WOYWW - My New Craft Room

I have never joined in WOYWW before, although I have often looked, but I thought this week it would be a good excuse for me to show you that my new craft room is now coming along. For those of you who don't know me, our home was all but destroyed by a burst pipe at the beginning of February and we have only just returned to it after the rebuild, having been living in temporary accommodation. Colin has spent about 10 days solid varnishing each shelf and strut of the craft room furniture, which is Ivar from Ikea - cheap but very practical and flexible for me:-

 

Colin has put back up for me the stamp storage unit he made for me when I first started stamping. Each shelf has a little ledge so that you can have a double row of stamps and hopefully see the ones of the back row. Obviously I have a lot more UMs now, but some of these wooden stamps are still real favourites.

We are really enjoying being back home and Colin has been amazing with all the jobs he has done. Starting to craft again at home as I did before is really important to me as it's a sign of getting back to normality. Thank you Julie for hosting WOYWW.

The Golden Age of Ballooning

Over on the Happy Daze blog today I have made this card for this month's Steampunkery challenge - I do hope you will join in as it is a great prize - and one of my favourite themes.

I made this card for my brother's birthday, using the Artistic Outpost French Flight and Paris Exposition stamps from Happy Daze, and one of the chipboard propellers they sell, which I embossed with gold ep. For the card I stamped loads of stamps from the stamp sets - nearly all of them, using different shades of ink so that some images were more in the foreground than others, such as the man in the hot air balloon who I stamped in bright blue.

If you are in the US you can get the Artistic Outpost stamps direct from them here, and I am entering this card into their September Referral Programme, the subject for which is Anything Goes.

The Last Days of Summer - Crafty Individuals' challenge

 The Crafty Individuals' challenge for September is 'Last Days of Summer'. My framed French menu and wine bottles represents what this means to me as this year I have been desperate for a break from our house problems and was hoping to get to France before the summer was over for some nice meals out. Well, we made it! We just got back Sunday evening and feel more refreshed now and able to face our DIY and unpacking. The house is chaos but we are getting there. I am hoping we will get the internet set up in the next few days. We are coping well with sleeping on the floor although we hadn't bargained on how difficult it is to get up from the floor at our age! I find rolling over onto all fours and then crawling is the best way, but it is a bit undignified!

I used the Crafty Individuals' Spring background papers together with the wine and menu stamp CI 348 and the floral postcard stamp CI 302. I stamped the bottles onto clear packaging material and then curved them with the heat gun.

I hope you will join in the challenge and show us what the last days of summer mean to you - there's always a great prize!

Butterfly Girl Canvas

I've made this little canvas over on the Happy Daze blog today, using the Lost Coast butterfly girl stamp and the Prima en Francais text. Hope you will visit me over there!

These are the sides of the canvas. I used those tiny little Prima clear stamps you can get very cheaply.

 

 

I probably won't be on line much for the next few days as we are having our internet put in at the end of the week - I'm at my friend's at the mo, using her WiFi. Our house is complete chaos!

 

 

 

A Lovely Day

I have made this card for the Happy Daze blog using stamps from the Artistic Outpost 'Lovely Day' set. I used Spring and Summer Limited Edition Distress Inks on glossy card and stamped the main girl collage stamp, and then the girl on her own, and cut them out. I used a patterned paper and added bees from the Bloom and Grow set and sayings from the both sets all over the paper in matching inks, and finally added a die cut and embossed flourish.

I am entering this for the Artistic Outpost Referral Programme for September, the theme of which is Anything Goes. You can buy Artistic Outpost stamps from here in the US, or from Happy Daze in the UK.

Up, Up, and Away!

The Happy Daze challenge for August is Circling the World. I do hope you will join in as there is a great prize! This is my contribution:-

I am entering this for the Artistic Outpost Referral Programme for August, the theme of which is Anything Goes. You can buy their stamps from here in the US, or from Happy Daze in the UK.

You can find more details of how I made the card here, on the Happy Daze Blog.

Returning to my Nest

After a fraught seven months, we have spent our first night in our own home. It feels very strange at the moment and there is a huge amount to do, as you can imagine. Nothing of my original home remains and I can't find anything and have nowhere to put anything, so it is very disorientating. We don't have any furniture and are sleeping on the floor. It will be a long time before we have finished sorting everything out with the insurance company, and have replaced our contents. I found the move back exhausting and much worse than I expected, especially in this incredible heat we have here in the UK at the moment. We didn't have a removal company and did it all just the two of us, despite many very kind offers of help (from very busy people who already have enough on their own workloads!). I wanted to leave the rental home absolutely spotless as you can easily be asked to pay high cleaning charges but the rental agent inspected everything and was very pleased.

All this sounds a bit negative but actually our house is looking absolutely beautiful. Our lovely builders did a great job, completely to our specification, and we are pleased with the choices we made for fixtures and fittings and decorating. Thank you so much for the wonderful support and kindness I have received from all of you; it has helped enormously.

Aperture Notebook for Happy Daze

I have made a little notebook using the little girl from the Artistic Outpost Think and Wonder set from Happy Daze. I also used the Spring and Summer Distress Inks and Inka Gold. For more details please visit the Happy Daze blog.

I am linking this to the Artistic Outpost August Referral Programme, the theme of which is Anything Goes. You can buy Artistic Outpost stamps from Happy Daze here in the UK, or from Artistic Outpost in the US.