Coaster Calendar

This is a coaster calendar that I made recently. I really like the Fall Flowers DS paper, along with the Time Well Spent stamp set.....I actually use this stamp set quite a bit....it must be because the saying says it all! I got these mini calendars at a local craft store. There is also a magnet on the back in case someone wanted to hang this on their refridgerator. Sorry for the short post today......Off to get ready to take Emerson to the doctor. We think she has a dairy allergy.....poor girl....her favorite thing is Strawberry milk!! Thanks for looking! If you have sunshine, please send this way! LOL!



Supplies:
Paper: Fall Flowers DS, Really Rust, Soft Sky, Whisper White
Stamps: Time Well Spent
Ink: Black StazOn, Old Olive, Soft Sky
Accessories: chipboard coasters, oval Old Olive eyelets, Soft Sky double stitch ribbon, calendar, magnet

Infinite Goodness Tile

When this stamp set came out, I just had to get it. I loved the images as well as the sentiment. I created this tile to show the guests at the workshop one of the many possibilities that you can use your stamps for, besides just card making or scrapbooking.


I used the masking technique from SCS when I did this tile. The french script is a really old background stamp that I had from when I first started stamping; it's stamped in Timber Brown StazOn. The pear is stamped in Always Artichoke and So Saffron craft ink and the sentiment is stamped in Always Artichoke craft ink. Many of them liked this idea, so maybe we'll do this in the future at a stamp club.

Sorry for the short post......Michigan State is getting ready to play shortly in basketball. It's a late game...hope I can stay awake for all of it. Go Green!

Music

I've added a music playlist to the bottom of the blog. I need music when I am trying to be creative. If I don't have noise, my mind just seems to wander and I can't concentrate. I was like that in school too.....I needed music or the TV on in order to concentrate, otherwise I would think about all these other things that I needed to do instead of doing the task at hand. This is just a beginning list of some of the songs I like. I enjoy all sorts of music, so this playlist will be a work in progress.

My 2 cents worth

I've been reading on a few blogs lately about the pressures of blogging and "trying to keep up with the Joneses". (Sorry if your last name is Jones....you probably get tired of people using that analogy :) Blogging means different things to different people. Some people do it just to show their crafts, other do it as a place to "be themselves" and say whatever is in their heart and for some it is a mixture of both. For me, blogging is my creative outlet, as I say in my title "my own little corner of the world". It's a chance for me to escape my everyday life of mother, wife, housekeeper, cook, chauffer, laundromat, etc. We are all human, and we can't always escape our life. It's going to "spill" over into our craft life that we have here in blog world. Whatever people's reason is for blogging, we should not be judging them or criticizing them. If you feel that people are "pulling you down" (as one person said) or if their lives are too dramatic for you, then please don't read their blog. No one is making you go to their blog and read it. But please don't go and leave nasty comments. This isn't high school anymore....it's the real world. As I learned growing up, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all".

People are feeling bad that they don't get many comments or visitors. As you can see from my blog, I have a little over 1400 hits since July of 2007 and half of them are probably me!! :) I rarely get comments and even ask questions and no one leaves comments. That's okay with me. I don't blog and share my stuff for it to be a popularity contest. I started it as a means to show my friends and family what I enjoy doing. And if I am able to inspire someone to create something from what I share, that is wonderful....an added bonus. Of course comments and RAK's always brighten someone's day, but we shouldn't validate ourselves on whether or not we get those. At the end of the day, our family (& friends) is what matters the most. Not how many visitors or comments we had on our blog. Okay, I better step off my soap-box now, or I could keep going forever. It was breaking my heart to see some of the mean things people were saying out there, so this was my way of getting it off my chest. Thank you for listening to me ramble on.

Craft Room - back of door #6

Well, this is the last of the craft room series, until I reorganize again! LOL! This is the back of one of the double doors to my craft room. You'll notice my "little helper" in the picture...Emerson just had to hop in! LOL! This is an over-the-door shoe holder. I think it was around $6.99. It is perfect for all those miscellaneous things that don't really have a home. I have misc. ribbon rolls, extra adhesive, misc. small punches, clothes pins (for ribbon), foam brushes, luggage tags for bags, glue sticks for the hot glue gun and whatever else I can seem to shove in there! Notice I still have an empty door.......just wait.....I'll get another shoe storage container and fill it soon! You can't see it in the picture, but I have a white pillowcase under the door hanger so it wouldn't scratch the paint when I hung it over the door. Thanks for looking! I hope some of these pictures give you some inspiration to organize your craft room. I LOVE to organize things, but staying organized is a whole other issue for me! LOL! I would love to see your craft rooms and how you organize your space. Feel free to email some pictures or post a link to your blog so maybe I can get some different ideas. Thanks for looking. Enjoy your day....I'm off to the grocery store...yuck!

Craft Room #5

I posted this picture back when I first started my blog, but have added some things since then and also labeled the picture, so I thought I would re-post it.

The desk is from my husband when he was a kid. I repainted it white and put new hardware on it. The desk was VERY narrow and didn't give me much room to work, so I put a piece of melamine board on top to give me more surface area (it still isn't enough, but I'm making do!) You can see my ink caddy on the left, which is totally full, not just of SU stamps, but all my StazOn, Tim Holtz Distress Pads, VersaMark, craft pads, etc. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to store additional ink pads? I'm slowly replacing my Spots with the regular ink pads and therefore have no place to store my non-SU! stamp pads. How do I store them?

