NSBR - a little give-away

1/31/11 IS LAST DAY TO ENTER

Been doing a little housecleaning today and discovered some small Vera Bradley items that I have left from an outlet sale I attended. They are duplicates of things I already own so I thought I would do a little give away!

The pieces that I am offering are all brand new, with tags and are RETIRED patterns. Here's what I'm giving away:

Sherry Handbag in Caffe Lattte

Purse Cosmetic in Kensington

Purse Cosmetic in Yellow Bird

If you would like to play along, just leave a comment with the item that you would like. On February 1, I will conduct 3 random drawings - one for each item - and post the winners here. Winners will have one week to send me mailing information.

Embellished Heart Card

Thought you might like to see what I made of the card I created yesterday - kept it very simple with a second layer of flowers behind the opening, a few pearls, some penwork and a simple bow. I kinda like it!

Valentine Card & Some Instructions

Happy Saturday everyone!

I saw a post on both the svgcuts and craft edge forums this morning - requesting help creating (in SCAL) a card with a cut out heart filled with flowers. Now, I normally design in Inkscape so I had to go play around in SCAL and see if this could be done. I just upgraded from v2.013 to v.2.038 and hadn't played around with the new features too much.

I have to tell you- I think I will be doing a lot more designing in SCAL now - there are still some things you can't do but there is so much you can. Before I go over the steps, let me show you the card (I haven't embellished it or anything at this point):



And, here are the steps I followed to make this:

• Place your rectangle on mat
• Position heart in desired location
• Select both objects and then go to PATH and select EXCLUDE. You should now only see one object on your mat - the card base with a heart shaped opening.
• At this point, I locked this layer so that it would be easier to position and move things around.
• Position your flowers where you want them - be sure they overlap each other and also onto the card base itself.
• Select all of your flowers and WELD
• Unlock the base layer and SELECT ALL and then WELD
• That's it! Check the preview and it should be ready to cut!

I could upload the cut file to 4shared but maybe you want to try it yourself? If you want the file, let me know and I'll get it loaded and provide a link.

And then, I have been doing a lot of blog hopping and even though I've seen it before, I never think to do this myself - I actually broke out the sewing machine for a card last night! I sewed the solid cardstock piece to the patterned background and then I pleated and sewed the ribbon to the card as well. It's still a simple card but I think it is pretty.


Thanks so much for stopping by - I'd love it if you'd leave a note to let me know you were here!

Some Random Cards

Been playing around trying to use up stuff out of my scrap bin - you wouldn't believe how much is there and how many cards I can make!

These are just random cards to have on hand:


The wedding card is the only one that uses a cut file - I downloaded this pretty cut from HeatherM's blog.


Ok, I was wrong - this has a cut file too - the scalloped medallion. It's from svgcuts.com but I can't remember which collection it was in.


Nothing too exciting but thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

By Request.....My Knitting Collection

NOTICE: Please go to the SVG tab at the top of my blog for important information regarding SVG downloads. 

I had a request from the Craft Edge forum for a repost of my knitting collection of a couple of years ago. So, with my new practice of only posting what I have cut, I did some test cuts, tweaked some files, recut them and then added a couple new ones. The pictures below show the results:

Note in the picture below the needles have been taken out of the "packaging" and inserted into the ball of yarn.

In the next picture, you will see the needles separate from both the packaging and the yarn. And, assembled with a brad, the scissors will open and close. (Oops - didn't notice until now that one of the needles is turned upside down - sorry!)

Heart "Cobweb" Valentine

NOTICE: Please go to the SVG tab at the top of my blog for important information regarding SVG downloads. 

Someone on the svgcuts forum was looking for a file to cut this project from the Martha Stewart website (clicking on the link will take you to the website for instructions on finishing the project):


There is a template for printing and handcutting on the website but it's much simpler and quicker to just cut it using SCAL and your Cricut!

Here's the one that I cut this morning - no embellishments or anything - just the heart cut included in the file download.

Wk4 jingle belles card challenge

The challenge at Jingle Belles this week is Pretty in Pink....and green.


Here's my attempt at this one:


I have to say, that I actually like this one! The colors look better IRL - someday I'll figure out the lighting in this room so I can better pictures.

