Vacation Haul

I'm sure that most of you (if not all) are not surprised to learn that this is the vast majority of what I bought during my nearly three week vacation in California. I did buy some pants and shoes, but my trip would not have been a success in my eyes if I had not brought back a bunch of crafting goodies. Along with all of the tape refills, I picked up 8 Distress Ink pads (mostly the newer colors), four sets of clear stamps, three embossing folders and one die, a new seam ripper, beeswax (for waxing sewing thread to strengthen it and prevent tangles when doing hand sewing), some fat quarters of fun fabric, a rotary fabric cutter (with replacement blades), blank cards and envelopes, lots of fun cardstock, including two 8.5" x 11" red sheets with a fuzzy nap and some brightly colored glossy cardstock with cool designs (you'll see those up close and personal when they are used in projects). I also got lots of fun stickers, some more Glossy Accents, some Prismacolor pencils, and a Wink of Stella pen that I can't wait to use; it's for adding sparkle to previously colored images. I love the bright sock yarn I got, too. What you see above are the results of visits to my dear friends Michael and Joann, as well as the Piedmont Yarn and Apparel shop (I drop in every year). I also bought a bunch of stuff from a perfectly (watch out, here comes the rant) horrible store called Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley. Not only was the store poorly lit and patrolled by two large dogs with filthy snouts, but the woman there mocked me to my face (for not knowing certain products were discontinued) and laughed at me when informing me that a new product I wanted was out of stock. I should have abandoned my cart and walked out, but I had managed to find a number of things I wanted that I hadn't found at Michaels, so I was weak. But you can be sure I won't ever go back. End of rant, and please forgive me for descending into negativity. Hopefully, it is all out of my system now.

Liat and I went wild at Wal*Mart, picking out colors for a throw she wants for her new apartment in Jerusalem. This will be for the living room sofa. She picked out a pattern with a daisy in the center of each granny square. Should be fun to make, and squares are doable even in this nasty heat and humidity. I already miss northern California weather...

Time to get serious about moving my crafts room upstairs into a room with a ceiling fan and air conditioning. I have a lot of crafting to do!

Ink Pad Holder, version 1

When it gets this hot outside, it takes me a lot longer to get up the oomph to walk around the block to the recyling bin for paper and cardboard. Of course I have a huge stockpile of cereal boxes by now. I also had a bunch of Distress Ink pads stacked up in a drawer, and every time I wanted a particular color, I had to go through the stacks looking for what I wanted. Last night I got an idea, and so today I created version 1 of my new ink pad holder. The cereal boxes were already flattened. I measured halfway across the face of the box and drew a line. Same for the back.

I cut along both lines. As you can see on the left, I then taped the top and bottom of the box back together to create a long, shallow open-sided box.

I covered the outside and the bottoms of the shelves with paper, but I was too lazy to cover the sides and backs of the inside. Next time I will probably put the paper on before I close up the boxes. The other thing I will need to do (as you can probably guess) to to add another layer of cardboard between the boxes, to reinforce them. My original plan was to have stacks three ink pads high, but I don't think this version can handle that.

At least I got all of my ink pads indexed, with a small label stuck to the front showing what color it is. That alone is a huge improvement.

Good thing I still have plenty of boxes.

Scrap Wranglin'

This past Friday, while wandering around the Operation Write Home website, I discovered a tutorial about dealing with all those pesky scraps of cardstock we paper crafters tend to hoard for some unknown reason. Since this was a problem that was currently annoying me to no end, leaving me feeling irritable and unsettled (you know how I love to organize and be organized!) I decided to see what the Scrap Wrangler had to say. This is a hilariously helpful video, but if you don't have time or the privacy to watch it, the entire text is written out at that link.

