LittleBirdyScraps

Under Reconstruction!

If you're not wearing a hard hat and steel-toed boots then I really can't be held responsible for any injury you may suffer whilst visiting my blog.  I'm having to do things one at a time because I only have an Economy brain, so please bear with me while things come and go, look horrible, change size etc.  I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end....:D

WOYWW #155

ATC swap next week!  Exciting stuff!  (I've actually got a whole load of ATCs all waiting to go, so I'm hoping to send more than a couple off.  If anyone would like to do an extra swap, and do it with me, lol, please mention it in your comment and you can also email me at hsalthouse@yahoo.com.  Seems easier to just put my email addy rather than asking you to put all yours on show!)

So - this week on my desk is this. Sorry about the glare, it's daylight, but not as we know it.

Oooooh yes, it is my long-awaited Once Upon A Time stack from DCWV.  Well, from the US actually since that is where the Amazon supplier was.  I love being able to order weighty/bulky stuff from the US via Amazon and pay nearly normal postage!  And in fact I didn't await that long - it took under a week for it to turn up.

This is earmarked for my Harry Potter studio tour album; I'm currently trying to work out how to get all the photos into the one book, and if I can do that then I will have some of these lovely sheets left over.

Also on my desk this week is the following LO, one of several which I made at the crop on Saturday.  I am dead chuffed that, largely due to Shimelle's Cover to Cover course, I was able to get five page kits together, complete all five LOs on one day AND add proper, decent journaling after I got home!  Bumper, as Gaye would say, although I have no idea if she will read this or not :D

So, there you go.  Keep it short, Helen, keep it short!  Nip over to Julia's place for the lowdown on the desk display, and happy WOYWW!

Don'ts For Husbands!

I found this little book in the charity shop the other day and bought it for £1 because I thought I could do something interesting with it.  It's very tiny and measures about 4 and a half inches by two and a half.

It's called 'DON'TS For Husbands', as you can see, and was apparently written in 1913.  I thought that I would read through it a bit before I started transforming it, and these are some of the things it contains:

Don't sit down to breakfast in your shirt-sleeves in hot weather on the ground that "only your wife" is present.  She is a woman like any other woman.  The courtesies you give to womankind are her due, and she will appreciate them.

Don't stoop, even if your work is desk-work.  Your wife wants to see you straight and broad-chested.

Don't slouch. No-one who cares for a man likes to see him acquire a slouching habit.

Don't fidget.  Some husbands are never still for a moment.

Don't be conceited about your good looks.  It is more than probable that no one but yourself is aware of them; anyway, you are not responsible for them, and vanity in a man is ridiculous.

Don't think you can soothe wounded feelings by material gifts.

Okay.  Let's stop right there.  I appreciate what she's saying, but let's not take this too far.  There are, of course, other ways of dealing with wounded feelings.  But a small material gift is always welcome...

This book goes on in the same vein.  And on, and on, and on.  And on.  And on.  Goodness knows what sort of wife this woman was, or indeed whether any poor bloke had the misfortune to marry her at all.

I started off thinking that it might be a shame to cover up what was in this book, that it might be quaint or fascinating in some way.  Instead I have decided that it needs burying as soon as possible, and perhaps I could somehow make it a celebration of the male sex.  I wonder how the old bat felt if, a year after this was published, her husband had to go to war and maybe didn't come back.

 

WOYWW #154 - I'm late! I'm late!

Ooh, a quickie!  Last night I was too busy making a card and wrapping pressies to take any photos, so this morning here is said card - for Youngest's birthday

He thought I'd bought it, which was sweet.  The background technique is one I saw Lindsey Mason demoing and it's brilliant for quick cards, particularly male ones, with a simple stamp on top.  I'll link up my original blog post with the details, later!

ETA: It's here, the original post - you'll have to scroll down to the bottom to see the cards I made - but I've now realised that I didn't actually describe what I'd done!  So tomorrow I will make every effort to repeat it, whilst taking photos.  It's actually very simple, but always nice to see pictures, I think! Hopefully it will be there when you pop back for WOYWW #blah...:D

But now I'm off to work; take a look over on Julia's blog for all the other workspaces you get to have a sneaky peek at!  And happy WOYWW.

WOYWW possibly #153

Hello everybody, WOYWW has this week got me out of bed.  I completely forgot it was Tuesday yesterday, or indeed Wednesday today, and so didn't upload anything last night.  Here is my desk, in poor light, this morning

That's a couple of holiday photos being made into a layout there, using Lily Bee Buttercup which is gorgeous.  On the top of the desk is this

...which I had to photograph over by the window!  It's me messing about with distress stains and my new Oxford Impressions Vintage Circus stamps which I've been wanting to get my hands on for ages.

I'm off to the shower now as I'm meant to be at work in 40 minutes.  Good thing it's just over the road!

Nip over to Julia's for some more workspace wonderfulness.   Thanks for the comments I received last week - my own wanderings were a bit sparse, so hopefully I can make up for that this week!

Order amongst the chaos...

Today I got my first prompt from Shimelle's Cover to Cover class - for which I may even get around to uploading a button for my sidebar.  (As you may have noticed, there are things missing from my sidebar; I thought I'd take it back to scratch and start again, so expect a blogroll to appear, at the very least, some time soon!)

I've been having a scout around my scrappy space and have taken some photos of my albums (the ones on display, anyway, since some are imprisoned in a cupboard):

And then I went off and found my wild and free LOs which haven't yet made their way into an album.  There is a big pile in the aforementioned cupboard:

(I'm dying to know what that white thing is poking out of the middle.)