Here's the details of what I did: I started with a 5x5 card made from Core'dinations cardstock. I inked the edges with the same color green ink. I topped the card base with a 4.5 square of a scrap of pink patterned cardstock - I think it is Basic Grey - edges inked with pink ink. Then I had fun! I cut the Holly Jolly from the Rockin Around the Christmas Tree collection at SVGCUTS.com. (I omitted the arrow layer). In Inkscape, I broke apart an svgcuts.com freebie to create the large holly leaves and berries. I added a slit to the center of the leaf to nestle the word Christmas (stamped on a scrap of the same pink patterned cardstock with green ink) into. I embossed the leaves with a cuttlebug embossing folder. Inked them with green ink, sprinkled with clear EP and heat embossed them. I used versamark ink and clear EP on the holly berries (the shine causes them to look almost red in the picture but they are the same dark pink cardstock used to make the Holly Jolly embellishment). The finishing touch was adding the light green Basic Grey opaline pearls to the corners.

Thanks for stopping by to visit! Have a great weekend!

WOOHOO! A first for me!

I actually made a card that fulfills TWO different challenges!!!! I've never tried that before and just had to share my excitement. I know some of you can meet 5, 6, or even more challenges with one card/project but, still, this is a FIRST for me!


So, for the details: My card is a 5x5 square with a 4.5" opening cut into it. Behind the opening, I layered a section of a black flourish die cut cardstock over white cardstock. I added a curvy edge section of silver glitter cardstock, a strip of white cardstock punched with my MS lace border punch, and then a strip of DCWV stripe cardstock. I trimmed the edge of this section with baby ric-rac colored with silver ink. Then I stamped a birthday cupcake stamp onto a piece of white cardstock using my black staz-on ink. I rounded the corners, stamped a section of a flourish onto a corner and inked the edges with silver ink. I added a gem and pearl flower embellishment and couple of rhinestones. The sentiment was stamped with staz-on ink and given the same silver ink treatment as the cupcake. Oh, and I almost forgot - the flame of the cupcake and the sprinkles on the icing are diamond stickles.

The challenges I met:

Pixie Dust Paperie has the following sketch challenge:


And, Crafting with Christina has a color challenge - Black, white and gray (may substitute silver).


Thanks for taking a look!

Just a Note about Vera Bradley

I just wanted to say that I am thrilled that you are all so excited about the VB give-away. I figure if I have had them stashed for 2 years - it's time to get rid of them. I didn't know what type of response I would get since they are just small pieces and retired items at that.

How do I happen to have "extra" Vera? The only reason that I have so much VB is that my daughter lives in Fort Wayne, IN and hits the annual outlet sales. We get pieces for about 20-25% of msrp that way. You don't get a lot of pattern or style choice but as long as you are not set on getting a specific item, it can be a lot of fun. I've managed to get "sets" of almost all of my patterns - a purse, wallet and cosmetic. And, I have one pattern that I probably have 15 pieces of - it's my travel set so I have all sorts of different pieces to vary depending on the situation.

In case you think you might ever want to go to the outlet sale, here's a little more info:

The year I went to the sale, the doors opened at 8 and we sat outside in 30 degree weather from about 2:30 until 7 when they finally let us into the lobby. It is insane but the building has a capacity and once they hit that number, no one else can go in until some leave. And, obviously, the first people in get the best selection of merchandise.

It works best to go as a group so you can divide and conquer. I went with both of my girls so we each took a third of the sales floor. When you go in, you get a large plastic bag (think garbage bag) - you walk up and down the aisles and grab ANYTHING you even remotely think you might want. Then you go to sorting areas and look through your stuff and toss what you don't want into large boxes. The staff restocks those items to the tables. Compare notes with the other people in your group and then one person holds everything and you run around again looking for anything you might have missed. They bring out more stuff as tables empty so its always good to hang around for a little bit. I bought about 15 extra pieces that were exceptional bargains - used a bunch of them for birthday gifts and such for co-workers and friends. (the ones I'm giving away are the last of that bunch)

It made for a good girls day out for the 3 of us - with the girls grown and Jenn living in Indiana, we don't get many of those. Maybe we'll do it again in a year or two if they are still having the sales by then.

I have a free VB svg file available here.

I'll leave you with this layout I did of my daughter's first VB sale from 2008.

And I thought my Craft Room was a Mess......

