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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.  

It’s now half past ten and breakfast (scrambled eggs) is finished and I am ready to start my blog.  Last night I decided I would get up as soon as I awoke (not counting getting up at 3:45 for the loo!). It was ten past nine when I awoke!  I don’t seem to wake up early in the winter months, okay I’ll admit it, it’s along time since I was awake earlier🤣 though I often am awake in the early hours and often go downstairs for a cuppa.  I blame my husband as he doesn’t wake up early either.  His grandmother used to get up at six every morning!

I can’t possible show my craft room, or maybe I can with just clearing the middle so I can display my latest goodies.  I am constantly trying to squeeze a little more room in my craft space by reorganizing and frequently say things like “I had forgotten about that!”  

On the left is a black book which my husband took the middle out of yesterday morning and I am putting my Christmas journal inside, so the cover has to be covered and the signatures sewn in, I might try holding them in with ribbons or twine instead.  On the right is a box I was given “to do something with” and as it was on top of the Christmas box it came down with it.  In the middle are my recent goodies.  I don’t usually get lucky in sales, but I couldn’t resist these Tracy Easson stamps, a Woodware one and two Matt Tints.  I also bought a mdf reindeer and sleigh which is waiting to be built up.

This arrived yesterday, often things are smaller than I thought, not this one!  My new printer is, well, big!

Finishing with a picture of my dear MIL and me at a garden centre.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

WOYWW 810

 Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.  

A couple of views of the finished kingfisher by the pond.  At least that is one finished project.  I would like to finish a few more before Christmas.

Within three days of being back from my MIL the Christmas tree and decorations were up and life seems to have been busy ever since.  I have been alternating between doing stuff and resting.  Crafting has not been on the agenda though I  have been doing some online shopping!   

An assortment of stickers, tiny image books, a roll of "Merry Christmas" stickers, a pack of paper clips shaped like crosses.  The sticker book on the left is half sticker and half with a white edge.  The circles on the right I actually bought 4 packs of because I thought they were different sets.  All from Shein.

The picture on the right show two accordion kraft paper books with  nice thick covers from Shein. The picture on the left shows some acrylic paint pens and underneath six 2 inch books. both from Amazon.  Lastly some flower tissue paper and self adhesive foam sheets from the Range.

My daughter’s MIL died while we were away and we offered to do the refreshments after the funeral.  We thought the numbers would be quite small in the beginning, but they doubled and I wasn’t sure if we had enough chairs.  As it turned out, those a few hours away decided to go straight back - quite sensible considering the weather. 

So yesterday I was determined to get in the craft room and then my husband spoke to my grandson!!

Our garden backs on to the primary school’s grounds, so quite often we speak to Joshua at playtime.  My husband helpfully reminded Joshua about the Christmas cards he wanted to make and told him to come round after school!!  Now because we were away I hadn’t got any of the Christmas craft stuff out.  So I did get in my craft room, just not what I intended to do.  He made six cards and is coming back today to do the rest.

See you later x

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 Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing. 

I haven’t done a great deal, but I did do 3 portraits, of which this is the best one, all using the same reference picture, which is a painting by Cyprien Eugene Boulet.

I really like this painting.  I might have another go this week.

I bought a Dan Brown book "Origin" from a charity stall a few weeks ago.  I actually bought it for an art journal (to go with all the other books I have already bought!),  my husband read it and enjoyed it and now I am reading it too.  I don't think it is as good as previous books of his.  I read them for the story, but with a healthy dose of scepticism and Google by my side🤣🤣.   Some facts are interesting like details of a cult church with it's own pope, split from the R C Church, but I must admit I am a bit bored with it. 

My cold is gradually improving, thank you for all your good wishes.

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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.  

In the post before this one, I showed some papers that I had made.  I printed out quite a few to take away with me and brought a whole variety of pens to see which ones worked best.  Unfortunately I  am down with a cold and haven’t felt like doing too much, but I have nearly completed three. 

