WOYWW #290 and Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve and I am a little late but I am here!  My Grandfather Maurice (Reece for short) was a very colorful character and used to have sayings to explain all sorts of circumstances!  The one about a one legged man in a butt kicking contest comes to mind today...  I haven't posted to WOYWW since WOYWW #285 in November...OMG!  Time flies when you are having so much fun and traveling about like I have been doing.  Check out Julia's blog for more info on WOYWW!

We spent Thanksgiving visiting with our son and his family in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  The 2 day (20 hour drive) took all the starch out of my sails and I spent the week after we got home trying to recover and recoup before my daughter and I took off on a weeks cruise of the Caribbean. Thought I would share some pictures of both trips and forget my desk today cause it is a horrible mess....oh well if you insist!!!

I know!  Super Scary with capitol letters!  I have been doing a lot of crafting but I can't find much in the way of photography.  I was in a couple of swaps and sent those off without even thinking of taking pictures!!  The snowman you see in the desk is part of a 6"x6" calendar page swap that I made two pages for.  Here is a better look at them...

I will do a post and post pictures of all the year later.  That's it for WOYWW and the following is family pictures if you are interested read on...

We went to Virginia Beach for a week over Thanksgiving driving there with Heather and Michael.  We got to spend some quality time with our grand daughters and got to meet our new grandson Charlie. 

l-r back row  me, our son Chad, our daughter Heather and her husband Michael, my husband Chuck, sitting is Candice, Charlie, Miss Wiggleworm otherwise known as Hannah, and Teresa.  I took a ton of pictures but I think this captures the holiday.  We enjoyed being with our families!

The All Girl Cruise was a Mother/Daughter cruise with my daughters best friend Julie and her daughter Caitlin.  Heather and Julie became friends in the SCA and introduced her to me.  I consider Julie a bestie also. 

1st Formal night...doesn't this look like trouble on the hoof! l-r Heather, Me, Julie and Caitlin!

I love this picture of us!

The cruise left Galveston on December 14 and went to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel and back to Galveston on December 21.  We had a blast and like before there are a ton of pictures but I will only share a couple here and maybe do a post on the trip later.   Merry Christmas everyone!  

WOYWW # 285

I have a new picture of the Grandies this week.  My dear daughter-in-law and son have been so good about posting and sending us pictures of the grandkids.  The girls have been so sick with croup and upper airway infections Mom and Dad have had their hands full trying to keep them away from the new baby a bit.  A couple days ago they finally got to hold their precious brother and as you can tell they were so happy!   Grandma and Grandpa will be so happy to be able to hug and hold all the Grandbabies when we travel out for a visit and Thanksgiving holiday next week…more pictures then.

Teresa is 5 years old and Hannah just turned 3 years old  this fall.  Charlie at 2 weeks old.

I guess I should get on with my WOYWW post and the state of my desks and my craft room this week.  I have been busy doing a lot of different things so check back on previous posts to see some of the cards and fun stuff I have been making.  Okay this is the corner/window desk today.  I know I was asked if I ever used that desk and the response is yes I do!  Today (or tonight cause it is dark outside) I have some inks, stamps, and other stuff on the desk I am using.  I keep my Project Life cards/paper stored on the other side of the ink pad rack.  The two altered sewing boxes (ones a house) hold various ephemera and decorative bits for tags, cards etc.  

This is the center desk.  There is a 3 feet walkway on either side of the desk so it really isn't as junked up as it looks.  Actually it is fairly neat tonight considering…I really need to find a better way to store all those little iron looking craft ink pads and the roundy round storage and clip it up take up a lot of room so I am using the corner desks more today.

The other half of the corner desk.  The desk has some crochet I am doing.  I am making my youngest granddaughter Hannah a cat scoodie complete with ears and pockets.  Check it out at mooglyblog!  The closet is a mess and I spent some time today trying to organize things a bit.  The cases at the edge of the desk house my Christmas papers.  Yes I know I have way too much paper but…Those rolling stands behind are loaded with stamps too.  I don't know how many stamps set and individual but there are a lot of those too!