......it was nothing compared to my Computer!!!! I have spent the last 3 hours working on cleaning up and reorganizing my files.....and I haven't even begun to touch the thousands of digital pictures I have. I've basically dumped all of those into one folder and will work on them another time.

What prompted this? Well, when the PC starts slowing down, you know its time to take action. MY PC isn't the latest, fastest edition but it is just over a year old and has LOTS of memory so it shouldn't be bogging down the way it is. In perusing my hard drive, I noticed that I had 2 & 3 copies of some files --- PLUS .zip files for the same items. No wonder I'm having problems.

As soon as the last of my photo files are copied into the one folder, I will be doing a backup of my hard drive onto my Passport portable HD followed by a defrag of the PC hard drive. Hopefully these steps will speed things back up!

I could use any tips/hints any of you have for keeping your computer files organized - I obviously need some help in this department!

Natalie's Valentine Card

SVGCUTS released the cutest valentine freebie yesterday (you can click on the picture to go to their blog to download it):




I was going to use this just to make my grandson a valentine card and make Natalie a princess themed card. Well, my daughter said Natalie would love the dino too - so I attempted to combine the dino and princess themes with this card:


The card is a gate fold style and when you open it up, there is a lacy heart cut that says ".....to our DINO-MITE princess!" and I have another little crown under the word princess.

What do you think? I know it's busy and has lots of sparkle but is it too much? Does it work?

Thanks for taking a look! Off to work on Daniel's card now.

Wk3 jingle belles card challenge

Don't know about you, but I haven't done much today - followed a couple of blog hops and did the pink stamper challenge that I posted earlier. And, figured I should work on the jingle belles card challenge - doubt I'll manage to keep up with all of them for the year but I really want to try!

The challenge this week was to use acrylic paint in some way. I have a drawer full of acrylic paint - bought it all when I was really into the making memories foam stamps (still have those by the way). Never really thought about other ways to use it so I just started playing around this afternoon to see what I could do. The card I made uses nothing but paper, paint, glitter and one flat back pearl from basic grey.

I created the lettering by using a CHALK TEMPLATE (an oldie from Fairytale Creations that I have had for YEARS) with a metallic acrylic paint called "dark patina". While the paint was still wet, I sprinkled it with the glitter. I tore my patterned paper and used just a quick swash of paint along the top edge. The snowy corner with the pine trees is a cut from the Santa's Workshop collection at SVGCUTS.com. I used my patina colored acrylic on the trees and added some glitter. Then I took some white acrylic and dabbed it on the snowy area and again sprinkled it with the glitter. The snowflake is from the same SVGCUTS collection and is painted with white acrylic, sprinkled with glitter and then I adhered the pearl in the middle. The snowflake is mounted on a foam dot.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

My Pink Stamper Blog Hop Challenge

How is it possible that I have never visited My Pink Stamper's blog? WOW - some amazing stuff there and her new design team rocks! I just followed their first ever blog hop and was truly in awe of some of the beautiful creations the ladies shared.

Part of the blog hop was to collect a word at each blog to form a challenge sentence and then post your entry on My Pink Stamper's Blog.

Well, those of you who follow along here know 1) I'm not a card maker and 2) I'm not much of a stamper. But, I managed to put together a card - using only things in my scrap bin, a freebie SVGCUTS file, my MS Lace Border punch, foam dots, ribbon, chalk, ink, and a marker. Since I had never visited my pink stamper before, obviously I didn't have any of her stamps, but I did manage to meet the color challenge by using a lot of pink on my card.



Thanks for stopping by!

Inside of Little Birdie card......

.....here's the inside of the little birdie card I posted a couple of days ago. I designed the word happy to the right side thinking of adding a cupcake or something in that space. Decided it was a good place for the little birdie instead. Also - the little birdie on the top right is not white like it looks here - it's actually light blue.

Spring Forward Blog Hop

BLOG HOP is Full! A great group has been assembled - be sure to mark your calendars for March 11 - the HOP starts Here!

Hi everyone – exciting news today! Celeste from Touched by a Butterfly and I have decided to team up to host a Blog Hop. The theme of our blog hop will be Spring/Easter and is open to paper crafters of all types – cards, scrapbook layouts, 3D paper projects – paper and the theme are the only criteria. You do not have to offer patterns or cut files but if you want to, that would be awesome. We are looking for 8 to 10 other crafters/paper artists to join us on this little adventure. Participating in a blog hop is a great way to increase the number of viewers/followers to your blog.