The object was to see which pens worked best on the inkjet prints. They all seemed to work in that they didn’t effect the ink on the paper, but a lot of the colours didn’t show up as well as they would have done on a much paler background.   I still have a few more ideas to try out.

We are back in the caravan looking after my MIL, I haven’t actually seen her since the day after we arrived as I don’t want her catching this cold.  Last week we didn't have any Internet as my SIL had changed companies, but we have it now and a signal for the TV which means I have been watching both the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts series.

Looking forward to visiting you all later.

WOYWW 805

 Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing. 

I made a sketch using a watercolour pencil and a stabilo pencil.  I downloaded a set of images from Arthouse Whimsey and used one as a reference.                

                        

For the next two pages I used some of the images free from the Women of the Word conference.  I printed them in circles and made some of a different colour for contrast.  I found the picture for Naomi online

My husband “found” a kingfisher ornament in the garden, all colour gone and decided I could repaint it!  I will take a photograph when it’s finished.

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 Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing. 

I started a watercolour of little squares and rectangles that I had seen in a tutorial by Wendy Soganik on one of the free courses.   Although I was quite pleased with the result when I took a photograph it was more obvious that my lines were decidedly wonky.  I decided to digitally alter that.  All the wonky ones were straightened out and looked much better.  Then I had a play with the colour blends!  The picture above is a selection of the results.  The original watercolour is A4 so these are quarters.  There is a second stage to the tutorial which I hope to get to this week.

There was a Women of The Word conference a couple of weeks ago.  The free downloads are available straight away so I have those although I didn’t manage to watch all of them.  I have been doing a study of women in the Bible. And did my first page yesterday. This is of Miriam, a prophet and sister to Moses.  

I had planned to use my brayers, but they were nowhere in sight so I used a palette knife to spread the paint and then did some stencilling. I wasn’t too sure I liked the result, but in the end carried on.  On the left handside is the page with some colour added digitally, on the right the actual page.  Now I haven’t actually stuck down my image so I may add to the background.  The image started off as a download from the course, but I wanted a stencil so I altered it, including a new head :) 

My workspace!  Tomorrow I must look for my brayers!

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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing. 

I added wax to some backgrounds I made last week with my rock pigment watercolours, and then polished them until the colour stopped coming off. I tried Liquitex on a couple of others.  Both the Wax and the Liquitex worked at sealing the paint and stop the colour coming off on my fingers all the time.  The left hand side are the originals and the right are sealed.

The paints seem to grow a little mould every day, I have been scraping off and throwing the mould part away, so I decided to top them up with distilled water, but the mould floated to the top!   I decided to do some more backgrounds with them today.  I had a very happy play!  The first background I did the paint was very patchy and I decided to mix in some PVA glue with the paint.  I added quite a bit and made lots of brush marks.  The second one I used a fine hole stencil mesh, I couldn't get a print by laying paper over the stencil so I put the stencil that had been on the paper on fresh paper and repeated a few times.  then I pressed the paper onto the painted paper and did a few lift offs.  The bottom layer is actually the same colour as the rest, but came out different.

I had several bottles of the PVA glue and I decided to mix the watercolours with it.  I had some very old ink bottles, which you can see above.  The watercolours turned from slightly lumpy to very smooth and I think a better colour.  I guess the proof will be in the using, stay tuned for more news :)

The desk!

I just had to share this with you.  My talented granddaughter made me a niffler for my birthday - a creature from The Fantastic Beasts films - and a fabulous Hogwarts card with a little note in an envelope asking me to look after the niffler from Newt Scamander himself.

Wishing you all a great week!  Angela x

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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.

Beautiful birthday flowers from my daughter for tomorrow.