Another picture of my "junque" wall.  I am a big fan of Kelly Rae Roberts! as you can tell.  I love the way she portrays women and the whimsy of her art.  See the wood blocks and the DVD/CD's sitting on the sewing machine cabinet?  My son in law was going to throw the blocks away and I claimed them…any ideas what to do with them?  The CD's are from my husbands efforts to clean up his office. I have a lot of plans of things to do with them!!  As you can tell I love those little suit cases.  I have them loaded up with all sorts of fun things.

Okay that's it for my desks this week.  I will probably not have a picture of my desk's to post next week so I wanted to make sure I got them in this week.  Have a good look around cause there is a lot to see in my room!  

Wanted to share a close up of a black and white card I made for the swap on Paper Crafting Swap on Facebook.  I still have one card and one tag to get in the mail this week so will probably work on those tomorrow and get them mailed out.  

If you are wondering what all this desk stuff is about go check out Julia's blog Stamping Ground and she has a length there that will fill you in on the details of what this is all about!  

That is it for me and my desks this week.  I hope everyone is staying warm and safe this week.  We are having some of the coldest weather for November I have ever seen in Oklahoma.  It snowed on Sunday resulting in about 2inches of the white fluffy stuff and lows in the lower teens….brr!  

Cards

This is a card making week for me I guess.  I joined another swap group on Facebook called Paper Crafting Swappers and cards is primarily what they swap.  I still have a couple cards to make to share with my swap partners but since none of them look at this blog I will post what I have made so far.

 Have you ever heard of an explosion or squash fold card?  I made the card using Stampin' Up! (SU) card stock and BoBunny print paper.  The stamps are from Day of Gratitude stamp set SU put out a few years ago. 

The card is made from an 8"x 8" piece of Pumpkin Pie card stock fold as shown below.

Card opened out flat.  You score at 4" then turn and score at 4" again.  Turn the piece diagonal and score the length.  Fold the card so that the diagonal fold folds inside the card.  It was a lot easier then I thought it was going to be but it still took some thinking to get it to fold right.  

Shelly's Images Blog has an awesome tutorial on how to make the Squash card.  Check it out. 

The second card I have made is made using Stampin' UP! cardstock, BoBunny print papers, SU punches, stamps and dies from Stamps of Life.

I think Mr Snowman is cuter in real life cause you can see the glitter on his hat and scarf and I couldn't get it to photograph well at all.

More to come!  Hope you like these cards!

Day of Gratitude cards

Heather and I attended a Stampin' Up! Regional meeting in Ft. Worth, Texas several years ago where we received a stamp set called Day of Gratitude.   One of the items we created using this set was a card called the Cajun Craze Gratitude Card.

 Cajun Craze because that was the rusty red color of one of the cardstocks and ink we used.  Other colors were River Rock, Old Olive, Whisper White.  I made these cards this week using Cajun Craze, Always Artichoke, Whisper White, Very Vanilla, and River Rock cardstock, markers, and inks.  I love the rich colors! 

I uploaded the tutorial so if you want to make some cards here it is. Several years ago SU quite making these little tutorial sheets for the public that the Demo's could had out now the Demo's have to print off their own.  What's up with that SU?

You may have to click on it to enlarge it and print it out! 

Ticket Strip Swap

I joined a swap on Altered, Tattered, and Timeworn (ATT) a Yahoo Group of artist and crafters that likes ATT!  The group used to be named All Things Tim because Tim Holtz was a supporter and influential to getting the group started but things started going south a year or so ago and he bailed out and even refused to support the group verbally with encouragement or anything so we changed the name!  Come check out the group we are doing some awesome art there now!

One example is a swap we did using the Tim Holtz Ticket Strip die and altering the strips with Stampers Anonymous stamps.  We wanted to keep the tags flat so it limited a lot of what you could use and do with the strips.  Here is mine...  I guess you could say I did a few too many considering the swap was 5 strips/5 strips but I liked the way mine turned out and I wanted to keep all of them so I made two that were similar of all the strips.

sent this one off to share in the swap!

kept these! 

This was something new and different for me just like the altered keys earlier and was a challenge to do but...I loved it and plan on doing some more to use on cards and other things soon!

I used Stampers Anonymous stamps Mini Muse CMS 063, Artful Artifact CMS 080, Urban Chic CMS 086, Shabby French CMS 087, Bitty Grunge CMS 089, Attic Treasures CMS 123, Simple Sayings CMS 155, Paris to London CMS 160,  Travel Ways CMS 162, Tiny Things CMS 164, and maybe some others I put up before listing them.  I used Ranger Distress Inks and Archival inks to make all these tags.  I think they turned out awesome!