If you haven’t participated in a blog hop before – this is the perfect opportunity to jump in as we’ve never hosted before either – we can all learn together. How does it work? Basically, once you decide to participate you should make an announcement on your blog to help generate interest in the event. Then, design your project, take pictures of it, and write up instructions on how to duplicate it. If you want to offer blog candy, have that selected, photographed and your criteria set. Then, at the appointed time, you publish a blog post that includes your project information, blog candy info (if you are offering any), as well as the main blog candy info and blog hop itinerary. I would also ask that as a participant, you visit the other blogs and leave comments. Not too hard, right?

There will be a prize/blog candy offered for those who visit and comment at every stop along the way – the prize has not been determined yet as this is something we’ve just decided on today. If you would like you can also offer a small blog candy for those who visit your blog – you determine your own criteria and run your own give-away.

The blog hop will run March 11 – 13 (the weekend clocks “spring forward”).

We’d love to have you participate! If you are interested, please email Celeste or me as soon as possible as the number of slots will be limited to 12 (Celeste, me, and 10 others).

Greetings from my Grandkids!

I know it's sideways - but had to share my birthday greetings from the grandkids that Jennifer posted this morning on facebook.

One more Card for today

I absolutely love the Birds and Birdhouses collection from SVGCUTS - I had to have it, but it has taken me this long to do something with it.

My inspiration for finally using it was the stamp that I have used on this card and one that I posted earlier today. It says "a little birdie told me" and in between told and me, there is actually a bird on the stamp. I simply masked the bird off before inking my stamp and then filled in the space with a little cutout bird on a foam dot. Oh, and did I mention - I found this cute stamp in the DOLLAR BIN at Michael's - its part of the brand new spring stuff!

This card features a scrap of basic grey paper that was in my bin, Core'dinations cardstock, bazzill cardstock, some pigment ink and I used the cuttlebug divine swirls embossing folder. The birdhouse and bird cut are from the aforementioned Birds and Birdhouses collection. My birdhouse is 3 layers - a blackout of the image as the underneath layer, the embossed front elevated on foam dots and then a 3rd layer that I used to cut the roof lines in a contrasting color - also elevated on foam dots.

That's it for me tonight - headed to bed. See everyone tomorrow!

A couple of cards

Okay, so I admit it - the snow is pretty! But, I'm totally ready for it to go away!

Thought I would share pics of the couple cards that I made today. This Christmas Card is super simple - embossed cardstock, a couple of snowflake stamps, a steaming mug and a warm wishes stamp:


The Birthday Card was a bit more involved - took me way tooooo much time to do this but I am okay with the result. The card base is made up of 2 patterned papers from the SEI chick-a-dee paper stack. I added a sheer pink polka dot ribbon around them. The birdhouse and bird are from the Birds and Birdhouses collection at svgcuts.com. I accented the birdhouse with stickles and some penwork and placed the house on top of a blackout shadow layer cut in pink. The little bird was also cut as a blackout (but not shadowed) - I layered the blue bird over top of the yellow one and then adhered the wing slightly skewed using foam dots. I cut the bird in two sizes and used the smaller one to replace the bird that was in that same position on the stamp - I simply wiped the ink off of the bird before stamping the image. Inside the card, I hand wrote "it's your birthday and then stamped "Happy Birthday."


Jenn - this next pic is for you. I took this just a short while ago, after considerable melting has occurred. The snow measures 8" now so we must have had at least 9 or 10 before it started melting.

Wait....I thought I lived in the SOUTH!

This is what we woke up to this morning:



We have 8-9 inches on the ground. Of course, Alabama is not really equipped to handle this and pretty much everything is shut down.

Doesn't bother me too much - I'll just spend the day crafting. I've made a couple of cards so far - guess I'll see what else I can accomplish.

Kindle or Nook?

NOTICE: Please go to the SVG tab at the top of my blog for important information regarding SVG downloads. 

I pondered this decision for a while - my SIL has Nook and my daughter has a Kindle. Had a chance to see and observe both of them and did a little reading on them. The touchscreen of the Nook is what finally made me decide to go with the Kindle. I don't know what it is but I seem to have trouble with touchscreens.

