WOYWW - 93

This is my desk as it was when I left it last night, and is, as yet, untouched today.  No time to play today, life is interferring agan.  As you can see, the working space is diminishing again.  I cleared it all and tidied it a couple of days ago, but stamping and playing with different methods of colouring plays havoc with space. 

I have been trying out different ways of using Barbara Gray's Flower stamp with its little flowers, and you may be able to see that one at the front of my desk.  I stamped it onto cartridge paper with a distressed ink pad ( I cannot remember which colour), then masked off the centre of the "O" and brayered the rest of the design with Juniper and Cloudy Blue Adirondack.  I then masked the rest off, and stamped the flowers into the "O", again using the distressed ink.  I tried colouring with the Aquamarkers I have, but I was not really satisfied with the result - a bit anaemic and dull.

I have just had a set of Derwent Metallic coloured pencils, so I thought I would see if adding those to the mix would improve things.   I found they added just a little more depth of colour in a more accurate way, and were a little more intense, lifting the design just enough.  Then I outlined the main design with Barbara Gray's technique of a deckle edged fine line in gold, mounting it on to purple pearlescent card, then onto god and back to the purple, before mounting the whole thing on a creamy coloured pearlescent card, with the addition of gold ribbon and bow.

The other design you can see is another attempt at the embroidery design printed on to cartridge paper again, and coloured in with Staedtler fine liners, and brayered with the Cloudy Blue and Juniper.  I also printed the lady at the centre again, with the idea of decoupaging her onto the flat design.  Not sure yet how that will work out.

As you may have read in an earlier post, our fourth grandchild, Rosie, was finally born last Thursday.  We went to meet her on Friday afternoon (what a vile time to tackle the M42), and she was so beautiful.  The shawl had been finished earlier, but, of course, the card could not be finished until we knew whether she was a boy or girl and what her name and date were.  The main parchment work was done and the colouring of the cot, and two pieces of card folded with two different colours of ribbon.  The writing was done, following a tip from Pauline Loweth, by printing it out, spaced correctly, and traced through on to the parchment with a white pencil.  Then I went over that with the Quickie glue pen, allowed that to almost dry, and dabbed and rubbed it with Martha Stewart glitter, and brushed off any excess.  I then left it overnight to dry off thoroughly.

I was at it before breakfast, and embossed the writing from the back to push it out, get some depth and increase the shine on the words and centre design on the cot.  The ribbons on the parchment were also coloured pink, and then the ribbon and bow attached with Pinflair glue gel, and the whole thing left to dry and harden.  The insert was done in My Craft Studio, using a pretty rose photo I already had, which I tiled to make the background, with a blank centre for the words.

I am off now to have a look at lots of other desks thanks to the help of our leader, Julia at http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/      but I must say thank you to all those who took the time and trouble to read my various posts this week and to leave lovely comments.  I apologise to all those I did not get to visit in my turn.  I will try to do better this week.

I will leave you with a final photo, courtesy of our son who posted it on Facebook, of Rosie with her big sister, Charlotte.  I defy you not to say "aaahh".