WOYWW 133 - It's Beginning to Look a Bit Like Christmas

Hello Peeps

I can hardly believe that this is the last WOYWW before Christmas and that we are only a few days from Christmas Day, the biggest event we Crafters tend to work for!!  And before you ask me YES I do still have some pressies on my desk needing completion!! Eeeeek!

My workdesk this week has been temporarily been moved downstairs between the kitchen worktop and the lounge.  Take a peek at what I am working on......

and........

The top pic are my hands yesterday evening after I had been playing with Sugarflair colouring in a bid to decorate our Christmas cake a little more than I usually do. My normal decorating is to roll out icing and then places something on the top with a large ribbon and bow round the side.  Hubby said it may be food colouring but I am not happy unless my fingers are coloured with something!!  LOL!!  They had hair dye on them a short while later!!

This year I have the idea of a Holly and Ivy theme.  Oops!!!  I will show you next week if it is good enough to share!!

Today I am working on my Christmas decorating which is a little later than usual but hey-ho.  I now have a lovely Dining Room to eat Christmas Dinner in this year - complete with curtains (the whole reason why I NEEDED the dining room decorated)!!!  As Bing Crosby is saying in White Christmas, which is playing (second time today!) - gotta have an angle!!

Right! Gotta do some more decorating including the dining room so I will be pouring myself a glass of something while I finish then I will pop over to see you later!

Don't forget to call by at the Desk Jockey Julia's blog to see the other desks of bloggers who reveal their desks on a Wednesday. 

I would like to wish you all a Very Happy Christmas and a huge Thank You to all my Followers and People who pop by to see me now and again.  I always appreciate your comments.  Thank you all for encouraging me with my blog in it's first year!!

See ya all around in 2012!!

MWAH!!

Hettie

WOYWW - Shhhh! Top Secret

Hello there!  Who has hit FF on December?  I cannot believe that we are on 14 December already – nearly half way through!!!!  Yikes!!

Well, today is Wednesday and as usual a bunch of us are joined together by the lovely Julia who runs the WOYWW phenomonomonom!!  So without further ado here is my desk…….

As you can see, I am not showing much of my desk today. This is because it has the makings of a Christmas present on there for my lovely friend Mandy’s daughter and I don’t want Mandy to see it if she wombles over here!!  The stamp you see there is left over from my tag I made the other day from Tim Holtz’s 12 Tags of Christmas.  Did you see his tags?  They were wonderful I thought.  I managed 4 but will aim to do the balance in whatever shape or form (yes I know they will be “tag” shaped!) before the end of the year!!  Note I only say “aim”!!!

I can show you this though…….

It is the floor of my craft room and nearly clean except for the white dot out of my “_________” die!  I have been having a bit of a move around in my room in order to free up some drawers which will hopefully clear some space on the shelves and then I will be able to find things!  I live in hope!  This is all due to Ikea stopping selling the drawers I was buying and changing them – again! They stopped the first set in the middle of my buying them!!  I refuse to buy the new version as they are yet a different size and shape!!

Right, enough waffling!  Don’t forget to click on the button on the side and join Julia and the rest of the motley crew who are part of this WOYWW thing!!

See ya soon and please leave me a comment so that I know you have been and I will pop over to see you!

Hettie

Tim's Tags - Day 11 - Grungy Monday

Good Evening Peeps

I hope you have had or are having a great weekend.  Today has found me in my Crafting Room making Christmas cards, the majority of which I have made using Tim Holtz's stamping technique from Tag 3.

Have you been following any of Tim's Tags?  If not, then why not go over to his blog HERE and take a look at  all the tags he has made.  They are truly awesome.  It is such a shame that tomorrow is his last one for 2011.

Before I go on, "Hello" to Lou and thanks for following me and also "Hello" to my other followers too!

The Lovely Linda of Grungy Monday fame gave us two weeks in order to complete the current challenge in order that we could incorporate one or more of Tim's Tags as our challenge.  I have decided to use this one...........Tag 11

As you can see it is not a Christmassey tag, but I could not resist using shrink plastic and alcohol inks with one of my favourite dies and stamp sets, and also the other passion in my life - sewing.   I have made the tag and rosettes using one of my favourite cardstocks by MME.  I bought absolutely loads of sheets of this particular design as I love it sooooo much.  I have also used shrinkplastic, wild plum and espresso alcohol inks, acrylic dabber, walnut stain DI and embossing powder, peeled paint distress stain on the lace and brown bazzill.

