Chickens - and a giveaway....

First of all, I must say sorry that I'm late with this post - no excuse really, just life getting in the way.

Sharing with you some fun chickens I made for a card....I started off by cutting out some circles....

Then punched some flowers from the same pattern paper....

I chopped a bit off the circle, and added just three of the flower petals to one end.....

Then I punched some red flowers.....

and used three petals again to the straight edge. I cut a tiny triangle of orange for the beak....

and added a black dot for the eye, and a punched heart from a different pattern paper for the wing......

I die cut some Lawn Fawn stitched curves for hills.......

and gave my birds some legs. Now they look like chickens - sort of!

On to the promised giveaway, here's a treat for one of you, just in time for all the Christmas cards you are planning, six metallic markers from Letraset to add a bit of shine and sparkle to your projects

All you have to do is leave your name in the comments under this post, and I will draw a winner randomly next Thursday. Good luck!

My 'moon' projects

I promised to show how I made my little 'wall art'. I started with one of the new Fiskars thick punches - these will cut through all sorts of material, chipboard, milk bottles, shrink plastic, thin balsa wood, and lots more

I had some stiff self adhesive stencil vinyl so I punched a circle.....

Stuck it to a card and started sponging with distress inks......

until I was happy with the result.....

then I peeled away the vinyl to reveal the moon

added some streaks of pale grey for a bit of shading across the circle of the moon

then stamped an image from the Inkadinkadoo Meadow clear stamp set...

and a sentiment by Hero Arts. The whole panel was mounted onto a white card

and I liked the effect so much, I reproduced it in different colours for my craft room

Have a great weekend. I will be back with a giveaway on Sunday, so be sure to drop by then x

Getting there....

At last! A more or less fully functional space I can call my own. The flooring will be changed to wood eventually, and the window will have a roman blind - I am searching for suitable fabric. The blind will be more of a design statement than a necessity, as the room overlooks the garden.  I wanted to avoid lots of clutter, I didn't want kitchen type wall units. My vision was everything out of sight, but as I progressed with the unpacking it became obvious that it would be impossible to hide everything away, and impractical as well - I would be forever reaching out for stuff I use all the time and then forgetting to put them back.........

I have three drawer, each with five drawers units under or beside the desk, holding all my stuff like ink pads, misti, embossing powders and heat gun, blank cards, white, black and kraft cardstock (the ones I use most often, and for stamping), one drawer holds glitters, metallic paste, crackle paint etc, another holds my stencils and texture pastes. Then there is a drawer of stickles and liquid pearls, and one with new replacement adhesives, craft blades, glue dots, xyron refills etc. In other words, pretty much everything I need regularly is close to hand. My Pampered Chef turntable thing is the one I have used for years now,  with pencils, bone folder, scissors, glue pens etc close to hand. I also have a little desk tidy where I keep the memento and versafine black inks that I use for sentiments, tiny bottles of glossy accents, and small bottle of tombow mono multi medium glue, and cosmic shimmer glue - all the stuff I use daily. My distress inks are in the storage unit you can see by the lamp, and I keep the carousel with the blending tools next to it.........The black drawer unit which I will replace when I can find something similar in a more pleasing colour, holds all my embossing folders. My Promarkers live in a Copic bag under the desk!!!  

So the 'Bygel' bars came out again, in these I have stuff like red double sided tape, bakers twines, paint daubers and brushes. The Alex large chest holds my Fuse, and all the dies are in the drawers below. I also have a drawer full of wood mounted sentiment stamps that I have collected over the years and don't want to go to the bother of unmounting them. Another drawer holds all my watercolour stuff - paints, paper etc, and the bottom drawer holds Cricut mats and vinyls. Christmas stamps fill another drawer

The Kallax units hold various other stuff - one cupboard has fabric, sewing cottons, bobbins etc, a drawer holds buttons and brads, another has all my gems, split into colour families and kept in clear plastic document holders from Poundland. A lot of this unit is taken up storing all my Fiskars punches. You can see the paper storage in the far corner 

and another Bygel bar on the other wall - it's only a small room, so I wanted to keep this wall free from units etc, but put this up to hold all my new thick materials punches that are due to be released in the UK this month. I like the way they look, and combined with the teal of the units, it seems that my colour scheme for the room is teal and orange! Above this 'punch bar', put up after I took this photo, is a shelf with three white containers holding all my clear and unmounted stamps that I keep in plastic envelopes from Poundland. You can just see this shelf to the right of the first photo. It looks high, but is quite reachable for me as I am tall.........