The first element of wrangling your scraps is to go through and cut out card-sized (i.e. A2 or 4.25" x 5.5") pieces. That is the biggest your OWH cards for heroes to send home can be. If you're like me and send larger cards to your friends and family, you can do what I did: since most of my scraps wouldn't have been big enough for those cards (5" x 6.5"), I decided I would use whole sheets of paper and cardstock for the larger cards. Simpler that way. Anyway, above you can see my upcycled baby wipes box (which believe it or not - and if you know me at all you will surely believe it - I have saved since there was an actual baby living in my house. Note that my younger daughter is now 15. 'Nuff said!). Ahem. The box is filled with card-sized pieces of paper and cardstock that were cut from my scraps. Yes. All of that came ONLY from paper that had already been cut into and partially used!! Believe me, I still have tons of whole 8.5" x 11" and 12" x 12" paper and cardstock, too.

You can not begin to imagine how thrilled I became, watching my enormous herd of scraps become corralled and easily organized. Now I know what I have and what is more, I am using it! Since I finished filling the wipes box on Saturday evening, I have used up about 20 of these sheets of paper in the making of seven cards.

Another piece of advice from the Scrap Wrangler is to toss out whatever is left after you have completed the step mentioned above. But. I just couldn't do it. She then advises (since she knows us so well!) that we set a deadline of one week to use up whatever is left over, and then make yourself toss what's left. I am fudging on that a little; since the timing works for me, I am giving myself until 31 December 2012 to use up this pile of scraps you see in the photo above. Just as a note, the Scrap Wrangler provides many great ideas for card designs that are perfect for using up these smaller scraps. In fact, those pastel colored strips you see at the top right have already been used to make a Scrappy Background card, which I will share with you soon, probably in my next post.

Whatever does not get used up by the last day of the year will be going on a scrappy cattle drive to the recycling bin around the corner from my house (but first, we'll have a fabulously festive New Year's Eve Paper Purging party! Gotta have a party, right?).

Here is just one of the cards I have made in the last few days. It is loosely based on OWH Sketch #150 and as you can see it uses three different pieces of paper from my scraps corral. The cowboy is a stamp by Darcie's, colored with my BIC Mark Its, and I printed out the sentiment from Microsoft Word (Playbill font). Whatever bits and pieces were leftover were immediately tossed into the holding pen (uh, I mean recycling box) that sits in my crafts room. I think I'm getting the hang of this!

I really had a blast getting my scraps wrangled, and even if you don't love organizing, I can guarantee you'll enjoy having all of that paper cut and ready to use in manageable pieces. I can't believe how many cards I've made since I did this. Usually I only manage to do a couple per week. I realize now that what was slowing me down was the mess of scraps. So, thanks Scrap Wrangler!

No Frills Ribbon Storage

Yesterday I dragged out the oversized shoe box I've been using to store bits and pieces of ribbon in, and decided to straighten out the mess. Everything was just mooshed in there, except for the two rolls of ribbon you see in the background, above. That is the only ribbon I've purchased for card making. Ever. In over 13 years of stamping/cardmaking.

All the pieces you see wrapped around the cardboard salvaged from my "to-be-recycled" box were either given to me or saved from various gift wrappings, clothing tags and so on. The gorgeous blue ribbon right in the middle came from my niece's wedding favors (ahem...I may have snapped up a few ribbons discarded by some of the other guests. What can I say, it's my favorite color!).

Now that I can actually see what I have, I have started to use my ribbon, yay me. Maybe if I use up enough of it I will actually consider buying some... Ooooooh.....

Here Comes the Sun

Once again, I couldn't resist the House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge - this time it's Here Comes the Sun.  I think these two little fellas are happy the winter is over!  To make the little banner for the sentiment, I stamped the words twice, once for the card, and a second time to create a mask or template.  I cut the second image very close to the letters, following the shape as best I could, then I positioned that just above and below the sentiment and drew lines for where to cut, leaving some white space as you can see.  To make the cuts at the end of the strip of paper, I used a square punch, punching with just a corner at an angle to the strip of paper.  I had seen a tip for that somewhere and wanted to try it.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well for me, instead of nice, sharp points I got one sharp and one squared-off point and had to fix it with scissors.  Better find that tip and re-read the instructions...
One of the many positive aspects of clearing through the clutter of over a decade is finding things you didn't remember you had - this background paper is a perfect example.  As soon as I saw it yesterday I knew I had to use it for this challenge.