I love how this rosette has a beautiful glittered swirl in it.  I know for a fact that I could not get this to happen again!!

Hope you like it and please do not forget to leave me a comment.  Please do not say that the cotton reel looks like a doggy bone - Hubby has already said that!!!  He is DEFINATELY on the Naughty list!!!!!!

TTFN

Hettie

Tim's Tags 8 - I don't do Steampunk - or maybe just a little bit!

Good Evening Peeps

As the title suggests I don't do Steampunk.  Not because I don't like it as some of it I do, but I am not sure if I would be able to "do" it"".  However, after seeing Tim's Tag 8 today I could not resist in giving it a go and try to do something a little manly and steampunkeyish!!

You see, I don't have the dies, stamps or most of the other bits that Tim Holtz has used on his tag today, but if I don't dip my toe in the water, I will never know whether I like it or not so here goes........

I love my Umbrella Man die and could not resist making him look just a little bit Christmassey waiting under the streetlight and under a little mistletoe, waiting for his sweetheart!!!

The background stamps are part of my Darkroom Door Prague set and as you may know by now I love Prague and the reason I bought the street light die was that I love the street lights on Charles Bridge and so I could use this die aplenty on my scrapbook layouts and mini albums.   I popped the grungeboard out of the light part and inked them with Mustard Seed DI and the light with black paint dabber before popping them back in to emboss the whole light with clear embossing ink and powder.

The Umbrellaman was painted with black dabber and then embossed but the umbrella was embossed with sparkly embossing powder!  I put a little bit of tinsel on the umbrella handle and attached them all on to the tag.

I do hope you like what I have done.  I think this would make a great card for a man don't you?

TTFN

Hettie

WOYWW 131 - Yey I am back!! And it is a Mess!!

Hi Peeps

I am back!! 

Unfortunately I was AWOL last week due to things getting pretty hairy last week and life getting in the way.  I hope that the DJ Julia does not punish me severely but I just knew I would not be able to get round the desks so apologies.

This week sees me in a bit of a pickle making cards and my desk has returned to a messy state, but I assure you this is all one project and I blame it all on Mr Tim Holtz!

You see, I am trying my best to follow Mr Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas but unfortunately I have only actually succeeded in making two.  However, as a result of making the second of my tags I got a bit carried out with the printing of stamps in colour and kinda kept going on pieces of paper – 21 times!!!  I just kept going until I ran out of space on the desk, floor, printer and any other place I could put them to dry!!  Yesterday evening I then added the Perfect Pearls (again having to let them dry) and cutting holly leaves and berries, trimming the printed designs, punching the corners, inking the edges and then I started putting the cards together!  Also in amongst the stamped cards are some of the other designs I had started last week so I should have a good pile of hand made cards to send out.

As you can see, I even have an untidy floor as a result of rifling through my ribbon tin to try to use up as much ribbon out of there before I start on using the rolls!!! 

Hey ho!  Hopefully by tomorrow they will all be finished in time for me to get in the post.  I even managed to rope Hubby into the cards thing this year by asking him to type up the addresses onto the computer so that I can print out labels!  Usually he leaves the whole process to me and he only buys, writes and gives one card – MINE!!!!   

I am at dancing tonight so will be round to see your desks via the WOYWWnet later today or maybe tomorrow.

Have fun and Keeeeeeeep Crafting!!

Hettie

Well I Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day!!

Hi Peeps

Sorry about the title but I have one of my Christmas CDs playing in my room and this track is on as I type!! 

Well, earlier this evening I asked my Hubby to pick a number from 1, 3, 4 or 5 as these are the numbers of Tim Holtz's tags which I have not yet done.  He picked 3.  Click HERE to see Tim's original tag 3.

Had to have a good think about this tag and the techniques as I do not have the stamps or the embossing folder which Mr Holtz has used (though if Santa is reading this I would be a very happy girl if you could pop the stamps and folder into my stocking!! Oh! And if you can put Harry in ooo-la-lah!!)

