Organization

Are you one of those who have it? always? yes? no? ya..me neither. But I truly strive to be organized. 99.9% of the time even in my organized disorganization I can end up laying my hands on whatever it is I'm looking for...eventually. I remember seeing it in a pile, in this corner...which I moved to that shelf, which is now in that drawer under that cabinet. Yes...there it is!! Well...I'm 34 years old and I still haven't mastered the daunting task of organization.


I strive to have kitchen counters without stuff on them, I strive for my laundry to end up in the same drawer and on the same shelf every time I put away the laundry, I strive for an organized playroom (HA!)...etc, etc.

So while I am constantly on this quest for eternal organization...I do have ONE place in my house that is heaven to me as far as organization goes....my STAMP ROOM!!! Again, I am constantly shifting and moving things around to make room for more stuff or re-work my workspace so the other day I stole 10 minutes to myself and alphabetized my cardstock. Go ahead...laugh!!! It's SOOOOOO much easier to find what I need fast!!!

I highly recommend it.

Hope you're all having a creative day!!

Snowflake Holiday

Ok so I have ZERO energy today because my entire house has a headcold...including me. WAH! But I still have a ton of pictures to upload from the stash of product that I made for the craft fair that I was involved in a couple of weekends ago. If memory serves this paper is American Crafts (i think) and it's mounted on SU! Real Red cardstock. It's stamped with 'Very Merry' from SU!'s "Short and Sweet" set. I use this set CONSTANTLY. If you don't have it already...it's a must have! I also put a snowflake brad (Making Memories) in the upper lefthand corner and stamped the snowflake from SU!'s Holiday Blitz set in Basic Black.

Ok...I'm off to CVS with my kiddies for more medicine.

Hope everyone is having a creative day!

ps - i know the picture looks HORRIBLE! but we *just* got a new computer so we haven't loaded Photoshop on it *yet* so I had to crop it in Paint...which is a HORRENDUS program. So I promise to upload a better photo when I've got Adobe installed.

Pocket Full Of Love

Here is the rest of the series of Pocket and Love Notes that I've made for my cousin Jodi. She has 2 boys so *most* of the birthday parties they are invited to are for other boys but she requested a few girl cards as well.

The first one is the continuation of my last post. All of the design elements are the same..I just popped it onto an SU! Purely Pomegranate love note instead of the pink pocket note.

Her oldest is a sports *fanatic*. So I went with the football and baseball theme. I used SU! Very Vanilla craft ink and heat embossed the images with clear embossing powder that I picked up years ago at The Paper Source. I finished the baseball/football love notes off with the new SU! sky blue double stitched ribbon and the baseball/football pocket notes off with a smidge of SU! 1/8" red grosgrain ribbon and a little yellow paper clip...it just needed a little something and the paper clip kind of made me think of clipboards...which are a must in the sports world. They all say 'Happy Birthday' inside using the Warmest Regards set...my constant go to for sentiments.

I hope that everyone is having a creative day!

Pocket Notes

My wonderfully supportive cousin, Jodi, ordered some Pocket Note gift cards at the craft fair this past weekend. She wants 4 girl and 6 boy cards. So here's my girl card:

Basic Instructions:

Cardstock: SU! Last seasons 'Pocket Notes', groovy guava, purely pomegranate

Designer Paper: Heidi Grace Designs - Mushroom (it's the back side of the paper from my last post)

Ink: Purely Pomegranate (can you tell how much I LOVE this color?).

Stamps: SU!'s Short and Sweet, Priceless

Embellishments: SU! Ticket punch, paper piercing and faux stitching with white Sakura gel pen, SU! rhinestone brad - Fire Circles, SU! 1 1/4" circle punch

So...

I've been busy...which is an understatement. I was lucky enough to be asked to be a guest at last weekend's SU! Regional Convention in Philadelphia. My darling and one of my most cherished friends, Sarah, is an SU! Demo and one of the culprits who got me totally hooked on this craft! We flew down and back to Philly on Friday. We had a blast! I took 236 pictures...yes...236...and have tons to write about. However, I'm tired and don't have the energy to post all that deserves posting...so please...bear with me. I PROMISE to get it done soon. The reason I bring up Regionals, is because we received the So Much stamp set for attending and while I never would have bought this set myself...I find it funny that it's the first stamp set I reached for since being home! This is the first chance I've had to craft since early last week and I'm so glad that I'm finding use for this. It's a simple set but I can definitely see many uses for it in the future!!

One of my very wonderful Mommy girlfriends has asked me to make an anniversary card for her to give to her husband for their upcoming anniversary.

I know them well so I tried to incorporate their style into this card. Simple and clean. I also tried to make it not too girly since it was from her to him. I am really happy with how this came out.

