WOYWW343 The reveal

The last WOYWW of the year and I have a special one up my sleeve. Because I finally can share my brand new shiny sparkling craft room. My DH has worked hard on this all year. The builders came and installed a staircase, layed the floor and finished of the painting in December. With all that done I could start moving all my craft supplies. I have been doing so for over a week now, I need to bring everything up 3 staircases, from the basement to the attic.Luckily I'm nearly their.
The attic is split into 2 pieces, one lounge area and one crafting area.
And this is how the actual crafting space looks like.

Going clockwise you have
2 tables next to each other, one for me and one for my son. 

In the corner a space where we still need to fit in a sink. 
On the other side our little "craft shop"

Next to my desk a shelving unit so I have everything on hand
and I got myself and my son one of those handy roller carts from ikea.

And in the lounge area we also have a whole wall filled with cabinets (11 in total) for storing everything

I hope we will be able to keep it in this state and don't slip to this anymore.

Hope you all have a nice year end and see you all back in 2016.

a little break

Hello,
Finally I managed to squeeze in some crafting time, the last week and a half I have been busy with installing my new craft room in the attic. I'm nowhere finished but it is progressing and was in need of a break so I made my calender page for December where the prompt is tree and the color to use silver and/or gold.(all details can be found here)

I cut a new stencil with the Cameo and sprayed it with green and turquoise Dylusions. Added some gold and silver words related to Christmas (naughty or nice; checking it twice; Santa Claus) and added the black stylish tree also cut with the Cameo, only need to figure out how to easily glue these intricate designs.

Coincidentally the last weekly challenge of 2015 asks for tree so I will be entering this page also for that.
I also will be linking up to let's play, because this was just the play I needed to get me going again with moving.

WOYWW340

Curious how my desk looks today

Tada

On the right you see a painting my son made last night, before he went off to bed he wanted to create something (and who am I to deny such a request J)

While he was doing that I was sketching and planning the arrangement for our new craft room, which is coming together nicely as you can see here

Tomorrow the rest of the flooring will be laid and on Monday the painters are going to finish their work. And then I can finally move everything from the basement to the attic. Looking forward to that, not to the actual move off course but I am looking forward to creating in my new space.

On the back of the table you can see the Christmas cards I made thus far, a couple of new ones were made this weekend

Next follows a description of the process I followed for making them, if you were only interested in seeing my desk you can go now, but you are most welcome to read further.

I started by making a masterboard by brayering some metallic colors on a large piece of paper and some hot pink accents.

Then I took some stamps and ink pads in the same colors

And stamped away

Cut them in pieces of 9x14cm

and glued them to my cardbase

I cut 2 silhouettes with the cameo and glued that on the cards, the third one was a stamp of a reindeer.

I especially like the silhouette ones, they stand out more, I might color the reindeer to make it more of a feature.

But I do not have to rush or panic anymore for making Christmas cards in time, as my son came home on Monday from school with a whole bunch of cards he made and sells to support his school.

I will of course be buying and sending them because I find them fab (but I am bias off course J)

owl canvas

Wednesday I promised to reveal the owl canvas.
And if you promise something...
So without further ado, here it is

I was inspired by an owl I saw here.
I started by printing out an owl, tracing it on a piece of carboard and cutting him out.

Next I punched a bunch of circles out of gelli prints and glued them in layers on the owl.
Some trimming and then my husband pointed out the fact that the feathers were going from bottom to top instead of the other way around. 

So I started over, not only because of that but also because I wanted to use other colors, more brown tones. 

This is more realistic and fitted better with the background I was creating with my gelatos. 
I handcarved a leaf stamp for this project

And cut leafs with my cameo silhouette.
I also cut a flower with the cameo.

And the sentiment

I so love my cameo, the possibilities are really endless I believe.

This was a present for a colleague who went on pension, that's why I wasn't able to show it earlier.

Carloyne Dube hosts a weekly let's play party, find all details here
I will be linking this project as this is also a perfect illustration of what she says about inspiring each other.

WOYWW 339

Goodmorning deskhoppers,

Not a deskhopper and no clue what I’m talking about, go check out our wonderful host's blogspot here who can explain far more better than me.

So here is what my workdesk looks like today, not too bad right?

After seeing a zillion workdesks piled under Christmas stuff the last couple of weeks it dawned upon me I should really get started on mine.

These ones were made yesterday.

I handcarved these elfs legs,
aren't they fun?

using the last piece of masterboard from
the snowflake project, just need to finish the 3D image.

I made a word stencil with my Cameo.

So this is my collection thus far, plenty more to go

And as you might have noticed the owl canvas is no longer on my desk, it is finished and all will be revealed this weekend.

Christmas card #2

This week’s challenge over at The Craft Barn is paperfolding.

And as I really should get a crack on my Christmas cards I made this card using some rolled tubes of wrapping paper.

2 down, plenty to go J

Christmas card #1

I made this card in under 10 minutes.

How, you ask?
Well, I had left over from the 12x12 masterboard I made yesterday,
cut it to size,
added this cute little girl (which I already had stamped and colored probably a couple of years back) 
and stamped the border and sentiment.
Christmas card 1 (finally) done.

snowangel

I splashed out this week and bought me an early Christmas present, a Silhouette Cameo. Off course I've been testing it ever since. And I've managed to find the right settings to cut through my transparencies to create stencils, big hoera!! (and lucky as this was the main purpose for investing in it in the first place)
As this week challenge over at The Craft Barn is snowflakes I downloaded a snowflake background and let the machine do its work, the results are amazing, how it's able to cut even the most intricate designs.
I started out with a 12x12 piece of patterned paper and sprayed some Dylusions ink through my brand new stencil

Looking FAB!