So I made a little piece of wall art to link it up, I'll share how I made it tomorrow, but the Ikea frame looks good against the taupe wall

Not close up enough for you to read without enlarging, but the wording says 

Note to self              Create                   this makes me happy

I hope you enjoyed the interim tour around my new space - I am loving it!

Coming along....

Slowly, slowly the room is coming together, some snippets to show you. One of the things I am most happy about is that my fuse machine now has a permanent place on top of the Alex chest of drawers - I love this machine, with the adapter plates you can cut and emboss all sorts of dies, even wafer thin ones and big steel rule dies. So my Big shot has been retired - after all I don't need two machines that do the same thing....

and the adapter plates, big dies and the Fiskars dies sit nicely in the drawer beneath the machine....

My Kallax units now have drawers or doors...I chose the bright teal colour on a whim, but I am happy with it. The other units hold some paper trays which are perfect for all my cardstock 

To be honest, I find the drawers more useful now that I am beginning to put things away than the cupboards with the doors, I don't have that many tall things to store, so I feel there is more wasted space...I should probably have gone with just a couple of cupboards and had drawers in the other units. Never mind...

and at last my sewing machine has it's own space, all hooked up and ready to go so expect to see a lot more sewing on my cards. I debated about slotting another drawer unit underneath, but thought I would leave it until I see how I get on with the unpacking, if possible I would like to leave the space, so that when the wood floor is eventually laid, I can scoot across on my chair and start sewing - the Fiskarettes design team come up with some beautiful sewing projects, I am even tempted to have a go at some of their projects 

When I am totally sorted I will take a few photos, although it is going to be a while before the window and floor get sorted out, so I will just take a couple of shots in the next few days

Sharing the first card made in the still chaotic room, a simple hexagon patchwork card, made with the Fiskars hexagon punch. 

A facebook friend tagged me with this video after my tales of Ikea visits - watch to the end, I get a mention! It made me laugh......I hope it raises a smile. Mind you, if he is like that all the time, I think that sweet girl will get pretty fed up rather quickly!

It's coming along.......

So the Ikea van arrived......

with rather a lot of boxes -

and a very jokey sort of driver....

Now for a bit of assembly.....

by the next morning, my room was starting to take shape.....

and a parcel of gorgeousness in the mail from my very good pal Kath

and just look at this fabulous wall hanging she sent me, it is supposed to be for my craft room, but it is the perfect colour for our bedroom, and so beautiful I just want to lie in bed and gaze at it, so I'll post a photo when it's in place...

I love it so much. Thank you Kath xx

So all those Ikea boxes didn't quite fit the bill, I had to go and buy a couple of shelves. That was a bit of an ordeal adventure. You know how they have this very clever marketing design that means you are forced to start at the top of the store and work your way down, meaning that you have to pass every single item of furniture en route? Toting a big yellow bag on your shoulder that you fill with all sorts of rubbish stuff you can't live without. Well I was almost done and ready to go down to the floor where you give yourself a free hernia tugging hefty boxes off the shelves, when sirens, very loud sirens started. Staff were rushing around telling everyone to evacuate the building, it was an emergency. We had to drop our yellow bags on the floor and trail down dozens of stairs. Outside, we all milled around like a disconsolate crowd of football fans who failed to get a ticket for the cup final. 'Blow this' I thought (or words to that effect), 'I'm going home'......but they wouldn't let me into the car park to pick up my car. A handful of burly guys in yellow high viz jackets were guarding the entrance and talking urgently into walkie talkies.
Eventually, after 75 minutes, we were allowed back in. The evacuation was due to a faulty smoke alarm or something totally banal. So off I went again, my yellow bag hitched over my shoulder. Trouble was, I had forgotten by this time exactly what I was looking for,(my list was in the abandoned yellow bag) and got down to the floor that they call Marketplace and I call the Jumble Sale floor, only to find that I had to get the lift back to the top and start all over again, third time lucky....
I paid, and was almost at the car after struggling to get my unwieldy cart into the lift, when I remembered I hadn't had my car park ticket stamped, so back into the lift I went.........got the picture?
Totally exhausting. I don't want to see another big yellow bag or a Kvissen, or Fjordan or anything with an incomprehensible name for a long long time
See you tomorrow, I may even have some photos of the almost finished room.... 

