WOYWW 456

I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS..

And what help I've had over the past few weeks - the generosity of deskers is legendary and has been quite wonderful. I only asked one person if, while they were having a good sort out, I could have their cast offs!  Eight lovely folk have either passed stash on to me or helped me in my first faltering steps in the Dark Art of Cardmaking :-D  I can't thank you all enough - I have a good few cards ready for the WI mob, some for their birthdays and some for fund raising. xxxx

Lynda Beazley came for a coffee and catch-up last week - she blogged a while back and still follows WOYWW. And she didn't come empty handed!

She gave me some gorgeous papers and die cuts and showed me a few more tips and techniques. We had a really great morning!

Pretty aren't they?  I've had great fun using these up over the past few days.

And another jiffy bag arrived in the post from Anne CopperBeech:

Useful papers, die cuts, ribbons and bits and bobs. Gosh Anne, thank you again, they're fantastic and I really appreciate the thought. xxxxx

The fabric that I cut out last week to make bags for Margaret's charity has been assembled - bit of a production line really but not quite as many as she is doing!

Just simple across-body messenger bags - I think they look like jellyfish here, lol! It's an odd perspective, the bag bit is much bigger than it looks here - they'll be in the post soon Margaret.

Do you remember the paper flowers from a couple of weeks ago?  Well, my WI's 1st birthday party was yesterday so I thought I'd better get on with getting the table decorations made last Sunday....

I got quite messy using the glue to stick the flowers on to the wire stem - I can't do anything tidily :-D  My friend Janet had made those die cut pink flowers, I did the tissue paper ones.

Arty pic of the peonies!

Everything was made from stash, begged & borrowed doilies (thanks Helen!) - the only things that are new were the pink and green ribbons from Bath. Oh, and the vase is a soup tin filled with chippings from the garden as ballast!


All ready for the party!!

Have a wonderful week, lovely gals - enjoy your crafting :-D xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


WOYWW 455

IT AIN'T WHAT YOU DO, IT'S THE WAY THAT YOU DO IT -
AND THAT'S WHAT GETS RESULTS

Thank you to all those lovely deskers who gave me such lovely support for the card making last week - I really appreciate your thoughts and input. I have really enjoyed playing with colour in a different way.

There's lots of potential in this week's post - that's a posh way of saying that I'm pondering over a lot of stash but haven't made a start on anything yet!! :-D

Margaret Glitter&Glue was telling me all about her church's amazing work with schools in Uganda - she makes bags to be given out to children there. Well, I have quite a lot of fabric in my stash so thought I'd like to get rid of some in the nicest way possible.  The box on the left contains the furnishing fabric, whilst the right hand one holds the linings. Since this pic was taken I've cut out quite a few bags but will show you next week.

Ah, there are some real old favourites there, brought from all over the UK. If I see a fabric I like I buy it, simple as, you just don't know if or when you'll come across it again. We're only talking about a metre or two, more if it's a seriously good bargain.  I'm quite ruthless and unsentimental about using these, I don't hang on to things for long (with the exception of Mr LLJ of course!!)

Talking about Margaret, she did add to my fabric stash last week:

Beautiful fat quarters from a craft show, with some lime I got in Hobbycraft.

Some pieces from her stash - glorious stuff!

And some lush ribbons - they will ALL be used Margaret, have no doubt!

Elizabeth (The Silver Scrapper) had promised to send some papers for my card-making attempts and it turned up a couple of days ago with a beautiful card. They're really funky papers, thank you!! I'll enjoy using these!

Everyone has been asking if we felt the earthquake that was centred about 30 miles away - NO is the honest answer!! G and I were walking on our special beach when it happened and we didn't feel a thing or hear anything. Friends of ours thought a bus had crashed the noise was so loud - maybe the sand changed the frequency of the shock waves, I don't know. Or maybe we were concentrating too hard on watching the amazing land and kite yachts. 

Just breezing along the tide line - it was fun to watch. All those birds in the distance are Oystercatchers, there seem to be loads of them on the estuary at the moment, obviously lots of shellfish and worms in the sand.

Two having a race with the Gower and Worm's Head in the background. Perhaps we were too distracted to notice the earth move - if ya know what I mean!! :-D

Have a great week xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

WOYWW 454

MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK...

