WOYWW542 (I think)

I am sorry I was missing in action last week but various aspects of my life caught up with me and it was Friday before I drew breath again!  Anyway, here I am for this edition of Whats on Your Workdesk, the friendliest blog hop in the world, hosted by the lovely Julia. I missed you all last week so am looking forward to catching up with your news.

Here is my desk this week (as it was last night), mug of tea nearly finished and a journal page in progress... still don't really know where I am going with this one but am having fun finding out!  There are some die cut butterflies made from gelliprint images, stamps of various sorts, pens etc.

By way of comparison this is what my desk looked like last week - mid sermon prep and assignment work pushed to one side. The only constant is the mug of tea! As you probably all know by now I work full-time as a University Lecturer (my subject is Cancer studies) but in my 'spare time' I am doing a school of ministry course as a precursor to potentially becoming a lay reader in the church of England.  As a result I get the opportunity to preach occasionally in my local church and I have a number of assignments to do throughout the year.  With both needing urgent work, this is why I was missing in action last week!
Anyway, sorry for the rather boring post this week.  I hope you all have a lovely week.
With love & God Bless,
Caro
xxx

WOYWW540

It is Wednesday and I am travelling to Bristol and back for work so this is a scheduled post for WOYWW - check out Julia's blog for all the details.

Here is my desk as it was yesterday playing with my new distress oxides and Carabelle stencils. You can also see a new art journal ready for playing in and the base of some Harry Potter figures in the background.

This is because my birthday was this week and I was given this lovely pile of goodies - a mixture of Harry Potter and crafting toys!

This is the card that I made with my first play using distress oxides, Carabelle stencils and Lavinia stamps.  I haven't tried distress oxides before so now need to spend time on YouTube looking at all the different ways you can use them -LOL!  I love the vibrancy of the colours.

My birthday was lovely and peaceful, a mixture of family time with the three of us, time to read, time to craft, some crazy golf and a meal out.  I missed my birthday chats with Gran and Dad, but other than that it was a perfect day. 

That is all from me for now as it has to be short and sweet - I am back from Bristol tonight so will try and comment on everyone's posts. In the meantime, Have a lovely week,
With love and God Bless,
Caro
xxx

WOYWW 539

Another week, another Wednesday and another hop around the crafting desks of the world courtesy of Julia. 

Here is my desk looking relatively neat and showing some evidence of crafting! This journaling book is almost complete, and this rather busy page was made using acrylics. I put the acrylic paints away before doing the more detailed doodling with the acrylic paint pens that you can see. There are fine posca pens and some much thicker cheap pens that work nicely.  To the left of my desk you can see a colouring card that I have started which was sent to me all the way from Australia by our very own Shaz in Oz (more later). At the back of the desk is a somewhat unusual item that we found tucked into my Gran's top drawer - something called a promise box.

This is a closer image of the box...

and this is the inside of the box.  We don't know when Gran was given the box (Mum didn't even know she had it until I found it), but from the type face it appears to be from the 1940s so may have been when she officially joined the Methodist church or could have been something that Grandad gave her.  For those of you unfamiliar with these boxes the little scrolls of paper each have a Bible verse on them, something comforting, encouraging, or guiding, and the idea is that you read one each day and memorise them. You could do it personally or in a group. At a family gathering, meal time or worship time. The description says that the verses are “a careful selection of precious promises from the Word of God for Comfort, Cheer and Guidance of His own”. My Gran was a Methodist all her life, and her faith was really important to her so it was lovely to discover this aspect of her faith that I didn’t know about. From the edges of the scrolls she has clearly used it so that is really special.

Here is a close up of the journal page - just doodling for fun, but was lovely to do while it was chucking it down on Sunday and Alex was happily engaged in building a Lego castle.

This is another journal page completed using gelli plate images and then doodling in white.

Finally I have to say a massive thank you to Shaz from Oz who sent me this lovely card with these images for me to colour in - I admired the image so much on her blog that she kindly sent me some to play with. I have made a start on one of them, but only have the odd little bit of time here and there at the moment as it is the first week of teaching at Uni and I am dealing with all the new students and associated chaos! 
That is all from me for now.  Have a lovely week
With love & God Bless,
Caro
xxx