Did I mention that I set up shop at a local craft fair this past weekend? No? Oh, well I'll tell you about that another time ;)

Basic Instructions:

Cardstock: SU! Purely Pomegranate, Kraft

Designer Paper: Heidi Grace Designs - Mushroom (circle designs set on pop dots punched out of HG paper with SU! 1 1/4" circle punch)

Ink: Purely Pomegranate

Embellishments: SU! PP stitched ribbon, Making Memories silver eyelets set with my new Crop-O-Dile (how did I EVER live without it before???), SU! 1 1/4" circle punch

Insanity!

yes...it's official...i've lost my mind!! ;) hahahaha...

but seriously...you must KNOW i love this craft or else why would i be up and dressed, coffee in hand...ready to walk out the door AT 351 AM!!!to go to the SU! Regionals in Philly today???? i'm going with my darling friend Sarah so i'm off to her house now so that we can drive to the airport...catch our 630 AM flight...to go all day (YAY!)...to catch our 8:30 pm flight home.

WEEEEEEEE! i'm so excited! i'm bringing my camera so i promise to take lots of pictures!

XOXOXOXO
hope everyone has a creative day!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Happy Hannukah

I know, I know...it's not even Halloween yet!! But alas...I find myself already thinking about the holiday season. We are very lucky to be able to celebrate both Hannukah and Christmas in my house so I am blessed with the best of both worlds! Since Hannukah *usually* falls before Christmas we'll start with my first ever Hannukah design. I have literally ZERO time right now so I'll grab the recipe together later and post.

Hope everyone is having a creative day!

Bengali Jungle

I have ALWAYS loved journals, sketchbooks and notebooks. I hoard them...for no particular reason. I don't journal...I'd like to journal...I try to journal...but I'm just not a writer at heart. I know some people who keep a journal faithfully for years and years. It's just not me. I do like to make lists, doodle, and just have a place to jot stuff down...so the journals, sketchbooks and notebooks do me just fine for those purposes. My friend Joanne taught us how to do the altered composition books in her project club months ago and I've been hooked ever since!!

I will be selling this and many more at the upcoming craft fair at Ward's Berry Farm in Sharon, MA next Saturday 9/15 from 10-4!

There will be lots of fun things for kids and families to do so I hope you can come by!!

Basic Instructions:

Cardstock: SU! Wild Wasabi, Cameo Coral, Real Rust, Cool Caribbean
Designer Paper: Stemma - Sketchy Daisies, Frances Meyer - Bengali Jungle
Ink: Versamark
Stamps: SU! Priceless, Doodle That
Embellishments: Prima flowers, rhinestone brads, SU! specialty ribbon in Fairytale
Time to complete: 40-60 minutes

Spidery Mini!

Just another mini composition notebook that I will be selling this weekend at the Ward's Berry Farm Harvest Festival! It's on Saturday, the 15th from 10-4 at Ward's Berry Farm in Sharon, MA. If it rains on Saturday, they will be calling the rain date for Sunday, the 16th. If I get a call that it is postponed until Sunday (they are forecasting showers for Saturday) I will put a post here letting you all know. If there's no post then assume that the fair is on!

I can hardly wait!

The Studio

We will have lived in our house 10 years this coming November. That fact alone is STARTLING to me. And my darling husband (we'll be married 11 in October) has ALWAYS, ALWAYS let me do whatever I want to any room in our house. For years before having children we had our room, 2 guest rooms, and The 'Clubhouse'. Some of you reading this will smile or giggle with memories of The Clubhouse...mostly my girlfriends...and some of their husbands. It was essentially my dressing room...my hang out room...my pre-party room. My friends and I would gather for an occasion (birthday, bachelorette, holiday, etc) or no occasion at all and drink fruity, girly drinks or wine get ready, try on different outfits - back in the day before any of us had kids and all we had was disposable income to allow us to purchase many outfits for aforementioned occasions - we'd do our hair/makeup and spend what now seems like hours picking out shoes and purses and accessories. *sigh* those were fun days!!!

But I digress - so I had The Clubhouse...and then we decided to have children. So we transformed The Clubhouse back into the master bedroom and soon thereafter had our daughter. We kept the 2 bigger bedrooms as guest rooms for a while. And we had the baby in the smallest room. And then I got pregnant with my son so we decided that it would only be fair to give them the 2 biggest bedrooms that were left. So that left the smallest of the 4 bedrooms.

My little brother (younger by 9 years) decided (THANKFULLY!!! =) to move home from San Diego last winter and we had always told him that he could live with us. So he did...and we've had a blast. But this past weekend he moved into an apartment in Boston with his friends. So once again my darling, fabulous and wonderful husband didn't bat an eyelash when I said that I was taking the 4th room as my studio. So I'm out of the spider infested, musty, dark basement into a cozy room with lots of light (natural and lamps), lots of space - we need to add more shelving but otherwise it's great. Nothing matches but we're using what furniture we have as I definitely can't afford to buy anything more right now. And what I have works - pretty much.

