WOYWW 391

So I am back again for one of my haphazard visits, still in the throws of moving , or not, and thank you everyone for all your sympathetic comments last time I talked about our move.
So to clarify about our move, we feel God is telling us that this house and garden are too big for us if we are to do what he wants us to do, which we believe is working as Waterways Chaplains on the canals. For that reason we have sold the house and are looking for a smaller one with a mooring at the bottom of the garden, however we have not found the right one, so will, at some point, be moving onto our narrow boat. But I sincerely hope it will not happen before Christmas, we are out of the country from 19th December and are certainly not moving in the week before that, so I am desperately hoping our buyers cannot sort out their legal problems until the new year. So 'Yes we are moving' but 'No I am not not tearing my hair out waiting for it to happen'
So my work top this week, just the  usual chaos, not really worth taking a picture of it 'cos it looks like so many times before. However what is not on my work top any more is the 70th Birthday for my OH. I  spent many hours planning, thinking, discarding and generally worrying over this card and could not decide which idea was best, so in the end I went for them all, so here it is, on the coffee table, (not enough space on the cluttered worktop.)

I have tried to make sure you can read most of the pages.
If somehow dear reader you are wondering why I am bearing my soul, visit the lovely Lady Julia 
who hosts these crazy Wednesday get togethers, and see what we all try to share on our desktops.
Well I'll not blather on for the sake of it, Thank you for visiting my page and if you make a comment I most certainly will get back to you.
Bless you
Chris

WOYWW 387

Good morning lovely peoples, I hope I will be here this Wednesday to join in with What's on Your worktop Wednesday, hosted by the wonderful Lady Julia. 
And if you think that is a strange statement, over the past couple of months I have tried at least 4 times to be with you, started draft posts and not been able to carry the exercise through, because life has been too busy. Life has been busy because we have sold our house, and are at the end of a chain which seems in danger of imploding on itself. They say moving house is the most stressful thing after marriage and having a baby, and they are not wrong. In mid September we started on a major downsizing exercise, as we don't wish to pay to store stuff we will instantly ditch when we finally find a new house. Then first one legal problem, then another with deeds and boundaries and mortgages, and suddenly everything was on hold.

 So all the craft stuff I had sorted into three piles, storage at Margaret's, paid storage and take with us, suddenly got mined for stuff to make Christmas cards and eventually my worktop became like this!
Actually that was a week ago, by yesterday morning it was much worse, but I didn't take a picture before it got too much even for me.

















 So while OH was out Monday afternoon and I cleared it up to this, picture taken Tuesday morning, but as we are going out in an hour and will not be back to it before tomorrow, will be just the same  on Wednesday.

So on the cutting mat you can see some of the stamps I have been using to make Christmas cards, then beyond that are the cards I have been sorting into sizes, for inserts and envelopes. the largish pile beyond that is the papers and embellishments I have piled up, and then there is the storage folder for dies, and some lamps.

And artfully! arranged for you to see are some of the cards I have been making; bit of stamping, bit of die cutting, some recycling of last year's card and  some nearly mass produced with a picture off the internet.At some point I have to put inserts into them and find envelopes, and then the difficult task of writing them and telling people that we have no new or old address anymore.

So we still have no idea when we are moving, and for those who are interested, our plan was to spend a couple of summer months on our boat looking for the right house with a mooring, in the place where God wants us. However our plan did not include spending the worst of the winter on the boat, we will have to wait and see because we can do nothing more.

Thanks for reading and I love comments and will endeavor to get back to any lovely person who does comment.
Bless you all
Chris

WOYWW 372

Hello lovely readers and welcome to WOYWW, or What's on my Worktop Wednesday, and for those who have no idea what I am talking about, go over to the wonderful Julia's Stamping ground. 

Talking of Julia, a big WELCOME BACK, we have missed you so much and we are so pleased to have you back. Not that Jan hasn't done a brilliant job as an understudy, but the star is the lady we all want in the starring role

 So to the business of the day.