My Kindle is a birthday gift from the hubby and, weather permitting, should be delivered in time for my birthday! Even though I've been using the Kindle app for my blackberry, I'm very excited about getting the actual Kindle - the screen size on the blackberry is not great for book reading.

I started thinking that it would be nice to have files for these pieces of our everyday lives - and in creating them, I opted to also include a card base so they could be used for Amazon/B&N gift cards.































The pics on the left are the images from Inkscape - the pics on the right are my somewhat messy attempts at assembling and detailing the cuts. The .scut2 files are set up so that the assembled device will be the actual width & height of the device which will make nice size cards. Of course, if you want to scale the size to something smaller, that is definitely possible - although I'm not sure how small you could make the kindle file due to the circle cuts for the keys. I will try to design some envelopes to fit the files - possibly tomorrow since the forecast is that we will be snowed in (I live in Alabama - can you believe it?)

I'm also really having fun making pop-up greetings for my A2 card blanks - last night I created a Happy Birthday file using the Varsity font and I'm including that .scut2 file here as well.

I've got to get ready for work now - I'm hoping the bad weather holds off until I get home tonight. Wishing you all a restful/peaceful Sunday.

A couple of files to share

NOTICE: Please go to the SVG tab at the top of my blog for important information regarding SVG downloads. 

Thought I'd take just a couple of minutes before I get ready for work and post a couple of files.

The first is the inside cut for my Wk2 jinglebelles card - it's a pop up greeting that fits an A2 card. The file is set up as a .scut2 file for SCAL2 and is sized to 8 inches by 5 inches. There is a score line for the top fold. Using a scoring tool - you will need to also score the card at the 4 inch mark between the two words and then again at the very bottom edge of the bottom word.

The other file I am sharing this morning is for one of the mini-take out boxes - the one that I showed in the argyle pattern paper. This is an .svg file that you will import into your cutting software. It includes open paths for the score lines so will not cut with SCAL 1. You can resize it up to the maximum cutting area on your mat.

WK2 jingle belles card challenge

Wow - I've shocked even myself with this one. The challenge was posted at midnight and less than 24 hours have passed and I've got my card done!

The prompt this week at jinglebelles "comes from the song ... Have Yourself a Merry LITTLE Christmas ... which to us inspires making cards that feature Inchies and Twinchies (2" squares) in the design (or perhaps a twinchie-sized gift tag)."

I have to tell you - this was a REAL challenge for me. I don't own any of those cute little inchies stamps - I have a very limited collection of acrylic stamps - mostly some flowers and things that I can use for elements on my scrapbook pages. (Can you tell I'm not really a card maker?) I kept looking around my scrapbook room trying to figure out what to use for my "inchies" when my eyes fell onto one of my old class posters. I taught a class on "serendipity squares" - basically collage with a fancy name. So, I pulled out scraps of Christmas papers left over from this years card making and created a little collage and cut out some squares.

So, NOW WHAT? My card base is silver metallic cardstock from AC. I cut a smaller piece of red, embossed it with Cuttlebug Divine Swirls, and then inked that with MS silver ink. I tied a thin silver ribbon along the lower edge of the red cardstock and then added a red ribbon with a tiny rhinestone buckle (this is off of a stickpin from Joanne's - I'm really digging deep into the old stuff here). Next, I cut some scalloped squares from the Scalloped shapes collection at SVGCUTS. Added a little bit of that same MS silver ink to these squares. I added some tiny letters to each of my inchie squares - spelling out love, joy, and peace. I adhered love and joy to the background squares using thin foam dots and glued peace directly to the background square. When attaching the background squares, I glued down love and joy and used a thicker foam dot for peace - giving an alternating height effect. I finished up with 4 round gems from Paper Studio. Inside says "Season's Greetings."



I have a few more collage squares left so I may play around and try my hand at another sometime this weekend - but, for now, thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

Chinese Take Out?

I was talking to a friend of ours a couple of days ago about her daughter's approaching wedding. We were tossing out ideas for wedding favors and that led to mini Chinese take-out containers. I have been working up a couple of samples to show them. If they like them, I can create them in the wedding colors and decorate them to suit the theme.

