WOYWW

Well this is not going to be much of an entry because life seems to be so busy. Retirement is such hard work. When you struggling to get into work each day and you dream of retirement and having all the time in the world, but when you get there, you lack the structure of working schedules so you think 'I have plenty of time, I'll just enjoy sitting down with my breakfast and relax' and suddenly it is lunchtime and you have done nothing with your day at all. Throw hospital appointments into the mix, as you get older they get more frequent, and you have lost even more time.
So this week we have been all the way from North Wales to Sheffield for a hospital appointment for the man, effectively two whole days worth, we stayed with our daughter in Doncaster on Sunday night, so yesterday I was still finishing the 70th birthday card which has to be taken away with us tomorrow. It is actually finished and on my worktop with loads of junk and a couple of other cards I had to have done by today.

I am quite pleased with it, although there wasn't room for her children as well on the front, it would have become messy.
The card at the bottom is for my son in law and this is a better picture of it.

The five star Tech Support reference is because he spent nearly 5 hours on Sunday evening helping us sort out our new phones and tablets so that we could sync calendars and get apps and use them for the purposed which we had bought them.
He really is wonderful at Tech support, formerly a rocket scientist and now a vicar.
 
Must stop now, going to Netherlands for the 70th birthday party tomorrow and not got anywhere near finished packing.

Woyww

Well I am cross. I wrote half a page of stuff, previewed, tried to correct spellings and the whole lot disappeared, so this is the mark 2 version, which is never as good as the first version.
This won't be a picture of my worktop because it is still laden with the stuff we brought back from holiday, a pile of clothes to be ironed and not a lot else. 
It should however have had on it the card I am planning for my sister's 70th at the end of the month, but I wanted to do a collage of her interests, singing, her garden, caravanning, grandchildren etc, but I spent most of the morning trawling through pictures both electronic and paper and realised that I have very little that is suitable for the purpose. All I have achieved so far is a picture of their caravan and a disgruntled hubby asking 'What have you been doing all day?' 
I still have a week in which so have emailed my niece and hope she will come up trumps with some good pics and with luck I will have it all finished and on my worktop next Wednesday. Meantime I will put up a picture of the last 70th card I made.

This was an easy one to do because I only knew her as a ballroom dancer, but can't claim that much ignorance about my sister.
Well now I am doubly cross because having posted this, I found the original one in drafts, but I am not changing it now.

woyww

Well we are away on our holiday, and the weather has been pretty awful.  Boating in a blizzard is  not my idea fun.
My desktop is just the table on the boat, and the card, I hope I can get the pic on here, is a wedding anniversary card for hubby for Friday.

Hurrah it worked.
And this is picture of theexciting part of Birmingham we are going through.
Gosh, it is not easy doing a blog on a 7in tab.

The best laid plans...................

Well the weather has altered our plans 
completely. Today hubby had an appointment at Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, so we left home at 7.30 just as it was beginning to snow. We got 5 miles from home and it was clear that at 5 miles an hour on a single icy lane on A55 it would take us 24 hours to do what is normally a 2 hour journey, So we turned around at the first opportunity and came home. I'd made the effort to go out to get some answers from the docs in Sheffield, but once we got home, my cold floored me and I went back to bed. 
And as the weather promises to remain awful we have had to postpone our holiday until a) the weather is better and b) my cold is better, because I am not going to go and do locks, in the snow, feeling this grotty. Feel so rough I don't even want to make cards so I will just show you  a few I made a while back.

It is amazing how cards I thought were so special when I made them look so simple and unexciting when I look back at them, but I think these have stood the test of time.The one with the green ribbon was very hastily made for a friend when her husband died but I do think it is very effective and worth repeating in different colours,and the black and white one was just playing with dies and borders.

WOYWW

Well this is going to be a brief entry because I am feeling really rough, but if I don't post today everyone might think I am deserting WOYWW.We're going to be away for 3 weeks on our narrowboat Bendithion. Although I will try to take some craft stuff with me I might not be able to upload pictures on a limited link.
We are hoping to go down the river Severn to Tewkesbury and then up the Avon and through Birmingham to near Chester where our boat is moored.
So my worktop today has just a few half made cards on it that I may or may not feel up to finishing, when my sore throat is better. I was up half the night coughing and inspiration is not strong in my persona at present.

I will just spend a short time looking at other people's WOYWWs and then retire to sit in front of the fire with a good book and a hot drink.

Yesterday evening I felt I really had to finish some of the cards on my worktop, so I had a very busy time trying to stamp sentiments and work out what die cuts to use to make the card elements harmonise. The black and white one took the most time as I couldn't stamp the sentiment on the white shimmery card. The ink just bled horribly and I tried at least 4 different inks, Papermania, Stazon, Whispers and Momento, and none of them produced a sharp image on the card. I have no idea what the card is, pulled it out of the drawer when I started making the card and thought 'that looks nice'. So then I had to colour some silver peeloff to get something that would fit on the piece I had cut out for it to go on. Why is nothing ever simple?

For those who like to know these things, the black shaped card came from Create and craft and were called Silk art cards and are no longer available, the black and white paper is from Pink Petticoat, Grannie's wallpaper, the white square was cut with Spellbinders ornate squares and the flower with Spellbinders poinsettia.  The sentiment panel I believe is Labels 8.


And if anyone can tell me how to crop pictures on here to get rid of the scenery behind, I'd appreciate it.

My next creation was far simpler but just as effective, I think and I can tell you nothing at all about any of the makings since everything came out of my stash. 

 This one was a fun one to make, but very fiddly, cutting out all the flowers. It was virtually a straight copy of a card I saw in a magazine, but not using their papers or colourways.

 Again the paper is pink petticoat, Pointy poinsettias in various toning colours. I do love their papers and the fact that they all available in 50 different colours and, as long as you print all you need at the same time, you can be certain that your colours will all match.

The final one was also on my worktop on Wednesday. Again the ornate squares die cutter and silver peel offs coloured black.

And finally, since I took a picture of them to send to her, these are the flowers my daughter sent me for Mothering Sunday, still looking as fresh as ever on their diet of Sprite lemonade. I had heard of this idea before, of putting fresh flowers in lemonade, must have sugar in it, but have not had such wonderful results with it before. They have been in a warm living room since they arrived 11 days ago but have not dropped anything or suffered at all from the hear or age.
Well I have things to do so must stop,
Blessings to you all
Chris

Following my comment on Julia's blog about crochet, I thought I'd post a picture of one of the many blankets I have made over the past few years.

This one is on the spare bed, I have another one that I made for the bed on the boat, but don't have a picture of it, although I am certain I took one.







Three sets of camera batteries later I have laid it on the bedroom floor and taken a picture of it.I would have put it on the spare bed, but that is full of stuff to go in the attic and don't feel inspired to do that at the moments.

Started trying to finish card I showed on WOYWW but my efforts at stamping do not seem to be going well so it might have to wait until Monday.
Feeling a bit frustrated at present with making cards, I bought two discs from Docrafts, with the Digital designer and found that they were so not-user friendly that I got very cross, and cross is not the right frame of mind to do any crafting. the images are lovely but the programme is so substandard compared to Craft Artist that I feel cheated. I don't do a huge amount of stuff with the computer, prefer using 'real' bits, but just occasionally I need to do something in a hurry and if necessary I can produce a presentable card in 15 minutes with Craft Artist. If I want to make it that little bit better I can do some decoupage.
Well I have visitors coming to supper in about 40 minutes so I'd better to something towards that.
Chris