Snow day activities

I took advantage of finally having some down time this past weekend and spent some time in my craft room. First I took all my printed photos and went through them making page kits for all the photos I know I plan to scrap:

some of the page kits are nice and small: I actually narrowed it down to just a few sheets of cardstock and patterned paper. I don't bother adding embellishments at this point because I stock so few and they are so versatile I can easily pick them out at the time I am ready to use them. Plus I don't want to tie them up in kits in case I need them another time.

Sometimes though, I get lazy and just throw a whole collection pack into a 'kit' with a few photos I know I want to make pages for. Hey- it still makes things go faster for me and it works!

Here are some additional ones that I had not completed at the time, but have since gone back and finished up too.

Here are two actual pages I made:

I cut the clouds out of other paper also by American Crafts. I really like the simplicity of this. I didn't have much to say- it's a funny picture of my dog and representative of her desire to right up in your business at all times, so to speak.

Classic cute doggy picture- she can't seem to keep from sticking her nose in the dirt! I had always liked shaped paper but never really wanted to thunk down the ridiculous amount Jenni Bowlin charges, but grabbed this piece and another like it at my LSS recently. I'm still a little unsure how I'm going to store it in an album and not 'lose' the shaped quality- perhaps I'll just use the other shaped piece in the same page protector.

*so close*

Ta-dah! Furniture and boxes and labels! Hooray!!!

Ok, so there's still some work to be done, but all my craft stuff is back in my craft room and is mostly organized- I have to hang a shelf and Bygel rail, but the bulk of what's left is getting the rest of my 'Jess stuff' in there and organized. I don't want to bring in any piles- thing must have a home to be let back in! You can see some of my dolls and stuffed animals along the top of the cube unit- it makes me so happy to have them home with me!

I wasn't really sure what to get when I went to Ikea for boxes, so I just bought a bunch in two sizes and it worked out surprisingly well. I actually filled each box with some category of item, though thankfully only one of the boxes is actually *full*. They are however nicely sorted and labelled- now all of my craft stuff is mixed together and it should be pretty easy to find what I need regardless of what type of project I am working on. I did spring for two nice metal boxes to hold my Thickers and other misc. flat embellishments and am thrilled with how well that worked. the left tower is still holding our DVDs.

After I get it all finished up I'll do a post with some detail shots.

But where do you put it?

I have been asked before what the heck I do with my ATG when I'm not using it- it looks like it takes up a lot of real estate which is usually quite precious to a crafter. Well, I have seen people make little stands for theirs, or balance it in a coffee cup, and I've even seen someone drill a hole in the bottom of theirs so they can put a binder ring through it. Theoretically you can hang it from said ring. Also, if you use peg board some well placed brackets could give your gun it's own home on the wall!

I do none of those things though. I recently discovered that the flat top allows me to balance my gun on it's head, making it take up very little desk space and making it *extra* easy to spot!

As I've mentioned before, it is quite light, so I often just sort of toss it on top of whatever pile is nearest on my desk. I don't have to worry about it crushing any delicate paper or making it difficult to get out things hidden underneath.

Yes, my desk has gotten messy. I need to hang that shelf!

A busy weekend!

I didn't spend a ton of time in my craft room, but I still got a lot done thanks to my cleaning and organizing efforts last week! I'll go in chronological order of what I did.

First up was a scrapbook LO Saturday morning while the hubs did some glorious unpaid overtime. I had picked to my papers ahead of time and love the color scheme. This actually did not take all that long, but some Heidi Swapp rub-on nonsense added a lot of time- but you;ll notice there are no rub-ons there. I had heard so many bad things about her rub-ons (of course after purchasing a pack a long time ago), so I was really wary to use them. I thought one of the clock rub-ons I had might be a fun addition, so I added one to a separate piece of cardstock to use a background image on a journaling block. I was pleasantly surprised- it went on really well! But then I decided to write over it- which was disastrous. So all of that got tossed. Since the first was so successful, I decided to add one directly to my page. Ugh- what a mess. It didn't go on easily and wound up being crooked. The only good thing was that the rub-ons strong aversion to sticking to my paper made it fairly easy to pick off with my paper piercer. I felt like a dentist! So I probably wasted an hour battling with rub-ons to end up with a rub-on free page, but I love the way it looks so its all ok.

now on to the details. I had been thinking about Jennifer McGuire's pages, and what it is about them that makes me like them so much. I think it's all the fine little details. She adds a lot of small touches to her pages that I think really elevate them above others. It;s like the finishing touches on an outfit. Her pages always have killer jewelry and a great pedicure!
I punched out two of the circles on the PP and popped them up, it's not super noticeable but I think it's a neat effect.

I had been storing my Nestabilities in a paper photo sleeve- not very secure. I had intentions of getting empty CD cases and strips of magnet to store them, but at the last minute changed my mind and wound up getting some magnetic paper and storing them on that in a CD carrying case, and love it. It's fairly compact and easy to grab them all at once.
Magnetic sheets complements of Staples:
I am headed out to CA for a wedding in a few days, and made a card for said occasion. In the past, I've been apprehensive to make a card for a wedding- it's a lot of pressure! I'm so thrilled with the results here though. I think the card is appropriate for the couple- the bride is a rather non-traditional gal and I think she'll appreciate the lack of pink :)

I stamped the image in Versamark and added holographic embossing powder- it has a great iridescent shine!

I also decorated the envelope to match- the first time I've done that! I love it, so plan to do it again. It really adds such elegance to the whole thing.

It's a shimmery white envelope with a stamped image in Versamark clear embossed. I love this stamp so much.

A few other picture-less tasks included giving a bunch of my clear stamps the spa treatment. They're so much cleaner and stickier now! I will have to do it for the rest sometime soon. Also, I went through some of the giant stack of pictures I had printed out and made the decision to just toss a bunch of them. The first few months we had Madison I was a picture taking machine, but it's just not realistic for me to scrap them all. I feel much better having tossed some of them- I don't think they would have added anything and to be honest, the quality stinks!

It will probably be a little while before I can get anything else done- we'll be in CA for a few days and then will be staining our deck over July 4th weekend- fun!

My craft room

Now that we are in a house, I have my own craft room. It's great to have a place to put all my stuff and not worry about cleaning it up all the time so we have a place to eat. Crafts are by their nature messy, and crafters tend to be as well. Add to that my lack of furniture in the room, and surely you understand the mess that is posted below.

See the big bag with leaves sticking out of the top? I'm making a new wreath! I loves wreaths. I have great wreath making plans for the winter.

Here is my desk, along with what I am currently working on. I need another table. I've adopted the 'shove' methodology for clearing off workspace. Not good.
Isn't the leaf paper pretty! Just got that. It is not actually related to my current project.

Here is my cardstock and some of my patterned paper. There is another box the same size that holds papers that are put together into kits and project packs I intend to work on soon. I'm showing this because I just reorganized my paper last night :) Previously I had it categorized as such: SU! paper by rainbow, Bazzill textured paper by rainbow, and then Bazzill smoothies by rainbow. That was not so much working, so now all paper lives in rainbow harmony. I'm big on rainbow sorting. I have a lot of purple, orange, and green. I'm set for Halloween until I die!

This little bin hold all my thickers, letter stickers, and 3-d embellishments. It's a fun little box. Yeah, your eyes are not lying to you- I bought some Jolee's type embellishments. Wanna make something of it? I think they're cute!

So there you have it, where I like to get busy with scrapping and such. I'm hoping the gift fairy brings me a table and some shelves this year. Maybe a better chair. Then I won't hunt around the floor for supplies like a crazywoman!