I have made two different versions - the argyle patterned one in the picture below is made with cut flaps that overlap for the ends. The white patterned box has gussets that fold over - I like this style because you don't have any openings for things to protrude from.


I didn't have a take-out box on hand to disassemble to make a pattern so I searched and found some links on-line with free printable templates and worked from those. I will try to get the files uploaded to my 4shared account and add a link for download later tonight.

Big Thanks!

The couple of months leading up to Christmas found my life in absolute chaos - I struggled to get anything done this holiday season. I have been really working hard to turn things around in the past week. I'm not making any resolutions because that is just like dooming myself to failure. Instead, I have decided that I am going to try to participate in a few blog challenges to help keep me on track. I am going to start with just 2 - one organizational and one creative. And, sharing my progress with all of you will hopefully provide the motivation to stay on track!

As I embark on my new year/new outlook, I realize that there are some people that I need to thank. These are people whose friendship and/or blogs have motivated and inspired me - some for a long time and some just recently. I'd like to recognize them here:

1. Celeste at Touched by a Butterfly - I've known Celeste for almost 2 years now and have watched in awe as she has undertaken so many challenges and community service type projects. Your journals for cancer patients and OWH cards are wonderful endeavors! Celeste, you are such a thoughtful, kind person and I'm proud to call you my friend.

2. Jeanne at Creative Chaos - Jeanne has been a supportive friend for many years (We even served on a design team together - way back when!) Jeanne is an awesome card maker and scrapbooker and I love to see her new creations - they motivate me to try new things! Thanks Jeanne for continuing to challenge me to step outside of my comfort zone.

3. Dawn at Lost in Paper Scraps - Met Dawn (and Jeanne too) on the first Yahoo group I ever joined. Dawn you seem to always find the bright spot in life and your optimism and sense of humor cheer me up when I am down. Thanks so much for sharing your light with others!

4. Karel at One by One the Flamingos are Stealing my Sanity - Karel is a very special person who inspires me with her energy and zest for life. I don't know how you do all you do but you have made me realize that I don't make the best use of the time and resources God has provided. Thanks for opening my eyes.

5. Melanie at Scrappily Ever After - The Organizational Boot Camp is a great way to start the new year and it has motivated me to really dig deep and organize - not just stash it away to make it look good. Thanks for the challenge - I can't wait to see what is next!

6. Stef and Lauren at jingle belles - I think your Christmas Card Challenge is one of the best I've seen. The concept and pace of the challenge is perfect - anyone can find a few minutes a week to create a card. I struggle with getting things like this done so I am very excited to embark on this year-long journey with you! I want to thank you for providing much needed motivation and I look forward to the next challenge!

I encourage each of you to pass this along to at least one person who has inspired or motivated you!

Christmas Card Challenge

Christmas cards are a last minute thing at our house - I normally dash out and buy some after we start receiving ours. I know - shame on me! This year, I did actually make my cards and mail them out - but I was rushing to get them done and there were several people I would have liked to have sent to but I didn't have time to make all of them.

Enter my friends Dawn and Jeanne - they posted the cards they had made for a card challenge hosted by Stef and Lauren at the jingle belles blog. They are hosting a year long challenge to create one Christmas Card every week and then take the month of December off! I am not the greatest card maker in the world - it's kind of secondary to my scrapbooking. However, I am always up for a challenge as they help me to stay on track. Plus, by posting my ambitions here on my blog - I have all of you to help hold me accountable.

Last night, after finishing my task for the day 2 organizational boot camp, I created this simple card for the 1st jingle belles card challenge - the prompt was

something old, something new!

To make this card, I raided my stash for Christmas stuff - and guess what, I've purged so well, I didn't have anything old except this Paper and Ribbon. The paper is from an old Chatterbox Holiday collection - 3 or 4 years ago at least. The ribbon is something I picked up at Michael's probably 4 or 5 years ago.

I don't hardly buy embellishments any more - those of you who follow my blog know that I make pretty much everything on my Cricut. The elements I used for this card are freebies from svgcuts.com (click the links to get these great files): Holiday Cheer and Jingle Bow. Both of these are OLD files from 2009 - however, I just cut and created them last night so I am counting them as my NEW elements.

I inked the edge of the background paper with Certainly Celery from Stampin' Up and glittered the Holiday Cheer caption with some micro fine glitter from Hobby Lobby.