Thanks for all the lovely comments on my blog last week - I'm sorry that I didn't manage to do return visits to everyone. Will try harder this time!

Well, I don't honestly know where to start.....only kidding, I know many of you want to see pics of Margaret Glitter&Glue's visit :-D  We had a lovely time, Margaret is so lovely, easy to get on with and funny...we chatted a lot, had some laughs and she was so helpful with breaking me in to card making!

This is Margaret last Wednesday evening, helping me sort out the amazing stash that had been sent to me by Shaz Silverwolf, Annie C and Crafting Queen...it was less daunting once things were sorted!

There - that's better!

Thursday morning... and after a failed attempt at taking Margaret for a beach walk (far too windy and rainy!) we settled down to a card making lesson for me, whilst waiting for Ali to turn up. I think you can tell that I'm not finding this easy! But I had a very good and patient teacher....

..and once I got into it, I rather enjoyed it. But as I was saying to Julia, it was just assembling stuff as opposed to the proper techniques of stamping/die cutting etc. I know that's a step too far for me.

I discovered the joys of vellum - I loved these flourishes and flowers Shaz, really floated my boat!

And before you knew it, I'd made four cards.....

and then another four using bits from Crafting Queen and Annie's selection

I found matching the colours very easy, it's something I love doing, but the perils of double sided tape and teeny tiny pearls were taxing :-D

Margaret sat and just got on with it and before you say anything had made all these for my WI! She's so clever...



And then Ali turned up!!
It was lovely to meet someone who you've 'known' virtually for such a long time! Needless to say, after lunch, we got straight down to the onerous task of crafting and chatting...it's a hard life eh?!

Ali also very kindly bought me some useful supplies:

Papers, cardstock, card blanks, tapes and glues..so thoughtful Ali, thank you very much! I've already made inroads into it all!

It was interesting to hear about Ali's crafting and what she gets up to and her machine (I forget the name of it sorry) that she used for embossing looked like a little handbag with bling on! Very cute.


We had a lovely afternoon - there's nothing nicer than getting together with crafters! 

Have a great week!!

WOYWW 453

LOTS OF TIME FOR TALKIN'.....

OK folks, another photo heavy post coming up so the text is pretty much limited to captions so you can whizz through it really quickly. I'm really excited today because Margaret Glitter&Glue is coming to stay for a couple of days and Ali Wade is coming over for lunch tomorrow as well - happy dance!

Right, the desk yesterday:
My mate Helen came for a cuppa and catch-up. I couldn't have her sitting there doing nothing (!) so she made pom-poms to attach to the charity beanies. She's a good lass :-D  

We had a lovely morning nattering and soon all the hats were sorted (apart from the top right, we just couldn't find a matching yarn for that one!)

The desk on Monday:
Some new purchases, material that I'm going to make something with and the finished masterboard bag.

I've got a project in mind but can't tell you what yet! Watch this space.....

The finished craft bag - looks a bit wonky but it's ok in reality!

And then there was last weekend!  If you're bored by now, feel free to dip out!!

G and I had a lovely weekend in Bath - he was attending a creative photography course at the Royal Photographic Society there (a birthday prezzy from me) so whilst he was doing inventive things I met up with Julia!

We found this AWESOME haberdashery stall in the Guildhall market - it started at one end with yarns, then moved into embroidery, then ribbons, buttons and finally into paper crafting supplies. It must have been 20 metres long.

It just went on and on and on........

I may have bought a couple of items :-D

Pretties!!

And then we found the leather stall!! Oooh, they had some wonderful stuff there all made in the tiny little workshop behind that door to the back:

There were lots of leather bound books to fondle (and sniff!)

Including a suitcase full of tiny little notebooks in leather and suede...so tempting.

And giant perspex spheres with gorgeous journals in - very Harry Potteresque!

But this display of tools on the back of the door is what really appealed:

Different leather working tools for a variety of jobs and each in their proper place - we both liked that a lot. Needless to say we were so busy chatting, laughing and generally being rude that I forgot to take any more pics of me and Julia - hopefully I'll have some photos of Margaret and Ali next week.

I am sorry about these long posts, there's just so much to share!! 

WOYWW 769

 WE'LL MEET AGAIN.... I'm going to take a break from blogging for a while - please don't worry, all is ok! - think I just need a...