As we are still on the boat, this was the dining

table yesterday where I was making a couple of cards.  A birthday card for my niece and a wedding anniversary card for my sister.
It was quite dark unfortunately, we spent the whole day moored under trees because it was so warm, which kept the temperature bearable, but meant it was not very light for making cards.

Being on the boat means that I have to clear away my stuff every time we want a meal, and all my stuff is stored in two drawers and I have to get out everything to find what I need, as a result I don't manage to get much done, however I did make a wedding card last week, before we hired a car and drove all the way back to Wales for the wedding.




 







 

We are moored near Roydon in Hertfordshire, which is very beautiful, and in spite of the train line being fairly close, the trees muffle the sound of the trains quite well.
We are heading up to Bishop's Stortford on Thursday and then slowly back through London and then working our way north towards Cheshire.

Well that's all from me for now, have a lovely WOYWW day.
I love reading all your comments, and will try to get back to you, internet access on the canals permitting,
Bless you for visiting
Chris

WOYWW 367

Hello WOYWWers, this is going to be a short post, mainly because I am writing this on my phone. However

  as this is all about our worktops, I will show what was effectively my  worktop at 11 am yesterday, Caen Hill  locks,  although by that point we had already done 11 locks before we tackled these 16, and then another 6 beyond  to Devizes.








As you can see, much of it was done in the pouring rain, as a consequence, today's work place may well look like this, at least if I have my own way, although the inexhaustible  Mr D. might expect me to plod on even further.
Anyway, you may, dear reader, be wondering why I am telling you this? If you click on the link it will take you to the inestimable LunchLadyJan who is hosting What's on your work top Wednesday.
Thanks you for reading my drivel, and if you make a comment, I will do my best to get back to you, but with internet access rather sketchy on the canal, it may not be for a few days.
Just edited because all the comments so far have understood that we had continuous rain yesterday and we didn't, just some of the time and glorious sunshine other times.
Bless you and have a happy day
Chris

WOYWW

Well, good morning lovely people and welcome to WOYWW. If you want further information about WOYWW visit the lovely Jan.  
This is going to be very short post, with only one picture, and that is of my worktop full of not craft, unless you count the crate at the far end, behind the yellow one, all packed with paper and dies and stamps.

We are getting ready to head off on the narrow boat again, picking her up from Bath on Friday and going where our fancy takes us, except on the Kennet and Avon, there isn't a huge choice, it is either East or West.
Over the next few months I will try to share from time to time, and will certainly visit lots of Woywwers, but probably won't be regularly here as internet access and phone signals are somewhat limited in the back and beyond.
So I'm off, bless you for visiting and I will try to get back to you if you make a lovely comment.
Chris

WOYWW 361

Good morning lovely people, and welcome to my post for Julia's What's on Your Worktop Wednesday desk snoop. Do visit there when you have finished looking here.

So on my worktop, first thing this morning, are 10 bags I've made for Margaret, for the school children in Uganda. 

          

 I haven't done anything in the way of card making since last week's blitz, but the bag with purple trim became part of a sort of  mixed media project.

Having stitched the patterned ribbon across the front of the bag I then picked up the remaining length  and realised I had measured it wrongly and it was three inches too short for the strap. Panic, panic! Hunted everywhere for something to trim the strap, nothing vaguely the right colour. Tried  zigzag stitching along the strap but purple and mauve didn't show up at all. Then I had a brain wave, lots of white ribbon, lots of alcohol inks 

and lots of messy fingers, and I had the perfect purple coloured  ribbon for the strap.
This picture doesn't actually show the colour of my finger, they were much more purple than they look here. So was my nice white work top, even with the glass mat and the big cutting mat underneath, so I had to spend 1/2 hour with bleach getting the marks out of the painted surface. I am such a messy person.