Thanks for taking a look! (Oh - and I cleaned up my desk again AFTER I created the card! YEAH!)

A couple of Organizational Challenge Pics

Okay, here's the promised picture of my clean work surface resulting from the Day 2 assignment:


The pile of completed layouts on the top shelf are waiting to be put into an album - need to pick up some sheet protectors in order to be able to do that. The small stack behind the layouts are cards and card blanks - more about that in my next post.


And the day 3 challenge is: For today's assignment, take 15-20 minutes and clean one box, basket, bin, cupboard, or area of your craft room. Again, if an item has a definate home, go ahead and put it away, if not, put all lie items together and keep cleaning. (Edited to add: this is part of Scrappily Ever After's Organizational Boot Camp - Sorry I forgot to include the link!)

Here is the stack of stuff I plan to tackle for today's assignment - I know it doesn't look that bad but you would not believe the ecclectic mix of stuff in those bottom 12x12 boxes.

Organizational Challenge Update

Today's assignment was quite easy: Take 15-20 minutes to clean off the top of your craft space. You can put items away ONLY if they have a specific spot. If they don't simply group like items together (i.e., cardstock in one spot, patterned paper in another, tools in another, adhesive in it's spot, etc.).

But, I couldn't stop there - I went out and got some storage drawer units to add to my shelves and re-organized all of the trouble spots outlined in my goals.

That's not to say that I don't still have challenges to overcome in this room - but what is left is not "scrap" related - it's setting up the sewing area and making Melissa a little "classroom" space for working on her courses.

I will still follow along in the challenges to see what else I can tweak - I'm sure I will get lots of awesome ideas by seeing what everyone else is doing.

I'll try to take a picture and post in the morning - just too tired tonight to do it. Thanks for stopping by.

Whew! What A MESS!

I don't care how hard I try, I cannot keep my craft room clean. Part of it stems from just having TOO MUCH stuff in this room. My craft room is my computer room, scrapbook room, sewing room, and also houses much of my daughter Melissa's crafting stuff as well - she has sewing stuff, knitting and cross-stitch stuff, jewelry making, and scrapbooking stuff in here. In addition to my L-shaped desk, we try to keep a 4 foot table as well so that she has a place to work or I have a place for the sewing machine - the table is normally in the closet opening which works out well. In the space where the table is now, I am going to be putting a small desk for Melissa to do her classwork on - she needs a place where she can be held more accountable to help her stay on task.

It's pretty sad actually - when we moved here 4 years ago - we had TONS of room. We upsized from 3 bedrooms & 1300 sq. ft to 4 bedrooms and 2000 sq. ft. Now every closet and cabinet is stuffed to overflowing. How does this happen?

So, I've decided to start with my craft room - I'm going to try to participate in Scrappily Ever After's Boot Camp and see if I can get the craft room under control. If the process works here, then maybe I can follow the same steps and tackle other rooms in the house!

To get started, we were supposed to take pictures of our mess and post them for all the world to see - here's my mess (and this is actually MUCH cleaner than it was 2 weeks before Christmas - I cleaned before the kids came down). With the exception of the closet, most of this mess has happened in just a week.







The closet is actually stuff I crammed in there before the kids came - stuff that was sitting around that was not safe for the grandkids so I put it in there. No clue where it's going to go now.



Here is my Day 1 exercise as well - establishing goals I want to achieve:

What Works What Doesn't Goal My actual scrapbook work space - love having most everything within arm's reach. Stamp pad & Ribbon storage - have to get up to get them so they never get put back away. Find a way to incorporate these items into my work area. Paper storage - organized and visible - easy to return things to proper place. Stamp storage - in cardboard photo boxes - out of sight/out of mind, and a real hassle to get them out and return them. See if I can free up some drawer space for stamp storage. Clear front drawer storage - I use what I can see, it's more likely to go back to the right spot since I can see it and don't have to move boxes to put it back. Photo storage boxes - cheap storage but they just don't work out for keeping a room organized - can't see what's inside and hate having to unstack to get to the bottom boxes. Shop for some drawer units that will fit my shelving units - or replace shelving with some drawer units.
If you stuck it out to read all my ramblings - thanks so much. I hope you'll stop by and help me stay on track.