And now all of my patterned paper (and scraps thereof) are finally organized, whoo hoo!  Tomorrow I'll share pictures of that, and of something else that got organized as a result of my crafts room cleanup.

Making Progress

 I've been spending quite a bit of time working in my crafts room, and it's beginning to show! My coloring media (paints, chalks, etc) are better organized, though come to think of it I may not quite be finished with that...hmmm...  Anyway, here you see my watercolors (and Twinkling H2Os, which are individual watercolor cakes with added shimmer, quite lovely), chalks, alcohol inks, and in the back spray bottles with color washes.  Ink pads and markers are elsewhere still awaiting  further reorganization.

The shelves you've seen previously are much better organized (and dusted!).  On the top shelf is a variety of empty boxes and tins saved for future projects, stamping books and some books left over from my teaching/tutoring days.  And, of course, a lovely piece of art from the wonderful and talented Sandy.  On the bottom shelf are my paint and stenciling brushes and several boxes of stamps (those may be rearranged later, as I decide what needs to be in this prime location.  These shelves are right behind where I sit, and anything on them is easiest to find and reach).

 In the cabinet next to my paints and chalks are more boxes of stamps, plus all of my sets of EZ Mounted stamps by Posh Impressions and one foam mounted set.  I have not indexed these into my catalog, but at least the sets are filed alphabetically by name (OC much?).

And here is my pride and joy!  I'm not quite done, but I have cataloged almost all of my stamps here in this binder, and labeled the boxes.  You'll notice that when I have stamps that may be related thematically to the current box, I note the location of the other stamps so they will be easy to find.

At the front of this binder there are going to be two lists (unless I can think of another type, I am obsessed with lists - bet you couldn't tell...).  Obviously, this list is in numerical order by box, and that is how the entire binder is organized.  Later I'm going to add an alphabetical list, so that if I want to find, say, a stamp of a chair, I can scan the alphabetical list for Household and see that I need to look in Box 8.

I also want to add a schematic telling me where each box is located, but that needs to wait until I decide where I want everything to go.  I'll probably do that in pencil.  Heh heh...

I can't believe how good it's making me feel to have everything cleaned, sorted and organized!  No more wasting time searching high and low for that one stamp I *must* use but can't find.  So glad I'm doing this.

Deacquisitioning

Now there's a $10 word for getting rid of crap you've saved for nearly 10 years!  Digging through all the stuff that's accumulated in the craft room is a major project.  When the room was originally created (it used to be the garage), it had a second purpose.  I used the space as a classroom for tutoring students in English.  In addition to all of the rubber stamps, paper, cardstock, ink pads, paints, specialty scissors, brayers, embossing powders, chalks, markers, colored pencils, and assorted craft tools, I've also accumulated a huge amount of teaching materials: books, workbooks, home made games (to make learning fun!), photocopies of workbook pages (so the books can be reused), home made worksheets and study aids, printouts from teaching websites...well, you get the idea.

If you compare this photo to the one I posted earlier, you'll note that the table has more junk on it and the shelves on the wall have (slightly) less, especially the top shelf.  I filled three boxes this week: one with papers that are destined for recycling, and two with books that will be donated to the American School, which has a great library and also gives away books they don't want/need.  The thing that holds me back the most from my decluttering is figuring out where to donate things that are still in great shape.  What you can't see is that the cabinet on the left now has one empty shelf and another that is mostly empty.

Here is a view from the other side of the room.  You can see the white board I used when the room was also a classroom. After I took this photo I cleaned up a fair amount of the stuff on the table, but I still have a long way to go.  I am also trying to work out a system for cataloging my rubber stamps that, unlike my current system, will also tell me where in tarnation each stamp is stored!  Many minutes are currently wasted while searching for a particular stamp.  I also would like to find a better system for storing my paper/cardstock/precut cards with envelopes, and my various coloring media.  Clearly, I've got a long way to go.

As Liat would say: baby steps.

A Bit of Knitting

Although I haven't finished much in the way of knitting lately, I did make this cute little guy and sent him off to a friend who recently saw the movie "Despicable Me" and expressed a need for some minions of her own. She is delighted with him, so I am very happy.