Anyway, messy person is off to visit lots of other crafty desks,
Bless you for visiting and thank you, in advance, for all your comments, I will get back to anyone who leave a number.

Chris

WOYWW 360

Well it's Wednesday again, seems to have come round very fast. Once again I linking my desk,with many other, at that wonderful desk fest at Madame Julia's.
So what is on my desk today?

Practically nothing because we have had people in the house, 

so all I have to share with you are a few cardsI finished,

 

 before I shovelled all the rubbish in the bin and the usable stuff in a box to put out of sight.
And I'll just finish with  this picture of what was outside the window when we pulled the curtains this morning.

Yesterday we had brilliant sunshine and temperature in double figures and this morning this!  And we had thunder and lightning with it too, and we are almost in May.
So I'm off to visit other desks, thank you for visiting, I'll will get back if you leave me a comment.
Bless you all
Chris

WOYWW 359

Welcome to anyone who has found this blog by chance, can I invite you to come with me to the What's on your worktop Wednesday gathering over at Julia's wonderful hosting spot at The Stamping Ground. There you can peruse lots of far more interesting desks than mine, and for those who have come from there deliberately to visit me, Thank you so much, I will make return visits, sometime before next Wednesday.
Before I go any further, last week I remarked that I had struggled with internet access in Scotland, the previous week which was why I had not returned any visits that week. Little did I know that on Wednesday and Thursday evening last week, Sky was going to conspire to reduce my paid for broadband connections of 14 mb/s, to around 1mb/s. So if I failed to get back to you at all, or was so tardy that you thought I was ignoring you, I'm sorry it was Sky causing chaos.
However, I think things are working properly now.
So my worktop: for those who know my worktop well will see that normal service has been restored and it is good and messy.
Picture taken late Tuesday evening, from the end.
So at the top of the picture is my trusty toolbox, a paint brush I use for brushing up all kinds of things, some paper, two tubes of Pinflair photo glue, some tape, and on the glass mat, a card I have been working on and bottom left, a couple of bits done with masks, embossing paste on silver card.

 

So last week I showed you the embossing and Pan Pastels stuff I did in Scotland, and in this picture you can see that I made it into a card for the friend we visited up there. I hope she liked it.

 and just a closer view of the card on the glass mat.

It is a  card for the dedication of the son of our pastor and his wife, this coming Sunday, so I need to get it finished.

Well bless you for visiting and if you leave a comment I will get back to you, internet permitting.

Happy WOYWW

Chris

WOYWW 358

Hi all, I'm back from a lovely holiday in Scotland and first of all I need to say 'Thank you' to all of you who visited my page last week and made some lovely comments, knowing full well that I would be unlikely to make return visits. I did say internet access might be rubbish in Scotland and I was right. I wrote the post before we left home on Monday and published it on Tuesday evening in the pub where we had supper. Then Wednesday morning saw me standing outside the pub hoping I could log back into their internet to upload to The Lady Julia's Stamping ground. It seemed to take ages, and then it started to rain, but I checked it was successful then dashed back to the caravan for breakfast and that was the last time I had any internet access.

So my desk this morning, or actually last night before I went out. You can see the few bits of crafting materials and tools I took away with me. There is my Spellbinders Sapphire, a storage folder of dies, my Pan Pastels, some cotton wool, craft knife and craft mat.
I didn't actually use them in the caravan but one of the friends we went to see took me to her local craft club and I did a little bit of playing with the Pan Pastels. Unfortunately I discovered that the Sapphire doesn't take embossing folders very satisfactorily so spent ages trying to sort the sandwich which left very little time to do much with the pastels.

This is what I did manage to do, the one bit of embossing that was vaguely satisfactory, it says Thank you, and then I cut out some flowers and coloured them with the pastels.









And just to prove I went to Scotland, this is the river Dee near Braemar, looks a nice well behaved river there, but in December it escaped its bed in Ballater, where our friend lives, and caused the worst flooding in living memory. She wasn't flooded, but she was very busy helping all those who were.




