Another year over

In fact, a whole decade.  I was thinking about this last night and, all in all, it's been a pretty lousy 10 years really.  

In 2000 things got bad and then went downhill from there.  Won't bore anyone with all the gory details but a few highlights were losing my grandmother, my father and my mother and getting cancer.

Anyway, here we are at the dawn of a new decade and hopefully the teens will be a darn sight better than the noughties!

I am now 50 (and a half) so when I saw Scrapdolly's new project I thought "that's for me" so I'm joining in the 52 in 10 adventure which you can check out here  

I'm also intrigued by Ali Edward's One Little Word (details here ) so I'm going to give that try too.  It sounds pretty much like an affirmation but with a crafty twist so it should be good for me.  I just need to decide on a word.... better make sure it isn't procrastinate I guess! lol.  I'm thinking along the lines of relax/chill/let go/let it be/peace.  Better make my mind up soon!!

Right, enough of the navel gazing!  Back on the craft front, a first for me for Christmas 2009 was making a card.  I don't make cards, never done one, but DDs wanted me to make one for them.  To get some inspiration I hopped on over to Hels blog because I just love her stuff and I rummaged around in her old postings.  I found this and thought "I have that stamp, I'll give it a go" so I did.  Not as good as Hels, but it'll pass:

I brayered a background with a Twighlight brilliance ink pad then stamped the reindeer on in black archival ink.  I masked him and stamped the snowflakes with embossing ink then embossed in silver.  I gave him a bit of a glitz with some rock candy stickles and matted (badly I know, I am dyscutlic) onto black cardstock then stuck it onto a white glittery card blank.  The reason I did the greeting separately was because I didn't think about it properly and had no room for it on the main bit - either that or it was for artistic reasons, you decide!  Anyway, I stamped the greeting and embossed with holographic embossing powder to make it all sparkly then used some cut & dry foam with the Twighlight pad to match the main background.  There was a bit of a big space at the bottom where the greeting should have gone but, because of the above stated reason, there wasn't enough room for it.  So, I dug out a cute ickle polar bear felt thingy and stuck that on and a bit of tinsely holly stuff went on the reindeer itself because you can never have enough tat or tinsel at Christmas is my motto.

Happy New Year everyone x

 

WOYWW

which is, as Mrs Dunnit tells us, actually LWOTYWOYWW.  Without further ado, here it is

My stash haul from Santa sitting there waiting to be organised (it'll have a flipping long wait then!)- who said that?!! Those of you who have been paying attention may notice a distinct lack of BIA. That's because the BIA has been put on the fantabulous contraption shelf alongside the cuttlebug, melt pot, encaustic tool doohickey wotsit and heat gun.

The three tags sticking out above the cuttlebug harlequin die are part of a pressie I made for youngest DD.  She had a christmas list as long as the arm of a very big orangutan (both arms, even) and included on said list were "clothes".  Older DD and I weren't sure what to buy so, inspired by a past issue of Craft Stamper (which reminds me, where is the lazy postie with this months issue?!!) I made a holder out of bits of kitchen roll inner tube (lots of uses for those this Christmas) and then decorated three tags as "vouchers" for a shopping trip for clothes, the company of myself and older DD on said trip, and a lunch while on the trip.  She used the vouchers yesterday and we had lunch at Zizzi's (I love their calamari and their risotto is to die for).  She actually only picked out one item of clothing (a jacket) and ended up with two pairs of boots, two handbags and some perfume instead!

Anyway, here is a pic of the holder for the vouchers for those of you who need to know about such things!

Can't promise I will be posting much of interest next WOYWW, if anything at all, as will be back at work :( but I will do my best though the post might be late evening.

