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.

Tim's February Tag.

Here we are, a new month so a new tag from Tim Holtz.  If it is February then it must be luurve.  

 Tim used ephemera pieces to cover his tag, and I did use a couple of those but mostly I have used cut outs from the Seasonal Stash paper stack. 

Work in progress.

I didn't have the metal foil frame for the felt heart so used a random chipboard one from my stash and silvered it up with some silver rub n buff.  If I was doing this again I would use the frame in portrait rather than landscape orientation as I don't like the space above it, and make the heart bigger.  I used the movers and shakers mini heart, but it's not big enough I don't think.  Another addition is the 'Passion' rub on from 7Gypsies, and as I didn't have a word band that fitted the theme I used a 'Togetherness' word stick that I've had in my stash forever but never used.  No idea who made it as I tend to take everything out of the packaging when I bring it home from the shop!  Bad habit if you want to blog about your endeavours....

The last step for this tag is to spritz the tag with distress pen spritzer to add some splatter.  I'm absolutely rubbish at this, can't get it to work at all, or if I do manage to get ink onto paper it's just in a small area and too heavy, not lightly splattered as it should be.  This tag has a blotch of splatter on the cupids, and not anywhere else.  GRRR.

Anyway, here's the finished tag.

I do like the wire wrapped heart on the arrow.

Cheers.

Postage Stamp Frame for my Mum

I made another postage stamp box frame for a picture of my mother when she was about 3, so circa 1929, as a twin to the one I did earlier for my dad.

All the same bits an fixings as before, except that the letters are a mix of tim holtz grunge and a mini scrabble piece (maker unknown as they were a gift from a crafty friend) and a little plastic cherub button from Hobbycraft.

The tiny rosebud flowers are actually rolled up strips cut from the wavy edged paper left over from when the frames where cut out.  Waste not want not.

 

And here they are together.

Sweet.

I Heart...

I bought a five aperture frame in the post xmas sale at M&S outlet store a couple of years ago (cheaper than cheap!) and immediately got inspired to create an 'I love...' piece, based around little polystyrene hearts I got in Hobbycraft, a different themed heart in each box.  It started well, decoupaged old map paper (from 7 gypsies) on one (for travel), music tissue paper on another, paper flowers (nature and wildlife) grungy metal (science and industry)...and then got stuck.  Couldn't think how I could do the night sky/space on a heart.  So it all got stuck away in a box, languishing for want of inspiration.

And then in December I went to Liberty of London and saw some fantastic beaded birds and animals

That's it! !  I covered the heart with stretch netting to represent the fabric of space and time (actually from inside the cushion covers of an old sofa we threw out- recycling at its best), painted it with mod podge and black paint, and then used pins to stivck various glass beads.  I made a telescope out of kebab sticks, rolled paper and jewellery findings, and covered a little plastic rocket with embossed metal tape which turned out a bit Wallace and Gromit, so very cute.

Here are all the frames:

Travel

The background papers are a mix of tim holtz and Graphic 45, and I made the battered suitcase out of foam rubber and strips of leather.  Wish my suitcase looked like that, but it is pristine as it hardly ever comes out of the storage cupboard due to me having married a reluctant traveller!

Science and Industry:

The background to this one is a bit of broken printed circuit board out of a redundant piece of audio equipment my hubby was ditching.  Light bulb is tim holtz ideaology as are die cut and embossed metal cogs.

Night sky/space

Quite proud of that telescope.  I used slightly glittery midnight blue paper behind this one. Hard to see in photo.

Music:

The music box is a die cast pencil sharpener (car boot), and the little dancer is from Prima.

And finally Nature and Wildlife:

Little plastic elephant and a cigarette card I got from car boot sale.  The butterflies are cut from Graphic45 Old Curiosity Shop and paper flowers are a mix, don't know makers.

Each frame has a related tim holtz ideaology word band attached.

Here's the whole thing

 

and some of the details

It took a while, but I really like it now it is finished.

Postage Stamp for my Dad

I had to take the day off work today because the cold I've been fighting off since Hogmanay finally caught up with me and I felt awful this morning, achy and shivery.  A couple of extra strong Lemsips later and I'm feeling a bit better, but still coughing like a drain.

Not one to look an unexpected day off in the mouth, I finally got around to making a little frame for a favourite picture I have of my dad when he was about 2 years old, which would have been circa 1922.  I used the Tim Holtz Alterations Postage Stamp Frame to make a small box frame, with paper from Tim's Vintage Shabby paper stash.  I also used the dies Elegant Flourish and Honeycomb, and a small heart from Movers and Shakers Cupid set.  Some ideaology in the forms of a word band and memo pin, a bicycle (probably Prima, but out of packet so not sure) and some flowers and ribbon hand coloured using distress pens and inks finish the frame.  