Happy Post

Isn't it lovely when you get something totally unexpected in the mail? I got this gorgeous card made just for me by Maxcine Etherington who is on my design team for Fiskars. Such a lovely card, and such a lovely surprise. Thank you Maxcine x

Meanwhile, back at chaos towers............ 

but today is a bit of a red letter day - the Ikea van is due to arrive, bringing various boxes of incomprehensibly named flat packs of furniture for my 'En's Den' 

So that will keep Mike busy for the foreseeable future, and watch out for blue clouds rising over Solihull as he loses the little metal key assembly thing  for the tenth time in so many minutes - I will keep well out of the way. Thinking about it, with decorators in the house, Mike in the conservatory assembling furniture (he can't get into my den, it is now full of furniture again from the rooms being decorated....), there is nowhere to go, I may just take my coffee to the shed and ponder for a while about my 'to do' list, which is now about ten pages long........

Making Slow Progress.....

Nothing to report here on the crafting front - all the supplies are still languishing in the garage, but I'm checking in anyway.....

Sharing a couple of photos, we have some double doors leading off the dining room, into the sitting room and the room we have started calling 'the den',  I hated the wavy 1970's glass, so we have had them changed to clear glass, what a transformation, it opens up the entire house.....still a work in progress, with horrible door handles and unpainted, and furniture all over the place,  but getting there, inch by inch..I'll take a photo when it's done

So we have found a plumber, lovely chap. We needed to check out some supplies he was telling us about 'go to my suppliers showroom' he said 'in Island Road. We have lived here for a few years, never heard to Island Road, so when we were ready to set off I googled it. No Island Road in our town. Light bulb moment, perhaps he meant Ireland Road? Googled again. No results. So I called him. Where did you say that bathroom supply showroom was? 'Island Road' he replied. Can you spell it for me? 
H-I-G-H-L-A-N-D..............................

A flying visit to London this weekend to babysit Max and Milo (although they don't like the term babysit these days). A couple of random conversations with six year old Milo

Did you used to have a mummy Ma?
Yes, of course
Where is she now?
She died before you were born
Are you wearing her jacket?
What? (startled) Why?
When people die you get all their stuff, and I thought you may have got that jacket 

and a bit later.....

You're not very good at Lego are you Ma?
Not very, no
That's because you are old, and old people are not good at a lot of things (he said this in a kindly voice, giving me a reassuring pat on the knee)
What sort of things? (I asked, all ready to take umbrage on behalf of 'old' people everywhere)
Well you aren't any good at Lego or climbing trees

He rests his case!

Game, set and match to Milo I think

See you tomorrow x 

There was a shed......

A shed with aspirations above it's station in life. This shed, in my wild dreams would become a craft studio, a wondrous warm and cozy place. A vision of planned loveliness that would be seen on thousands of Pinterest boards and where creativity would flow and beauty would be created...

This was the dream

The reality turned out to be a shed that would need £££££££££££££££££££ thrown at it to make it habitable. Reality slowly sank in, reinforced by my incredulous son who gave me a brutal reality check. 'Are you finally crazy Mum' he spluttered 'how will you keep it warm? The door doesn't fit, there are gaps around the windows.....there are patches of damp on the walls, you would probably get mould on all your stuff, as well as families of mice'

