Introducing - my craft desk!

It is small but perfectly formed,   and is a bit like the Tardis for space,  my craft desk.   It finally arrived yesterday at 4.45pm,  by 7pm I had half of it built, then I sensibly stopped as I needed to add the hinges and sliders, so felt that was best left to the daylight hours. So today I was up with the larks,  and in the supermarket early,  then back home, quick cup of coffee and then finished putting it together.   I thought I'd need to measure were to put the two sliders,  then I spotted the pilot holes, phew.    Had it all done by lunchtime, which meant I could Christen it with a craft session! 

Of course had to fill it with the craft stuff, though there is still loads of room for more crafty stash.  I need also to really sort out what I've got,  I'll start doing that next week.   It was just so good to have a permanent craft space,  I've kept my mobile table,  that's good for keeping other stuff on while I'm crafting.  The inks are on the shelf,  divided them into their colour groups! 

The flip down top takes the craft mat nicely,  may try to fix it to the table, not permanently as I like to remove it for brayering.   Not everything is properly sorted,  just put all that has been hanging around in the room into it.  I may even be able to find things, which will be a minor miracle. 

I'm still in wonderment that I managed to put it together so easily, usually there is one mistake!  I decided to use 'no nails' tape to fix the back boards on,  better than guessing where to bash in the nails. 

So it was time to craft!  I used my new Indigo Blu stamps, Hocus Pocus,  I fell in love with this set because of the owl, and the two sentiments.  I'd already had a play with them, but just stamping them on some paper, fooling around with how to decorate the backgrounds.   I also like to stamp the stamps,  they always seem to work better once they've had their first coat of ink on them.   The desk provided a nice firm stamping area,  another plus.   You can actually see the finished piece, but it took an hour or so to get there.

Here is the finished piece.  I used two pieces of card,  sorry 3 pieces!  I stamped the small picture, one with the owl, first,  on to a piece of card just big enough to take the stamp.  I brayered the sky using denim from the adiorondac ink range,  I used a mask for the owl, moon and castle.  I wanted to bring the little owl to life,  so using some quickie glue I drew round the outlines of his feathers, then used gold embossing powder,  leaving the glue to dry with the powder before using the heat gun.  To give a bit more depth I added the copper radiant rain,  a very watery mix,  just flicking it onto the image,  and used a pro marker to add depth round the neck area.  For the castle I mixed two dylusions, purple and blue,  again used a watery mix,  and brushed over the brayered sky.   For the second background,  I brayered some yellow ink, then stamped over it using the arched window,  for the sky I used the purple/blue dylusions combo, tried to get a streaky effect and managed it.  The branch was a happy accident as it covers up a slight mistake,  then I added the birds and the sentiment,  just matted the owl onto some gold card to make it pop.   Very happy with this,  the gold embossing isn't standing out well in the photo,  but it does IRL. 

The best bit was at the end, when for the first time there was no need to pack everything away in boxes,  rather I could just have a quick tidy, and then close the desk.