Here's a shot from the door looking in:
From the area nearest the closet - as you can see, I've brought my children's craft table up so they can enjoy time with me (while I get things done) drawing, painting or whatever crafts they feel in the mood for.
This was a little purchase at Target this weekend (29.99). It has 7 - 12x12 'drawers' that pull out and are self enclosed. The top one holds all of my SU! designer paper, drawers 2-4 house all other brands of DP, drawer 5 has solid color 12x12 cardstock, drawer 6 has all of my DP scraps and drawer 7 has all of my solid color scraps. Labelled accordingly...of course.
An almost overflowing file box with all of my SU! cardstock...it is THE BEST paper available...anywhere.

This cabinet has been in my husband's family for 3 generations - I think (this MAY be the 4th). It's designed for children's clothing, however, we're not in need of it presently for that as we have adequate storage in our kid's rooms so I snagged it from my daughter's room. On top I've got some ribbon storage (although I'm seeking a better solution), a basket with envelopes of varying shapes and colors, a basket of pre-done cards - I will eventually get a display board for these, my Stampendous stamps - I just like looking at them, and a few other misc odds and ends. My Fiskars scissor collection.

My jars in order as they are displayed- clips/pins/binder clips - small stamps - ribbon scraps - tiny paper scraps (yes, I save EVERYTHING) - Prima flowers - metal edged tags - puffy paint - and misc embellishments.
My reference area. I find inspiration EVERYWHERE. So I've got the SU! catalogs (this years and last), the following magazines: Real Simple, Cookie, Child (no longer in print), Parents, Papercrafting, Scrapbook..something...and many random catalogs. Also displayed: more ribbon from a ribbon share from Jo, my Cuttlebug, my box of punches and my portable paper trimmer (I have one of those table top heavy duty ones (to the area left of this picture) but for some reason it didn't make into any of the pictures).

Office supplies (i love post-its), my biz cards, works in progress, my box of ink pads (I've got to get the SU! ink pad storage system) and my address book. Oh and a shout out to Poland Spring of course!

This little cup sits right in front of where I work...it's got my snips, my bone folder, my favorite pencil, rubber scissors, regular scissors, pinking shears and band aids.
I'm a notorious pen thief...and I admit it. So I have more pens then an office supply store. =) And for some reason it makes me happy!! But when I was digging out my attic over the last few weeks I found my caddy for my Prismacolor markers. I bought it YEARS ago here. When I used to work in the city I would frequent this store at LEAST twice a week on my lunch break. But anyway - I have a small stash of the Prismacolor markers and various other brands. This caddy is great as it holds a ton of pens, pencils and misc bits.

This is the piece of furniture I was referring to earlier. It has 4 drawers on the left and on the right an open space where kids clothing can be hung on a bar that slides in and out. I may figure out how to use that for ribbon spools. I may hang them with binder rings.

Another shot of my kiddies craft table. My daughter (almost 3) loves nothing more than to turn the light on and off. She thinks it's very grown up that she can do it herself.
I've stashed all of my SU! stamp sets in the 4 drawers. I still have a bit of room left for my ever growing collection!

I have many of my 'alterables' living on the right hand side. Composition notebooks, frames, tins, etc.

So - that's my room! Yes, I know how SUPER lucky I am to have a room all to myself. And again, I thank my DH for all of his help in getting this room up and running so fast. He's amazing, supportive, helpful and wonderful. And he never complains. I'm a very lucky girl.

Mazel Tov

I'm keeping it short and sweet tonight...I'm tired. It's been a busy weekend! My brother moved out *sniff* but in return for him moving out I got our fourth bedroom back! YAY! And you all know what I've done with it!!! YES!! I am FINALLY out of the dingy, dark, musty, spider-infested basement into my own stamp room!!! I'm still unpacking so I haven't taken pictures but I promise to do so soon.

In the meantime, I have a handsome 5X5 Bar Mitzvah card. I used one of my favorite of the dark colors that SU! offers...Not Quite Navy, Very Vanilla and Shimmery White.

For those of you who are not 'in the know' regarding the differences of Bar and Bat (or Bas) Mitzvah - Bar is for boys and Bat (or Bas) is for girls.

Mazel Tov means Congratulations in Yiddish. I hope that everyone had a great long weekend!

Assignment Books

These mini composition notebooks are the most darling thing ever! I love how easy they are to alter. In this set I used the Math Class paper from Love, Elsie. (it's my new favorite line at EP)

I think these would be very sweet for a pre-teen to throw in the front pocket of those ridiculously huge backpacks they have to carry. I purposefully left the paper blank so that it could be colored in by it's owner! I think the binder clip is a really useful embellishment as well!

It's lined inside so I think it would be nice (and unique) to use as a homework assignment book.
And yes, I intended on leaving a border of the classic black and white specks showing. ;) I wasn't trying to cover up a crafter's mistake! he he he...

And my absolute FAVORITE are the skull and crossbones and heart rub-on embellishments from Love, Elsie. Sweet yet a little sassy...

Basic Recipe:

Cardstock: SU! Real Red, Bashful Blue and Pretty In Pink, Love, Elsie Designer Paper in Math Class

Embellishments: Mini composition notebooks and Binder clips (Staples), SU! Ribbon in Real Red and Lt. Pink, Misc light blue ribbon from ACM, Rub-ons from Love, Elsie.