Spring has a Sprung

Wow! What a fabulous Easter weekend it has been with wall to wall sunshine and soaring temperatures. I can't believe that on Tuesday it was snowing, and absolutely Baltic, but 4 days later it was so hot in my garden at 5.30 pm that I had to go indoors to cool off.  The down side is that I'm working this week and I chose NEXT week to take a holiday, but the weather is due to change.  Pah.

I have a tip to share.  I hate having to shake my half empty glue bottles to get glue to the nozzle, such a pain and doesn't help my dodgy shoulder. But, during a kitchen clearout last weekend I came across a couple of egg cups that are made from coiled wire.  I think they actually came out of Xmas crackers a couple of years ago but have never been used.  I had a eureka moment, gave them a tug to stretch them out, and now they hold my upturned glue and glossy accent bottles perfectly.  No more shaking the bottle.  You often see these eggcups in charity shops, so have a look for them next time you are browsing.

So, Time for Tim's April tag.  I've skipped the March tag as I didn't have what I needed to complete it,  will get back to it shortly, but Aprils tag was something I could tackle despite not having the stamps he used.  I had to hand draw the flowers, and didn't have the word dies, so improvised.  I also drew in the stitching as my cheap and cheerful mini sewing machine will be in the bucket soon if it doesn't shape up and behave itself.  I have a wheeled tool that puts holes in the paper as it turns, (have no idea what it is called but I guess it is for piercing stitch holes in leather) so my 'stitches' are nice and regular.

I drew bluebells on my tag, rather than the rose and daisy that tim has used.  To me, Bluebells are so Scottish, and just coming into season.  I like how my tag turned out.

Oops

Desk Tidy (or, I live in hope of a tidy desk)

Why is it 'tidy' and not 'tidier'?  Just saying.

I posted pictures of this item on my Facebook, and a few friends said I should blog it, so here it is...

My friend Alison gave me an empty whisky box recently.  The box wasn't very big (it had held 3 quarter bottles) and had a lid that opened on the slant.  Nice and sturdy too.  

The slanted lid gave me the idea for a desk tidy, so I cut the lid off and intended to stick it to the base as it was. But then I got the idea that I could make an extra compartment between the 2 pieces and so I extended the sides with a 3/4 inch slice of foam board.  I could've made it wider, but this was just the right width to accommodate my craft knives and pokey tools etc, without them falling over.  I also added 3 pieces of greyboard on the base.  Okay,  I could have used one piece of board for the base, but was using up some gash! This was painted black with acrylic paint. 

I also used some foam board to make a couple of dividers in the tallest compartment and some greyboard for dividers for the new middle one.

After a coat of black acrylic paint around all the edges I cut pieces of paper to fit each surface, inked the edges with black soot distress ink (Tim Holtz) and stuck those on with Scotch quick dry glue.  I covered the tall dividers in the same way and glued them in place.  The papers I used are from Graphic 45 and are a mixture from their French Country, Typography and Steampunk Spells collections.  I love that they use the same colour pallets in the various collections so you can mix and match.

I covered up the rough edges where I'd cut the Lid apart with some Tim holtz tissue tape,  patterned like a black measuring tape.

That's about it, not a difficult project and took me only a few hours, including coffee breaks.  The only other thing I did was poke and glue a couple of Tim Holtz memo pins through the side of the top compartment, into the foam dividers. This not only strengthened the divider but the ring of the memo pin is a handy place to hold my tiny detail scissors and skinny ink drippers which would otherwise fall over.  

Ta dah! As they say.