WOYWW #284

Thought I would jump in here as soon as I can to post my work desk this week.  We went out to dinner tonight to celebrate as it is Veterans Day here in the states.  I came from a long line of military people and I feel we fall short sometimes in expressing our gratitude for all these men and women do to in service to our country.  My father was Army, step father Navy, husband was in the Army, and my son is still active duty Army.  Chad met his wife Candice while stationed in Germany and she made Sergent before he did!  Candice left the service to have the grand babies and Chad continues on as a Warrant Officer now.  

Chad last year when he graduated from Warrant Officer school

My husband Chuck in 1970 just home from Vietnam!

I know I say it every Wednesday but its the truth I haven't the foggiest idea where the week has gone and I have been kept busy doing one thing or another.   I spent last night up at Heather's house working on some ticket strips for a swap and will write a separate post this week to show them off.  I am rather happy with the way they turned out for a first time making them.  Just like the altered keys from last week it was something new and different and fun to try. 

My desk this week....

I have made several cards and things for swaps but today my desk is covered with a fall card that I learned to make at a Stampin' Up! meeting when I was a demo a couple years ago.  It is simply called the Gratitude Card because of the name of the stamp set...Day of Gratitude.  They taught us how to use the markers to paint the stamps, paper pierce, and decorate envelopes to match cards!  I really enjoyed the conference because of all I learned.

A better and closer view of the card!  I think it is really cute.  You can see a bit of the largest stamp in the set in the upper left and on the corners of the card.  I love this stamp set a lot.

 The card was a lot of fun to make and I usually tend toward a grungier type of arting I still love to make beautiful stamped cards.

Speaking of beautiful cards I received this beauty from my Christmas Secret Sister today.  I always have so much fun sending and receiving cards and gifts from unknown people and trying to guess who sent it!   

That is it for today but check back later in the week and I will post about the tickets and maybe more pictures of the new grand baby!

If you are wondering what all this is about and why I am sharing my desk go visit Julia at Stamping Ground and click on the link about WOYWW and she will fill you in on the details. 

WOYWW #283

Running a little late again this week but I am here for WOYWW and to share some exciting news and photos.  First off to let the WOYWW's see my desk and then if you want to look at the rest of the photos stick around... What's WOYWW?  Visit Julia at Stamping Ground she has a linking thing on the sidebar that will take you to where you need to go to get the details of joining the fun!

My deskies my precious...

An overall of the room as you come in the door!  WOW I can see the floor!  OMG!  haven't been that busy I guess! 

My

The back desk with some new stuff my daughter bought me...twine, spools, wooden pieces etc.  I got some new stamp and die sets from Stamps of Life, and a new Tim Holtz wreath stamp/die set. 

Nothing going on on the L shaped wall desk...except Miss Ghost checking out I am doing what I should be doing!

A gift from a friend for doing the right thing...Thank you Laurel!

Latest make for a swap on ATT...Altered, Tattered, and Timeworn a Yahoo group.  I had never altered keys before and when I tried to use the big ones I showed a couple weeks ago it was way more work then I wanted to do and money for the bits and pieces.  These are smaller keys and I think they worked out fine!

My exciting news is the birth of my new grandson on Sunday!  Mom and baby are doing great.  Here is a picture of him enjoying his first hair wash!

Charles A. Doswell V
6lbs 15oz
20 inches
Born 11:26pm
1 November, 2014

Not to leave sisters out here is a picture of them taken Halloween night in their costumes.  It was quite nice that Charlie gave big sisters a break and waited till after the festivities to be born  Teresa is 5 now and quite grown up and wants to take control so she chose Capt. America as her costume and Hannah is Rapunzel!  So cute!

Mom and Dad getting into the act!  Such a cute family and I am so glad they are mine.  

 Okay done deal.  I am going to post this then head out for an appointment and then Chuck and I will be going out with the kids for his birthday celebration today.  Can't wait to get pictures of CAD III (Chuck),  CAD IV (Chad), and CAD V (Charlie) on Thanksgiving.