I've got a picture of my mum at a similar age that I think I will do another frame for, as a matching pair.

The letters are Victorian or Edwardian bone squares from a partial set that has been kicking around my family for as long as I can remember.  Something that was used in the schoolroom I think, and as my grandfather was a schoolteacher that would make sense. They have lowercase on one side and uppercase on the other.

The frame is about one inch deep.

12 Tags of 2015 #1, January, and a NY Resolution.

Gosh, here we are in 2015.  Happy New Year everyone. 

New year, new tags from tim.  

I shamelessly copied this first one, with hardly any differences except for a couple of wee ones.  I had the alpha parts numbers and the chitchat stickers, but not tissue paper (stamped my own using white tissue paper and black soot ink pad, and various stamps) nor the distress glitter nor some of the paints and spray colours, so improvised with what I had.  The whole point really.  

Here it is on my tag board, at peg number 1.  I took off all the previous years' tags as can be seen by the faded areas on the board, but they will slowly be covered up as the year, and Tim's tags, 

progresses.  That's one of my resolutions, to complete every tag.  I started with good intentions last year but it didn't finish well.  :-(

I love the glitter on this one, luckily I had gold glitter that wasn't too brash.

And a close up..

I really like the shadow effect on the chitchat stickers. That's so clever.  It gives the whole tag depth.

I wonder what this year will bring?  Health and happiness to all I hope.

Cheers.

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation....

It's MONTHS since I did a blog. Months. No excuse really other than after I moved my craft room upstairs to the spare bedroom, I totally lost my crafting mojo. In didn't like being so isolated so rarely went in there.  I've not got a big house but I felt so out of the loop up there. It was also a bit too compact, so it had to be kept tidy (and I'm a mess magnet).  And there was no room for spreading myself about, which I like to do, with 2 or 3 projects on the go at once but that was a no no too. And no room for any crafty buddy who wanted to come over and play.

Problem.

This was solved on October.  My youngest son Tom graduated as a building surveyor on July and has been working as such for a firm in the middle of Edinburgh since May.  He and 2 of his ex-university mates decided to take a flat together in town, which meant I could take over the now spare sitting room that my boys used to have.  Hurrah!! Whoop!!!  But also a little sad as we are now empty nesters.  Hey ho. Swings and roundabouts.

It's taken a bit of time to get it as I wanted, and required a trip to ikea for another desk and storage shelves, but I'm sooooo happy now.  Here are some pics.

New desk area, and shelves.  The ikea cd rack holds all my paints, pens etc, and also space for sissix dies etc. ink pads are in old cassette shelves on my new desk.  I spray painted the multi cubbyhole shelving white, to match in with the rest.

The spare desk, for spreading out on or for craft buddy, and the metal wall board that I store my Movers and Shapers dies.  This is now hanging on the wall within easy reach of my diecuttting and embossing area:

I've also got a sofa for lounging about on (an important part of the creative process I find!) and other cupboards for storage.

It's all fab.

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Since I moved everything in, which was in the middle of November, I have busy on lots of projects, so here are some of these.

It was my sister Ailsa's 60th birthday in December so I made her a memory assemblage using a tim holtz mini configurations book. We went to London for a girly weekend, theatre, shopping and met up with friends for dinner.  Fab time, had by all.  This is the book, using 7 Gypsies papers and various TH ideology bits and pieces,

Cover

Inside the book I have filled the boxes with all sorts of bits and pieces that are relevant to her life.  She loved it.

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I saw a lovely Christmas burlap panel on Paula Cheney's web site, a site I follow as she has some lovely ideas on it, so I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing them. 

http://www.oneluckyday.net/2013/08/christmas-burlap-panel.html 

I ended up making a few of these as Xmas presents for friends.

This one isn't finished, but don't have a photo of the final outcome,

I coloured the tim holtz christmas charm with alcohol inks and then sealed it with glossy accents so it looks like an enamelled charm.

The papers I used for these are a mixture of Tim Holtz Seasonal Stash, some leftover paper from a christmas project from last year (can't remember what paper this was), but mostly pictures from a a John Lewis carrier bag!  This is it:

 

I've got loads of this left over, so will use it again next year.

Another present i made was a model of my son Lucas' kitchen.  His partner Jill gave me a box and

suggested that I could build a kitchen in it, and she would love something like that.  After such a forceful hint, I could hardly refuse.  Even I was surprised how well it turned out.  The box is roughly 8 x5 inches, to give an idea of scale.  I used white foam board, greyboard and some dark mirror card, and made some Fimo bread and eggs.

The top one is the real kitchen, and my version is underneath

Finished item.

That'll do for this blog.  I've got another one to do about the 12 Tags of 2015....