I'll leave you with this lovely picture of a Miss Indigo primula that we saw at Thrieve gardens, near Castle Douglas. So bright and cheerful on a chilly spring day, and the gardens are really worth a visit if you are in that area.

Apart from sorting the inevitable pile of washing we brought back from the trip, I have nothing to do today, so will definitely return visits and do lots of desk visiting as I missed seeing all your desks last week.
Bless you all
Chris

WOYWW 357

Good morning lovely people, this is my worktop today, or it was when we left it on Monday morning, and no one else has been in the house since, so it should still be as clean and sterile. (Don't worry about me telling the world that we are not there, see that blue car on the opposite side of the road, if the owner saw anyone approaching our house he would have the police out very quickly, very very quickly, he has done in the past, nothing gets past him)

But we are away camping in Scotland, enjoying ourselves, currently in the Aboyne area.
However, last week I showed you the fun I had with  a play day with Margaret and showed you some of the stuff and said that some of it I probably wouldn't use. and this was one of them.

Neet suggested that I keep them and cut into them, so I thought, 'Well that card for my daughter needed a leaf on it and maybe that brown/green one would provide the right colour leaf.' So I cut into it, and there they were, three brilliant leaves and the two brown ones worked perfectly on my daughter's card.

And so they do.
Now I have a big problem, I daren't throw away anything now, and my cupboards are going to be overwhelmed with all those scraps that really will work as something.

So I have shared my stuff with you, courtesy of that lovely lady, Mrs Julia Dunnit so if you pop over to her Stamping Ground you too can share your crafty bits.
Thank you for visiting my page,I'm not sure whether I will be able to respond to your kind comments while we are away, my internet is a bit limited, but I will read them all and try to get back to you when we return home.
Bless you all
Chris

WOYWW 356

Fantastic play day

Yesterday I went to Margaret (Glitterandglue) for a play day, we had a wonderful time, getting very messy, and I'm sorry this post is rather picture heavy.

First we did some playing with shaving foam and and alcohol inks and acrylic paints, made lots of backgrounds, but at the end, neither of us was very excited, I can't see either of us repeating the exercise any time soon.

Here are all our creations drying on her bedroom floor, on wax paper, 

and here are mine on my work surface. I will probably only use two or three of these efforts.

Then we had a go on my homemade Gelli plate, I've had it for about three years and never used it before, again, not really enamored and probably won't ever use it again. Don't think the end result was worth the effort, I might use the blue one but not the other one.

 Next we played with Margaret's Brushos and made a fabulous mess, that's when my hands got so mucky, we had a wonderful time, and I am seriously thinking of buying some of those. 

They are fabulous to use, here are the results of that play and I will probably use all of these creations in some way or other.

So, now as this blog heading is What's on my worktop Wednesday, kindly hosted by the fabulous Julia, and we are supposed to be baring our worktops at the Stamping Ground,   I'd better show you my worktop.

At the far end are all my creations from yesterday, and on the glass mat is a card I am making for daughter, with the Pollyanna Pickering DVD A Walk in the Wild, and in between, my trusty tool box.

Well it is time I finished this or you, dear kind visitor, will never get to read it. 

Thank you for dropping by and wading through my drivel, and if you make a comment I will certainly return the favour.

Bless you

Chris

WOYWW 355

Morning all.
Many visitors to my page have commented on the size of the space I have for working, and it is a large space 13'6" long and nearly 2' wide, however the danger of such a large space is that it can be hijacked for purposes other than craft. Over the weekend and on Monday I had a major sort out of stuff, lots of unwanted papers, embellishments etc, which I send to the play therapists at the local hospital for the children's wards. so once I had done that, I cleared and started thinking about the 40th birthday card I had to make and a 'Sorry you're leaving' card. However having cleared away all the unwanted stuff the surface was more or less clear, I vacuumed the floor and went down to lunch. Pottered around and then went back upstairs to find OH looking at the vacant space. "You were going to sort the Christmas decorations weren't you", he said and "Let's get the stuff out of the cupboard, on to here and sort it all before it goes back into the cupboard" And this is why my work top looked like this yesterday afternoon when I took the picture.