And there are a couple of smaller piles next to my workspace:

So that's how things stand at the moment.  I'm not too distressed about the unfiled LOs, as I do go through them regularly and shove what I can into albums.  The bigger problem is space.  No, not the final frontier, the space on my bookshelves.  I really need to have another blitz and get rid of stuff we don't use or need, so that not only scrapbook albums but things like sewing machines can have a safe home. 

Watch this space.....(but not too closely!)

 

WOYWW erm......

Yes, okay, I've lost count again.  There are so many things to keep track of!  Youngest has flown off to Barthelona, which entailed me getting up at 3.45am and although I didn't do the airport run I wasn't able to get back to sleep.  Blurgh.  And Daughter has just texted me to ask for some money to be transferred into her account so that she can buy her travel card.  Blurgh.

Anyway, without further ado, here's what's on my desk today.  This very morning.

It's relatively tidy, because I have tidied it.  And there are hardly any scissors left because the children have stolen them all.  It's a computer desk, so here is the pull-out bit with a double LO on it:

I expect if I did more of these I would be better at them.  And here's another page I have completed

Not one I've done this week, but it's been sitting in the 'holding area' next to my desk and I don't think I've shown it on here before. 

If this has left you drooling in anticipation of more desky loveliness, then nip over to Julia's for more! 

The Bad Mother

That's me.  I just know it.  Today was quite a good day,  until I came home from school and saw the text from Youngest, who stands accused of kicking a hole in a wall at school.  The text said that he was just one of three suspects, and that I was going to have to pay a third of the repair bill.  And that he  might not be able to go to Barcelona.

This isn't a random punishment, I should point out. Youngest's school haven't started forbidding children to visit various European capital cities as a consequence for bad behaviour.  No - this is a Modern Foreign Languages trip which he is due to take on Wednesday.  So I was a little dismayed when he told me that he might have to miss it.  Although I should own up to also thinking: a)does that mean I'll get my four hundred and fifty quid back? and b)that means I won't have to get up at 4am on Wednesday morning to take him to the airport because it's cheaper than hiring a coach.  (They didn't give us the option.  I've paid 450 quid, for goodness sake, and there will be pocket money involved - who cares about another twenty for a coach if I can stay in bed til it's daylight???)

Which reminds me, I need to write the word 'Euros' on my forehead.

My Five Picture Story....

I thought I'd post these quickly - one of our assignments involved us choosing five little stories from our time in education, and making postcards about them.  Of course I found this very exciting, and I posted this one ages ago with the accompanying story, which was rather sad.  Here are the others:

This is about how easy it is to damage children's confidence by making their answers 'wrong' when we could make them 'right'.  I've heard children come up with some very thoughtful ideas in Literacy, poems or creative writing, to which the teacher's response was 'That's good, but it's not quite right'.  This is because we seem to require children to copy famous writers.  Boys, particularly, like to come out with outrageous and fantastic ideas, and often they'll be told they're 'silly'.  Well, they can have all the silly ideas they like as far as I'm concerned - it never did Roald Dahl any harm, lol!

This one is about the 'stupid table' that the kids in the 'low ability' maths group always think they're sitting on.  We don't have to do that to them.

This is about making assumptions.  We had a child at school who actually had a disability; I don't think I can be specific on here.  But it was a disability that wasn't immediately apparent.  And we all assumed that there were other reasons for her slightly unusual behaviour.  We were just wrong.

And finally, because I don't want to be completely negative, haha, here is someone who finally sees the light, because another person has managed to find a way of explaining something to him which works.

You may notice that the last two are rather different from the others.  For no conscious reason I resumed making my postcards after a considerable gap, and discovered that I was using loud colours and wacky designs.  How queer....!  Anyway, hope you like them.  I had huge fun making them, and fully intend to make more!

Bit of a cheeky WOYWW...

Now, I hope no-one takes exception to this, but having been absent from WOYWW for several weeks I have popped back to very quickly show you what is on my upstairs workdesk...although it is non-craft related!!!! Oooer.

 

It's a rubbish webcam photo of my dissertation.  Which is in itself slightly rubbish, if I'm honest.  But there it is, all ready for hand-in.  And it has been electronically submitted for a plagiarism check so there is no going back.

OOOOH I've just remembered, it is ever so slightly crafty because I bound it with my BIA.

Also on my desk right now, is this

I don't want to get completely lagging because I still have some minor bits of assignments to finish off tomorrow before the big hand-in on Thursday.  But a baby bottle of sauvignon seemed in order.....also, I rather like the bottle itself, maybe I can do something with that next week??

There are some LOs if you scroll down, which were completed for Shimelle's online crop.  But otherwise I will love you and leave you, and promise to have something creative on here next week.

In the meantime, have a look at Julia's blog for some real, proper crafty stuff to feast your eyes on!

 

A Little Trickle...

V-e-e-e-e-r-y slowly I am doing some more of Shimelle's challenges.  This is one where we had to use the same photo twice.  I did have a list right here beside me with the challenge numbers on it, but I can't see it.  And since I am about to screeeeeam - coursework - I won't look for it!

I found an old photo of my brother in his cub scout uniform, with his dog Jones, who was a 7th birthday present.  It's an old photo and they never seem to scan very well, but I've added a PS action to it.  Yes, that one I like, lol.

I'm quite pleased with it, although there's still something missing at the bottom there.  And you can probably see where it leapt from my hands and went swooping through the air before landing on the kitchen floor - with wet paint on it.  Because I am impatient.  But never mind.  I have used up that Jenny Bowlin paper that's been in the drawer for. ever.  And some chipboard and a clock, and some ribbon which I am usually too lazy to deal with!