Mice? I looked nervously around. Hmm, a few things looked a bit chewed. In the photo above, the carpet looks quite respectable. Believe me, it's only fit for the dump..Secretly I began to agree with my son - although I was reluctant to admit it. (In my experience, children, even when they are grown, can be quite insufferable when they can prove their mother is wrong about something!) I had visions of sitting shivering in the winter, a couple of hot water bottles strapped to my anatomy as I tried to keep warm. I know that the reality would be that I would secretly migrate back into the nice warm house, carrying various bits and pieces with me each time, so that eventually, once again, we would be living in a giant craft room, with a place for nothing

So even though it looks really pretty from the outside, the shed is going to stay doing what it was presumably built for, a great place to store the garden furniture in winter, somewhere to dump the lawn mower, somewhere where the grandchildren will have fun building forts and playing shop or doing messy things where nobody will shout at them if they drop something on the carpet!

Luckily we have a spare room on the ground floor, and with a bit of juggling around with furniture, it is practically empty now, or will be soon, before a giant lorry of Ikea furniture arrives next week. It's a bit of an odd shape, tapering like a wedge, but should be practical enough when it's kitted out. It's just been painted in a restful neutral taupe colour and has a door so that nobody need see the horrible mess I make when I'm in full flow. It has heat, is just across from the kitchen...what more could I want. There is a lot more space than there was in the crafty cupboard in the old house, and  it is also gnome and mouse free, which is a bit of a bonus

So in the end, as seems to be a recurring theme in my life, all is well in the end, after a fair bit of drama along the way....

I'll be back tomorrow with the next episode of my quest to become the next Martha Stewart, bringing you the latest home decorating disaster news from here. See you then x

A moving tale......

Well, here we are at last...........thank you all so much for your patience while we have gone through this moving process, and for all the emails and good wishes

Needless to say, it didn't all go to plan. The day before the move, the removal company that we had booked announced that they were double booked and couldn't move us after all. Panic stations - at one stage I had my mobile (cell) to one ear, and the house phone to another, yelling down both of them simultaneously. In the end, we found another company, and they were great.

I had spent three weeks prior to the move scrubbing and cleaning every last inch of our old house - paintwork, windows, tiles, they all gleamed. So it was disappointing to say the least to come into the new house and find it less than pristine - what am I saying? Let's be honest here, it was filthy....so a few exhausted tears were shed, before I pulled on my big girl panties and broke out the bleach - again!

Small disappointments also helped the general feeling of doom. We had bought the light fittings with the house. I didn't even like 90% of them, but there were two really super fittings that I loved, just what I would choose myself, and the others could be replaced over time. Trouble is, the people selling the house also loved them, as they took them down and replaced them with some rubbish fittings that I wouldn't choose in a million years - I would rather see bare light bulbs than these monstrosities. A quick word with the solicitor told us that even though it was written in the contract as a general 'light fittings included' we had no come back on this unless we sued them. Lesson learned - if you want a particular item badly, make sure there is a specific reference to it in the contract. 

Most of the boxes, apart from the great pile of craft stuff have been unpacked, including a couple of carefully tied black sacks, deposited by the removers in the utility room - they sat there for a week, until it got a bit pungent and when I investigated, they had carefully placed the sacks of rubbish from the old house that should have been put in the trash :)

Luckily the weather has been kind to us. Today the tree felling guys came and hacked and chainsawed their way around the garden which needed a good trim - this is the before photo.....  

 and looking back towards the house.....

and a little secret gem - at the bottom of the garden is a little gate, then some steps leading down to a little deck overlooking the Grand Union Canal

and the place is overrun with wild life. Mainly of the brightly coloured plastic variety, like this plastic heron perched on top of a tree - heaven knows how they got him up there, it's a big tree!

I have a friend in Oklahoma, who lots of you will remember from the old Cricut message board where everyone know her as Okieladybug. She has a passionate hatred of gnomes, so would have run screaming to the hills in this place as I have found about 20 - so far......I have a theory that they are getting up to no good in the shrubbery and reproducing overnight, as every time I go out, I find a few more!

Battered metal owl anyone?

or a plastic hedgehog?

You will notice that not a mention has been made in this post of 'En's Den', the long awaited and longed for craft room. That's because there have been huge problems with that plan. Huge, massive.....so more of that tomorrow! 

It's so good to be back. See you then x