The natural rock pigments I bought on holiday are proving to be the worst buy ever!   I mixed the powder with the Gum Arabic and honey - a lot of stirring.  A couple of colours just did not want mix, phthalo green was the worst one.  The tiniest bit of powder stains and it seemed to jump out the pot of its own accord!  The mixing took me the best part of two days.   I thought I would try various brushes and brush strokes also I wasn’t sure how much water to use.  All of these were on dry paper, so next stage is wet on wet.  At one point I got a little frustrated and added some Liquitex, which is the darkest shade above.  

I visited my niece yesterday, she is expecting her second baby in February, such exciting news!

 

WOYWW 801

 Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.

Apologies for being MIA last week.  Every piece of my craft stuff is now in from the caravan and it totally mucked up my tidy room!  I thought I had allowed space for when it came in, but I was way out in my estimates!  It is however, packed away now and I really must come up with a better plan for next year!  We are staying with MIL for two more weeks before Christmas, but I shall not be taking too much with me.  

This is my room today, 

The stamps I bought at a charity shop for £1.

I have been working in one of my concertina books.  This is the one that caused the most bother and had fold lines in the wrong places.  So I did those pages first. I used some of my pencil crayon sketches from a few years ago.

I treated myself to one of these atomisers, it changes colour and makes the room smell lovely.  I have geranium in it at the moment. 

My husband treated himself to a waterfall.  Then we shopped for plants.   We managed to get a circular base for the whole thing to sit on.  It sounds lovely, but not with the television on :)

I look forward to catching up with you all later x Angela x

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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.

Still in the caravan, but home soon!  

This is what my crafting table looked like on Monday.

Since then I have finished my Stag and used up the remaining paint on my two concertina books that I made a few weeks ago.  You can see them drying.  I only wanted a hint of colour, but even so I was surprised I covered one and a half books.  One of the books has caused me a lot of trouble in getting the width of the sides equal, I really must pack a scoring board next time.

I have been on a diet this month to hopefully push my diabetes diagnosis back.  I have lost weight, but not having the scales I shall have to wait until we get back to find out how much.  Suffice to say my clothes are more comfortable than they were.   I have to have another blood test when we get back, but apparently any changes do not show for 3 months.

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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing. 

A digital creation using the an image (on the right) free from Gecko Galz for September Steampunk Challenge.

My next challenge is to sew up this toy seat, having been volunteered for the job my my husband.  It belongs to his great nephew and I am starting right after I post this.

My visitors have gone, but another one expected Thursday.  When we were out shopping, my friend Lesley bought me this cute bat.  It is a "Warmie" meaning you can put it in the microwave to heat up the lavender bag in his tummy!  Black of course is difficult to photograph.  x

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Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing.  

My crafting (caravan) table yesterday.  I was in the middle of making two journals, but my husband wanted me to start this project.  The deer was from a decoupage kit my daughter bought me last Christmas.  I have covered it with texture paste and the next stage is painting.

The original method was to create pages as you went along, I really didn't like that method.  Then I tried again using larger pieces of paper,  that was fine, but I thought I'd try making one long piece and then folding it up.  There are three thin layers, plus a layer of gesso.  This was a much quicker method, but as always, the folding caused me problems.  I didn't take a scoring board which would have helped, but I am just not good at keeping everything straight without some refolding!

We now have visitors so all crafting on hold for a week.  Hoping I can get round to everyone still x.

WOYWW 796

 Welcome to Crafting With Jack and What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, a day when we link up to Sarah's Craftshed and have a look to see what everyone has been doing. 

In the awning of the caravan once more, this time looking after my MIL, not that there is a lot of looking after involved as she is very independent.  We took her to the hospital last Friday to have a lump removed from her face, the doctors today and a hearing check up tomorrow, Friday doctors again to get her wound checked.

I have been doing some crafting.  Over the weekend I decorated a zine, a challenge for The Ugly Art site.

Monday I started making a journal,  I brought some papers with me to use up.  I quite like working in the concertina type journals, I have developed an easier (for me) way of making them.

Short and sweet this week. x