Further adventures of the GHD box

Hope everyone had a fab time over Christmas.  What did Santa bring you?  I got a lovely Troll bead bracelet and some beads for it from my DDs, a pair of earrings, a set of L'Occitane hand lotions in different "flavours", Elemis bath cream and some other beauty products plus..... THE STASH!! 
Some of you may have read my post on UKS here about how my DDs insisted I had asked for a cuttlebug so they bought me one which turned out to be a BIA (woohoo).  I also got a set of Christina Renee stamps (No. 2) which is in just the coolest packaging! Ten Second metal in periwinkle and mocha, a couple of ribbon boxes and some ribbons, Prima flowerage (yay), three canvases (small, medium and large) and two cuttlebug dies. Phew! 
Anyway, George/Georgina was well recieved and now has pride of place on youngest DDs dressing table.  Oldest DD loved THE BOX......
A while back I posted this about a box which once contained GHD hair straighteners that I was working on.  Well I persevered with the gessoing and sanding, then I painted it grey, then painted over that with Viva precious metal paint in pink, then used one of the 7 Gypsies papers from the Happy Daze blog candy on the outside as well as some grungeboard letters covered in pink Ten Second metal and a couple of images from Crafty Individuals and this is the result

The inside was lined with a couple of layers of decopatch papers then I cut up the tube from a kitchen roll to make a couple of holders for cotton wool balls and hair clips and covered those in the same papers and fixed them in. I then gave a spritz with some Mallow Blush cosmic shimmer mist.  I used some pink Prima paper for the folding up bit and some Basic Grey for the inside of the lid which I then added some more Crafty Individuals images to

I then gave it a coat of varnish to secure all the papers and it now sits on her dressing table with all her make-up and bits in it.

Happy New Year! 

So here it is....

....MERRY CHRISTMAS!! 

I will be spending a peaceful day tomorrow with my two lovely daughters just enjoying each other's company, which will be perfect :)  Of course there will be turkey and pressies and all the other trimmings and trappings!  Apparently I also have stash hidden in amongst my gifts.... I shall report back on Boxing Day.  

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas x

Busy Busy Busy

Been rushing around like crazy, work has been absolutely mad busy and I haven't had a spare second!

I notice lots of people have been posting their Christmas trees looking all beautiful and sparkly.  We used to have a tree at Christmas all covered in lovely baubles and beads and stuff and then this happened.....

Mackenzie loves Christmas and she especially loved the tree...

 

 

Hiding in it

Climbing it

  

 

Fighting it

And just generally destroying it.

She would just go nuts the minute the tree appeared and the baubles and tinsel started being unpacked.  Any part of the tree or unprotected areas of skin of anyone trying to decorate it was fair game.  She would calm down for a while once it was up, but then there would usually be a huge crash in the middle of the night as she reached the top branches and overbalanced the whole thing.

We gave up in the end after the destruction of three trees and the breaking of countless ornaments.  So these days we don't have a tree, except a very small wire doohikey that vaguely resembles a tree (vague enough not to excite the looney cat!).

Mackenzie still likes Christmas, especially trying to fit her fat ole behind into tiny little boxes as they are unwrapped on Christmas morning!

 

  

George/Georgina

George is now ready to make his debut as Georgina...
 

Here he... sorry SHE.... is, sporting the necklace she will be wearing on Christmas day when she is presented to DD.  The transformation from George to Georgina was a straightforward procedure.  Just gluing on some decopatch papers really!





Here is a profile shot:

and a glamour shot:

Now she is going into hiding at a secret location until her first official appearance on 25th.  Her people hope the press and public will respect her privacy and allow her this time to gather herself and prepare for her new life.

So I thought... why not join the fun

and so I did!. This is what is on my workdesk this Wednesday: 

I'm bogged down in altering a box.  It used to be black with some klimt images in gold on it (yep, a GHD box). So I've had to gesso it, then gesso it some more, with some sanding in between. It's just sitting there being boring right now, so I need to attack it with some paint, ink, papers, bellies, bling (you get the idea!)

For those of you wondering about George, he has been going through a bit of a crisis.  He has explored his sexuality and his gender, and is now mid-tranformation into Georgina.  (S)he will be putting in an appearance soon, once the surgery has healed!