Anyone for a desktop tea-party?

Following on from my pretty calendar to brighten up my desk I was truly bitten by the making-stuff bug last week and made 3 more desk brighten-upperers!

(See what I mean about the grey in the background?!)

The first is a cupcake pen-holder. It was really easy to make, I made a simple box without a lid from chipboard card and covered it in pretty paper (downloaded for free from Papercraft Inspirations) and lined it with white card, both for extra strength and to give it a nice finish.

To make the cupcake I used my build-a-bun stencil from Craftwork Cards (I didn't actually pay £3.50 for this! It came in a goody bag with lots of other lovely bits!), both parts were cut out of chipboard card for sturdiness. The bottom was covered in more PI paper and pink ribbon on the front and the same paper lined the back so the exposed part that can be seen from behind looks as good as the front.

I used the stencil as a rough guide for the top of the cupcake but made it look a little more swirly. I covered the front in white card and used crayon for the detail and pink chalk to colour it in, using shading around the detail. A few pretty brads made the sprinkles and a button with a sparkly brad stuck on made the 'cherry on top'. To cover the 'legs' of the brads I covered the back with more PI spotty paper.

My pens sit quite happily in here and it looks a 'treat'!

To make my desktop tea party a little more complete I added a 'slice of cake' post-it holder. This was much more fiddly as it involved making a pretty tricky box, using 2 layers of chipboard card for strength, which was then covered in (more!) PI paper. The white spotty paper is the sponge, the pink check is the icing and the pale brown and pink ribbon are the filling. Some little flowers and brads make pretty cake decorations.

The final addition (so far!) is just... pretty (pointless?!) I was given some awful black plastic file holders to go on my desk and since I just couldn't stand the thought of yet more black cluttering up my desk I drew around the end of the file holder (onto more chipboard card, I love that stuff!) and quite simply used more PI papers cut into strips along with some pink ribbon to create a bit of a sunburst shape, with another of my lovely flowers in the corner to hide where all of the paper and ribbon meets. It just blu-tacks onto the file holder so I can't get told off for damaging company property!

I'm starting to like sitting at my desk much more now that it's a little more me, I wonder what I should make next?!

I love my Calendar Girl...

I have a dull desk at work. So dull it makes me feel about as gloomy as my surroundings, all grey, beige and black. I haven't been here long- only about 6 weeks- so I haven't yet covered my desk in the usual junk that you acquire over the years, little teddy bears, donkeys, corporate freebies... I'm trying to refrain from cluttering my space with junk just for the sake of hiding the grey. I've decided to take a craftier approach so this will be the first of several work-related projects. 

One of my colleagues gave me a calendar 2 weeks ago to stick up on the little partition between my desk and another but guess what colour it was! That's right, grey! Well, I'm not having that. I refuse to add yet more grey into the mix.

Canon Creative Park is a fantastic resource for free printables, they have all sorts from scrapbooking papers to ridiculously intricate looking 3D paper models (seriously, how maddening would these be to make?!). They also do a big range of calendars which is where I downloaded mine from. Each month is either pale pink, green, yellow or blue which ties in nicely with the papers I had picked out. I didn't notice until I'd finished that along the bottom of each month there was a bright red Canon logo, not really what I wanted! So I took a centimetre and a half off the bottom of each month, dug out the pack of co-ordinating stickers that came with the papers and chose the least cheesy saying to stick over the logo on the bottom of December since I'd had this marvellous idea of sticking the last month onto the backing card. I quite like the sentiment though, I've been feeling a little out of my depth at work as everyone seems a little robotic here and not terribly friendly, I like looking at that and remembering to just be myself!   

I'm not a hugely flowery person but I love the big pink and purple flowers on here, and the snazzy green brads. I'm fairly sure everything is by Papermania, I hope it is because I want more of the flowers and the spangly brads in different colours and I'll be gutted if I can't find them!

I love my new calendar, it makes me smile when I see something so pretty that I made, a shock of colour in the gloom. I've got at least two more ideas for fabulous things to make for my desk now... it isn't going to know what's hit it!

My first real craft project in a year!

Last year I had a bit of a craft hiatus, I just seemed to lose my mojo and it made me sad. I tried, I planned projects, dug out the materials... stared at it all then put it away again! The only crafting I did last year was wedding related, and it felt more like a job than a pleasure; I'm so glad to finally have all that wedding madness behind me and to use craft as an escape once more.

One of the things that has been festering in my drawers for far too long is a wonky cardboard heart that I bought from a craft fair about 4 or 5 years ago. I'm sure it was from Art From The Heart but I can't find it on their website, no surprises really since it was bought so long ago! AFTH by the way is a fab shop for papercraft supplies that have a bit of an edge. I miss their little shop in Harrogate but I know that they've got a workshop so I'm really going to have to go one day for a class and a bit of shopping.

Anyway, back to the heart! Last night something struck, I think it was inspiration. I used a Fiskars edger to get the ever-so-slightly wobbly torn strips of paper (because I don't actually believe that I can free-hand tear anything without just plain ripping it into shreds!) and pretty much just dug about in my pots of 'stuff' to decorate it.

And of course, even though the back will more than likely be to the wall and won't actually see the light of day... I still had to decorate it!

It might not be perfect, but it stands for something beautiful, which is that my Crafting Groove is back Baby!

So I've finally joined the 21st Century...

Hello! Welcome! Bienvenue! Bienvenido!

All the cool kids seem to be blogging nowadays so I've decided that whilst I'm definitely not cool, I'd give it a go anyway, I always seem to be the last one to cotton onto the latest trend (Twitter still astounds me... maybe I'll bite that bullet too!) but I really have drag myself into the 21st Century and stop moaning about when 'I were a lass people didn't talk about themselves on that there internet'... I'm only 25, I have no excuse!

I'm not entirely sure what this will become... a diary, a crafty show-off spot, a place to gush about beauty products, bags and shoes? Who knows, certainly not me!