I stamped different snowflake stamps all over in different shades of blue, black and white.

I cut a piece of this 12x12 to fit in my journal and punched a snowflake border top and bottom.

I used a picture of my son in the snow as a focal image. This picture is from last year, we don't often get snow here but we drove 1.5 hour south (to the ardens) and there you have some hills with snow, so you can go sledding, walking or cross country skiing.

My son loves to make angels, whether it being snow angels or sand angels J

The winter fun is also cut with the cameo.

You'll definitely see more projects in the future using the cameo because I just might have fallen in love with it (hopefully the love stays).

WOYWW338

My desk is yet again unusually clean this week, this is due to the fact that on Sunday we had another celebration and we needed the extra table to seat everybody.

Still on my workdesk is the owl canvas in progress.

I want to add large leaves to it, but as I don’t have such a large leave stamp I carved one myself

On the right is my haul from Saturday, there was a bookfair where they also have a large amount of crafting supplies, each year I go and fill up my basket.

This year with an assortments of stickers and embellishments, decorative scissors, a paper cutter, a stencil and some craft books.

Now I’m off on my trip around the world from desk to desk.

Don’t know what I’m talking about, go here to find all the nitty-gritty details.

envelope clasp book

Somewhere in the summer I held a tea dying/coffee staining marathon together with my then 5 year old son.

We took a whole bunch of paper, a bowl with tea and a bowl with coffee, old sheets to lay on the grass and off we were.

Now I have a huge stash of new  “old” paper.

I used some of these papers to make this journal.

The cover is a folded envelope which I slit open to create an extra insert ( the back already has an insert where the envelop closes)

I used some pretty vintage papers on the cover and on some of the inner pages.

Initially this journal was one for me, but I eventually gave it as a b-day present to my mum. It was accompanied with this b-day card

I must say, I love looking at all those beautiful journals on fb, pinterest, youtube,… and would like to be able to make such wonderful journals myself, but once I start it seems not really my thing (don't know where to start or how to finish, what to add...). I think I'll stick to making mixed media pieces and getting my hands dirty with paint, inks,… 

Guinness World Record: largest chocolate coin

Wen I read that the weekly challenge for week 47 was Guinness World Records I immediately knew which one I wanted to use, I had just read in the newspaper that Leuven ( which is only 20 minutes from where I live) was trying to beat the world record for largest chocolate coin. Now that is a record that should belong to Belgium, and they did it, yeah! 

So, now how to translate that into my journal, I searched my stash but have nothing to do with chocolate: no pattern paper, dies, embossing folder or stamps. Next I searched the net for some inspiration and found cute pictures of kids faces filled with chocolate and then it dawned upon me, I have such pictures of my son (from a couple of years back).
So I printed one out and created the page around this. 

I painted the background brown (color of milk chocolate), 
stamped the letter M all over (for mmmmm), 
found these pieces of gold metal in my scrap bin (which remind me of the gold packaging of the coins),
stamped a ruler across the page (because a lot of measuring will have been done to verify the record: 2.5m diameter; 22cm thick and 1 ton)
Finally added some chocolate looking hearts to the page, because I just love chocolate.

WOYWW#337

YES, It is Wednesday.

That is great for 2 reasons, one the week is in half and the weekend is just around the corner and two and most important I can snoop around desks from fellow crafters around the globe (don’t know what I’m talking about go check Julia’s place out here).

So, what is on my workdesk on this wednesday, well, actually not that much.

We celebrated my son’s 6^th birthday on Sunday with the family and needed an extra table, hence I shifted everything from my craft table. Since then I haven’t had much time or energy to do a lot of crafting.  What you can see is the start of a canvas inspired by the owl from Julia last week (thx)

I got a lot of remarks on the great space I have available for crafting and that is true. So I wanted to share some pictures of the complete space, not only my desk.

As you can see it is total chaos.

I share the space with my son, his side looks like this

And mine like this

BUT although this is a great space, I’m counting down to move all my stuff to my new craft room in the attic. All year my DH has been working hard to create this wonderful space

Now the builders need to do their work, the staircase should be ready tomorrow, next week flooring and then the painters.

So I hope to move by year end, I’m very busy with sketching and planning how everything should go and my Ikea shopping list is ever growing.

Now I'm off for some desk hopping, till next time, bye.

fireworks

This page for the weekly CraftBarn challenge actually started as another project I’m currently working on, more will follow in a later post.

I first did some collaging with gelli prints, then came some stamping  

and then suddenly I saw fireworks in the page, just needed to add a crowd watching.

WOYW#336

Goodmorning curious, nosy people (and that is meant in a good way)
It is wednesday again and I'm lucky to have a day off of work because it is Remembrance Day.
And double lucky because wednesday is the day we get a peek at the desks of fellow crafters, not familiar with the concept, hop on over to Julia Dunnit's blogspot to find out all about it.
So what is happening on my desk today, let me show you

and here are some close ups

This is my very first attempt at coloring a magazine picture, didn't turn out like I wanted, but think I'm going to use it anyway and fight the urge to throw it away. Will need lots more tutorials and practice though.

Here I am trying to figure out what to do with this week's challenge over at The Craft Barn, fireworks.
Thanks for passing by and now I'm going on a trip around the world from workdesk to workdesk.