I made this little sweater in February and sent off to my cousin and his wife who recently had a baby. I love the yarn, Plymouth Jelli Beenz. I think I've had it in my stash since about 2006. Destashing is good. Of course, I still have some left, so I guess I ought to make another baby sweater or something...

It's been a nice Saturday. We have officially started cleaning up by the pool to get ready for the warmer weather and outdoor entertaining. Then the four of us hung out together watching the new Hawaii 5-0 and reruns of The West Wing (and one of us was also knitting). I even had time to draw/doodle and write a journal entry in a composition book a dear friend decorated and gave me quite a few years ago. I'd forgotten about it, but with my renewed interest in making art journals and things like that, when I re-discovered it I was raring to get back to writing in it. Of course, I am still working in my altered book, which will ultimately have about 35 or 36 pages. I'm not sure how many I've done so far, probably about 20.

My own personal minion, aka Meital, helped me out by taking two bags of old clothes that have been stashed in my craft room for ages to the recycling bins in our neighborhood. We also discovered and discarded some dried out markers and pens. Yay! Gotta love those decluttering baby steps.

High Hopes

Here is a spread I did in my altered book a while ago. I've been so busy working in the book (and learning new things online) that I have fallen behind in posting updates. I really love the quotes I found for this layout. Click on the photo to enlarge it so you can read them. In fact, I love the idea of combining art and favorite sayings, quotes, song lyrics and so on.

I am determined to finish up this book before embarking on a new project/art journal. I guess I'm just anal that way. If I had the soul of an artist I would probably jump around from journal to altered book to whatever, working on whatever I felt inspired to do. But the truth is I try to be organized in what I do, even when it comes to artwork. I am also trying to employ the "use it or lose it" philosophy as I continue doing collaging and painting in this book. So far I have thrown away a number of dried up paint pots (of course I saved them because it's easy enough to add a little water and revive them, but I have so many bottles and jars that have just a little bit left in them, so I am pitching them out).

I also finally got up the nerve to go through my modest stash of National Geographic magazines, circa 1998. They are tons of fun to use in collages (working on one right now, in fact) and I figure it's better I cut them up and use the pictures and words instead of leaving them pristine and intact (well, dusty and intact) on a bookshelf.

Baby steps.

This craft room cleanup WILL be accomplished one day!

Oh, and you'll notice - no mention of knitting in progress. I really need to get back to some things I've been working on! And I actually do have a small knitted item to share with you. Next post, I promise!

Craft Room Blues

"Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else." ~ George Halas

I love many things about the craft room we created out of our covered parking space a number of years ago. Every morning there is wonderful light streaming in from the window on the left in this picture. I still love the cheerful yellow paint I chose for the walls. I love the ceramic tile floor, and even the plastic table and chairs (love it when my family comes in on a Saturday morning to sit with me and drink coffee while I putter). I even love the fact that because it's pretty small, I can usually just turn around and grab what I want without getting up.

But as you can see, it is full of junk! It often serves as the family dumping ground for things we don't know where else to put. And okay, I'll admit it, my packrat tendencies have also influenced the state of this room. I've been scouting out ideas on the Internet, and trying to weed through the junk bit by bit. But it occurred to me that the best thing I could do would be to simply take everything out, wash, patch and repaint the walls, and then decide very carefully what is allowed back in and where it should go. Part of my problem is, I have things I would love to donate somewhere, but have no clue where to take them!

Since I don't happen to have a storage locker handy to hold the entire contents of this room while I purge, I'll have to keep working piecemeal. But the first order of business really needs to be packing up what I don't want to keep and finding a place to take it. We're only talking here about useful things in good condition, like books and rubber stamps. I have no qualms about dumping out trash! Unless of course it clearly might come in handy one day.

Ahem...

Eventually, I hope to be able to show photos of the decluttering and revamping of my craft room. But first, sadly, I have to work. I have a ton of projects to translate. It's so hard to focus on that when my mind keeps jumping to cleaning/reorganizing!