Then I had a eureka moment as I do have the Christmas tree stamp and embossing folder so I set to work.  I used Archival ink to stamp on the foam, then Peeled Paint on the top parts of the trees and Forest Moss for the lower part with Walnut Stain for the trunks (and my fingers but we won't go into that except that I know I will get funny looks tomorrow in work!).  We artists sure do suffer for our passion don't we!!

Here it is then......

I stamped several copies of this design so that I could make some Christmas cards before I stamped the tag.   Then I went on to emboss the cards and tag but on embossing the first one I realised that the folder and stamp are not a perfect match.  It is as if the folder image is slightly bigger.  Hmmmn!  How can I resolve this I asked myself and Hubby.  Then I had a thought (owch that hurt!).  I got my brayer out and the embossing pad and lightly went over the top of the trees and then added Perfect Pearl Pearls to give the image of snow on the trees.  Love it!!! 

On to the rest of the tag, I tried several versions of printing on the folder before I settled for Fired Brick and my lovely Flourish Stamp before I took knife to folder (eek!) and run the tag through.   Distressed the edge, added the Perfect Pearls, placed the canvas Reindeer into place.  (Have you guessed I like this die yet?).  Some Juniper and Pine Cones which Hubby helped me make the other night (gotta love my Hubby!).  I added some acrylic dabber on the cones before spraying some spray glue and sprinkling with glitter.  Adhered these to the tag using hot glue (ouch! told you we suffer!) and added some ribbons, a bell (from Czech - my favourite place to go at Christmas or any other time of the year to be truthful), fibres and hey presto - one tag. 

I am now very inkey, and just about ready for bed. 

Before I go, in the middle of creating this tag I had a surprise telephone call from my lovely friend Sandra of Stamping for Pleasure.  If you are reading this Sandra, thanks for the call it was great talking to you and this is what I was up to when you called. 

Night Night or Nos Dda to my Welsh friends!

Don't forget to leave me a comment and pop over to see Tim's lovely tags he is creating for us all. 

TTFN

Hettie

Ingredients:  Ranger - Flourish stamp, Tag die, Reindeer die, Pine cones die, DIs Antique Linen, Fired Brick, Reinkers Walnut Stain, Peeled Paint, Forest Moss, Perfect Pearls Perfect Pearl, Stamps Reindeer Flight; Cardstock - Cordinations, Papermania; Bell from Czech, Ribbon, Fibres

Yey! Tim is Back with his Christmas Tags!!

Hello Peeps!

I am sure you all know by now that the Wonderful Tim Holtz is back with his lovely Tags for Christmas!!  To save you looking just click HERE and you will be whizzed over there by Holtz Magic! 

Due to being up to my eyeballs in preparations for the first Craft Fair (today) I didn't get chance to have a got at yesterday's but so that I don't end up permanently behind I have decided to have a go at today's (I also adore the Deer die so any ole excuse!!).  I will do yesterday's tomorrow and hopefully (ironing permitting!) I will to do tomorrow's tomorrow too!!  Confused?  Don't worry.  So am I!!

Here it is (sorry it is on the wonk a bit but I am currently using Hubby's camera as I have lost the charger for mine - eek!).....

I have to confess that I did not have the Distress Stain, Distress Inks, Perfect Pearl mist, canvas, pine stem, paint,hessian or start to make Tim's exactly but as the Great Man himself tells us, I improvised.   To be truthful I could have had a rummage and looked for some hessian but I could not resist using this ribbon, especially as I manged (by luck honest) to get the wording on the ribbon perfick (sorta).  And the red bell may look a little big but I lurve them!!

In order to get the "resist" I used the Claudine Hellmuth matt adhesive and stamped the Merry Christmas and then let it dry.  I then painted over the whole tag with acrylic dabber. 

Right, now I am going to have a lookie round at some of my buddies' blogs and then hit the road that leads to beddieland as I am shattered!

TTFN and Sweet Dreams.

Hettie

Ingredients:

Ranger: Tag die, Cardstock, Matt adhesive, DIs Forest Moss, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain, Fired Brick, distresser, grungboard, muse token, glossy accents,  trinket pin;  Holly Stamp, Kraft Cardstock, ribbon, string, bell, fibre.