in the budget!

Just to answer a few q's from weeks gone by, to TraceyR - no my scissors aren't electric as funky as that would be, its the laptop power lead! To Elizabeth, I followed the tutorial here for the smacking acetate & To Morti - the fairy image is a Lili of the Valley die cut if u've not seen them before u must visit, their images are bootiful!!

WOYWW 65

I'm not sure whether to thank or cuss u lovely WOYWWers for your many comments on my laden shelves cos as I sat at my desk on that Weds evening I thought "Hmm they are a bit wonky!" only to find, on closer inspection that they were coming apart at the seams! So I quickly cleared everything off and had a lil panic... only to end up turning them upside down and re-hanging them but with less stuff on this time... until I can think of a better solution, at least!

I have to confess, I have very much cheated and this photo is not in fact from this week or even a Wednesday but I cudn't go two weeks without playing along with the wonderful WOYWW so I took a pic of my desk in a get-every-thing-out-on-the-desk moment to keep in reserve!

And the result of this atrocity? An attempt at the Lili Of The Valley sketch challenge for which I - all together now - missed the deadline! Must try harder!

WOYWW 63 - Mish Mash!

Come on, thats positively bomb site material!!

On the left we have the result of a messy hour or so trying to follow my cousins smacking acetate tutorial - messy but SOOO much fun! I did a whole load of sheets in all the combinations of the colours I own (all four of em, lol) I also experimented with printing onto tracing paper and white glueing (PVA?) the images onto the ink splodges once they'd dried. My images are along a horticultural theme in line with the Daring Cardmakers challenge (think Julia might know summat bout that...?) and I'm really quite chuffed with how they've come out. I'll show u some closer up images, if/when they ever become cards! Not sure how well u can see but most of the rest of the piles consist of a load of cd-roms my cuz lent me and a load of incredibly funky base cards that her mom/my auntie has sent me! They're such a generous lot up there, lol!

Happy WOYWW everyone; ready, set...get nosey!!

p.s. I've added a gallery page which features some of the cards I didnt think were worthy of their own post, so take a peek...

WOYWW 62 - Mini Book Madness

                                                             Is this better Keryn? Altho u can still see most of my cutting mat so probably not, lol. Who would've thought my butterfly shaped odds n sods tray would attract such attention?! No, its not crocs and theres nowt growing out of it.. except a pile of crap! Um, this weeks lil obsession is mini books, I've been thinking about making one for ages but that was as far as I got until I went to my boyf's over the weekend armed only with my laptop and scraps box and decided to finally try and follow one of the Create 10 lessons that I signed up for. I faffed about a bit n didnt really get anywhere til I opened lesson 10 and decided to have a go at the mini book. My first attempt was awful as I didnt have a ruler or knife but I got the basics down and got my head round the instructions and when I got back to my desk I made the black and white version - which I'm pretty chuffed with but not a clue what I'm gonna do with it! (the paper is all from Clare Curd's signature range, if you're interested) My best friend wants me to make her a pregnancy journal but she stated no dark colours so I started to make another one with some paper from a scrapbooking kit I bought from Home Bargains (the red thing to the left) but I got so far and decided I don't like the colours and I knew I would make a mess if I tried to take it apart so I kind of abandoned it and started again - the paper stood upright at the back of the mat is what I've started cutting out for third time lucky so we'll see if this one survives! Um, have I missed anything? Oh the shrink plastic butterfly wasn't a success, not sure if I need more practice or I just need to be more precise in my cutting but some of the finer detail split so they curled up and got stuck to themselves when I heated it. Really must get some printable plastic... Head over to Queens Julias palace for more WOYWW

WOYWW 61 - I'm baaack!

It seems this WOYWW isn't only a one time deal and if I'm not careful u'll send the boys round so I'm back for a second round! I've taken all ur advice and blatantly cheated, I took this pic last night (Tues) and I ever so slightly staged it by taking the pic before I tidied up - cos lets face it after wud b pointless, really!

So what do we have, well I think I'm getting over my lil lost mojo hissy fit from the previous post. I made a cocktail themed card yday for my cousin, based on one of the quick cards in Papercraft Inspirations (but that had to be mailed today before u ask!) and I downloaded the latest freebie pyramage from Printable Heaven's French advertising collection (love love love old adverts!) which became one of the smallest cards in the world - not too sure how that happened! And then today I made a topiary tree using a small flower punch (again suggested by PI mag) which is frankly pretty damn cool! And on my desk is the most gorgeous of gorgeous marianne butterfly die and the shrink plastic I'm attempting to cut it out of... stay tuned to see if it works!

Get over to Julias Stamping Ground & enjoy your Whats On Your Workdesk Wednesday!

WOYWW 60 - My First Time!

Hello WOYWWers, been reading ur blogs for a few weeks now n finally decided to join in! To be fair, this will prolly be my only entry as I never have time to take/upload a pic n waffle before I go to work so I'm takin advantage of a day off (n slight crafters block) to partake! If you have no idea wot this is all about, pop over to Julias blog n check out the fun!

Well I moved my craft room around about six weeks ago (mostly during the England/Germany game actually!) and finally set myself up a desk n some natural light... oh n started a blog!

So, what do we have? Nothing very exciting as I've been away for a few days n will be away for the next two weekends as well so my 'studio' will be sadly neglected for a while . My trusty laptop, my i'm-quite-proud-of-this ribbon storage (aka a bit of cardboard with holes in it over a coathanger!). Um, shoe rack from Argos hanging (precariously) on the wall as makeshift shelf (my old workspace was a lot deeper than this so it made more sense then!)...um geez, I didnt realise how hard it would be to point everything out! To the right is an easel card I'm playing about with - I'll explain more if its successful, lol and under the main desk is my Cuttlebug and recycling bag! A slight swing to the right shows the incredibly distracting view out my window (or maybe I'm jus nosy!) a plastic tray in the shape of a butterfly that I got from Matalan n holds odds & ends, another easel card that I will blog about at some point, my rapidly cooling cup of coffee and some other finished cards in the same theme as the easel card. On the wall under the window is a Ikea (yes! Ikea!) hanging rack and the bit of red u can see in the bottom corner is my paper storage, one of those expanding files things that doesnt actually close anymore, theres so much in it!! So feel free to ask any questions, I don't think I have anything to hide!