So the only evidence of any craft ever happening on there are the scissors and rulers a bits on the window sill, so nothing really crafty there except just seen it peeping out of the left hand corner is the Pergamano Christmas tree that Margaret made for us. I hung some really glittery earrings on it to decorate it.

So just to get the craft into this page, I'll show you a card I made before OH took over the work surface.  A week or so ago Margaret and i had a play day with masks and glitter paste, and i was really taken with her tree mask. Then when I was asked for a bereavement card for a gentleman, this seemed to fit the bill.       

Well  that's all for now, so come with me kind reader to The Stamping Ground to visit our wonderful host Julia, and look at all the fabulous desks shared by other desker.

Bless you for visiting.

Chris

WOYWW 354

So it's Wednesday again and here we are sharing our work spaces with anyone who chooses to look, and that is courtesy of the wonderful Julia at her special stamping-ground.

Well last week I was gently castigated for not showing my messy desk, so today you have got the full disaster. (in reality it was taken Tuesday evening before the light went.)
Actually looking at from this angle, I stood on a stool to give you a good view, the working area isn't too bad, it is just the other 8 feet of it that is 'disorganized', beyond the BigShot there is another 24"  or thereabouts.
So working backwards from the BigShot, you can almost see my Woodware Fingerguard cutter, a red box of assorted papers that I take to Craft club on Thursday, alongside that is a Xyron label maker, fabulous for sticking on die cut sentiments, scissors, knife, glue, bits of paper, a congratulations card, and evidence that I did start tidying the mess. Those bits of blue paper I found when I was putting away some other blue paper and thought 'Oh they look good together, I could make ...... with them' so they are on the desk for the next project.

I thought I would give you a clearer view of what is on the mat, a half made box card,  a double twisted easel card, an embossing folder, a piece of ribbon saying 'celebrate' and a piece of card with leave on, done through a mask, the day Margaret and I had a play date.






 

And just a couple more cards to show you how busy I have been, this was made because I saw the tutorial and thought 'I have got to have a go at that', really fun, and of course I soon found a use for it.

And this was for a club swap, using the other bit of the Celebrate ribbon on the desk.









Well I'm off to get dressed, have breakfast and then look at loads of other desks, Thank you for visiting and I will get back to you if you make a comments.
Bless you
Chris

WOYWW 353

Good morning all you lovely people, I'm running late today.
First of all I am not going to show you my desk this morning, because as usual it is just a mess of scraps of paper which need putting away before I start on another project, instead I will just show you three cards I have finished over the past few days.
However if you want to peruse some really interesting desks, go to Julia's wonderful Stamping ground, where you can look at lots.

Suddenly all my friends daughters are getting engaged so a demand for Engagement cards made me realise that I have no 'Engagement' die so had to find a way of getting Congratulations and Engagement in two different ways.

So this is the first one,




 

 And the second, unfortunately trying to take a picture of holographic mirror card with a mobile phone was not very successful.

And this is a birthday card I made using Sizzix Framelits Die  Triple Fancy Frame Flip-its. Again the mirror card making it hard to take a good picture.
I bought the die set, because the information stated 'Design Dimensions 6 1/4" x 5 1/2"' which I assumed referred to finished card, and was very disappointed to find that that was the size of the card from which the design is cut and the final card is rather smaller, So having made this card for a friend, I then fiddled around with my existing dies to create the Engagement card. It is certainly easier and quicker using the set, but still quite fiddly.

So now I'm going to visit some more interesting desks and maybe tidy mine so that I can actually do another Engagement card.
Thanks for dropping by and I will try to get back to all those who leave a comment.
Bless you
Chris