Wait for it, I will tell you in a minute. Meanwhile, here is my desk at the moment - not too messy for me. You can actually see some desk, but only 'cos I had a major tidy up again yesterday. I went through all my Christmas bits, gathering together all the bits I cut out two years ago. some of them I just looked at in horror and threw them in the recycling bag. Others you can see. On top and to the side of the cutter are four toppers I created, by printing onto gold paper, then reversing the image and printing it on to acetate. I sprayed the gold paper with glitter. when it is dry, you marry up the paper and the acetate images exactly and glue them together round the edges. This makes the images really strong with much more of a look and feel of stained glass. I usually mount them, either in a triple fold window card or straight on to plain card with a frame cut and placed over the top of the edges to keep things looking tidy.
There are lots of other bits and pieces around, such as my Fiskars scissors, my finger blade, computer duster (can of spray air), water bottle for me, pots with lengths of pretty ribbon. You can also see a tube of silicone glue, which I found lurking in the bottom of my glue box. I normally use the Pinflair glue these days, and I had forgotten how strongly the normal silicone smells. Never mind, it will soon be gone.
You can also probably see something shiny and red, yet more stuff I started and have not finished. These three topper use a similar technique to the gold ones above. They are clip art images, printed on card and then flipped and printed on the acetate. The two images are married up carefully, glued together and then I mounted them on holographic wrapping paper, then on to card to give strength. I did spray the back of the acetate with glitter again to make them really sparkle. These two sets of toppers will be mounted later today on plain cards with a peel off sentiment.
Thank you to all those who liked my baking desk last week. I have not abandoned the baking this week and I may post another recipe later this week, once I have tried it out in this cooker. Watch this space! So many of you said you were going to have a go at the cheese scones. If you did, please let me know how you got on - good or bad. Just as an extra, we had one left from the last batch, which had gone a little solid and not really as good to eat. I happened to have the grill on for our sausage, so I stuffed the scone underneath for a few seconds on each side, and it really revived it, both in flavour and texture.
Now, this is what I have been waiting for - my lovely brand new Silhouette Cameo. Not a very good picture of it. If I get time later I may get another picture and post that instead. I have had a Silhouette for some time, but I have a feeling that this one had been abused before it came to me. sometimes it worked but it would often just chew things up. Big simple shapes were no problem but the more intricate stuff did not really work as well as it should. So I have been yearning to replace it for ages, and my very lovely and very, very kind husband said I could have the new Cameo, which has only just come out. When I ordered it (from a company working through EBay), I was frustrated to be told that it was out of stock, but then they promised that it would be sent during the first week of November. That was only one week to wait. Sure enough, it arrived just when it was promised. The postman was killing himself laughing at me, when I flew to the door to grab my huge parcel from him. He knew I was a very happy bunny.
It is a fantastic bit of kit, and well supported by Silhouette. They have been constantly updating the software for all the Silhouette machines, so the version I already had was more up to date than the one in the box. All I needed to do was to exchange the power and USB leads and I was away. If you succumb and upgrade to this gorgeous machine, do not try to use the connectors for your old machine - it does not work properly.
Once set up and connected to your computer, it acts like a printer, but cutting rather than printing. You can still use the Silhouette pens and the other pen adaptors in place of the blade to draw. I can now cut quite intricate shapes with no problems. It will cut a full 12x12 piece of paper or card. All the other things it will do can be better found on other web sites and YouTube videos. Suffice it to say, I am ecstatic to be able to use all the designs I already have.
The real benefit of the Silhouette over other die cutting machines is that you are not limited by the imagination of others. You can design and save your own ideas, either onto your computer or onto a SD card. You can cut your own fonts, using any font on your computer, any style, any size. You can set it to cut your own decoupage designs. You can cut all your own backing shapes for your toppers. You can buy loads of designs for $0.99 from the main Silhouette site and there is a free design to download each week. The limit of your use is just your imagination.
As you can gather, I am so chuffed to get this for an early Christmas pressie. I shall use it this afternoon to cut the frames for those gold toppers, plain or with swirls - not decided yet. While I am doing that, You should go and wander round more of the desks on display at
Julia's place. by the way, well done to Debbie for getting herself on this week with no help from me. Go, gilr, have fun. Hope to visit as many as possible of you this week.
I finally plucked up the courage after lunch to get started on the disaster that was my craft room. I was very honest and took photos of the before and the after so far. Needless to say, I am nowhere near finished, but I did make a start. This is just to the left of my cutting mat, and everything had started to cascade and get thoroughly mixed up. Even the clock had fallen over and joined the general wreckage.
The whole of the desk has now been dusted and cleaned of random bits of glue. You can see the two new sets of CD Rom's from Joanna Sheen, the Patience Strong set and the Faye Whittaker one. (Pretty good service on those. They were in the special offer section at half price, and they came within 36 hours of ordering.) My now empty bottle of water is there under the light (must bring that downstairs to refill it for tomorrow - the water bottle, not the light), but you can see most of the cutting mat, which is a novelty.
I am lucky enough to have two printers in my room, one for general purpose and the other to take the thicker card, and also, as an extra, it prints pretty pictures on DVD's and CD's. After the pre-Christmas panic, they were both submerged under piles of UFO's and general dross. This picture does not show them at their worst. There are replacement printer cartridges, empty containers, sheets of Christmas papers and projects, cards and envelopes. 
By the end of the afternoon, I had managed to replace the dead cartridges, and clear the tops of both printers. Now they are both ready to use. There are a couple of things still in situ, the can of air to clean the keyboard and the air vents on the computer, a set of discs for Greeting Card Factory, and another container of assorted ribbons. I have followed Shaz Silverwolf's advice and ordered some of that foam board to store my ribbons on, so that will have to wait until the package arrives. 