I absolutely love the ribbon holder on my desk. My mother works at a dentist office and it used to be a sticker roll holder they used to give stickers to the kids. It's perfect for ribbon. I wish I had another one! This holds the ribbon I use the most. The is also a small dish to the left of the ribbon that holds all my little scraps of ribbon. I decided that if it was right out in the open, I would be more apt to use them than if they were hidding in a jar somewhere.

I ABSOLUTELY love my IKEA chair. You'd think it would be really uncomfortable, but it's the most comfortable $20 I'd ever spent! It's so nice to wheel around to the table behind me, wheel over to my closet and be comfortable all at the same time!

To the right of my IKEA chair, I keep all my scraps. Each SU! color has it's own folder. When making something, I always go to my scrap folders first before I pull out a new full sheet of paper. I think the rest if self-explanatory. I tried to label everything . There are also some more pictures that I didn't re-post that are filed under the CRAFT ROOM category to the right. Thanks for looking! I hope this inspires you to do a little spring cleaning in your craft room!

Craft Room - Embellishments

Well, I think I jinxed us here in Michigan. In my last post, I talked about it looking like Spring and the snow finally melting. Well, we got a huge snow storm yesterday and we are all covered in the white stuff again! Will it ever end?!?!?!?

Okay, I digress. This is where I store most of my embellishments. I picked up this shelving unit at a local flower/craft store when they were re-doing their shelving. It can be hung up on the wall, but this works for me right now just sitting on the table. The little jars are baby food jars and I spray painted the lids black.

I store my eyelets and brads in this "tic-tac" style organizer (see pic. below). My SU! ones are labeled so I know the exact color. I have 3 of them and they are almost all full! My flowers are stored in misc. jar or paint buckets. Whatever I have around and will fit flowers, is what I use :) I have tons of eyelets and brads that I got from a share a while back and they are currently stored in mini zip lock baggies. I don't have nearly enough "tic-tac" containers to store them all in yet, so I have just left them in the bags.

Believe it or not, I have more craft room pictures to show you. Stay tuned!!

Burp Cloths #2

Here is the second set of burp cloths that I did for the baby boom going on amongst our friends. They are expecting their second boy any day now. Season wise, they are born only a month apart, therefore they have most of the clothes, etc. that they needed, so why not some new burp cloths...plus they are easy to mail!


Don't look too close at the stitching! I can do lines, but never promised that they would be straight!! LOL! I am a beginner/novice at sewing, at best. When I saw that camo. ribbon at the store, I couldn't pass it up. I wasn't sure if the black ric-rac was girlish, but it was all I had for the burp cloths. I loved the orange polka-dots when saw it....it made me think of Spring. I hope they like them! Thanks for looking! Enjoy your day.....the snow is finally melting here and it's starting to look like Spring out there. We'll see how long that lasts!

Craft Room pictures #3

First, Happy St. Patty's Day! Did you remember to wear your green today?? Being Michigan State fans, we have TONS of green in our house! I have some more craft room pictures to show you. Here is the right side of the shelves I showed earlier. I originally had my stamps in dishpan bins from the dollar store stored on shelves/cubbies made from wire cubes. The closet is right next to my desk, so I was easy to pick out a bin, plop it on my lap and dig through to see what I wanted. Well, I ran out of space in my closet and needed a different place to house all my stamps. I'm not really sure I like this method of stamp storage yet....time will tell. They are 2 rows deep. They are labeled in different categories. In the picture below, you can see where I have the different categories....Sentiments, Backgrounds/Misc (wheels are stored in here), Flowers/Bugs/Animals, General, Holidays, Tags, and Alphabets/Numbers.
I am currently in the process of labeling all of my stamp sets with my trusty label maker. Now that I am starting to do workshops, I have to distinguish between my current and retired stamps, so I am marking the retired stamp sets with a red dot next to the name.

I'll post more details about my embellishments soon. I think I'm going to head to bed.....I've been fighting getting sick so I think I'll go and catch some shut-eye! Thanks for looking!

Burp Cloths - Part 1

We know SO many people having babies lately. Many live as far away as San Francisco, so I needed something that was easy to send in the mail. I made some burp cloths for my own girls, so figured why not do that for others. Our friends in SF recently had their first baby, a baby girl. I like to do colors other than pink because people tend to get lots of pink things when they are having their first baby girl. I hope they like these! I'll have some more to post for our other friends who are having a baby boy soon! Thanks for looking and enjoy your Saturday!

Emmybella

This is a card that I made for my 17-year old niece, Emily. Therefore, I thought that Emmybella stamp from Stamping Bella would be perfect! Some of the bella stamps are perfect for those people that aren't kids anymore, but not yet adults, ya know...those in-between years. I hope she likes the card as much as I had fun making it!

Supplies:

Stamps: emmybella-Stamping Bella, You Take the Cake-MFT (sentiment), Small Oval-Amuse

Paper: DCWV textured Robin #1, Making Memories Fashion Aqua Polka Dot, SU! Night of Navy, Old Olive, Whisper White

Ink: Black StazOn, Regal Rose, Old Olive, Night of Navy, Barely Banana, Blush Blossom

Accessories: Heidi Swapp Flower, Prima Flower, SU! Rhinestone brad, Corner rounder punch, American Crafts ribbon

Craft Room #2

I finally got some more shelves put up in my craft room. I was tired of having boxes and boxes of stuff all over my floor. I wasn't able to wheel around in my chair from table to table!! I still need to get a few more shelves, but these will have to do for now. I did post some pictures of my craft room a while back....you can see the label for it on the side of my blog or click HERE.

First, on the left side of the shelves......in the 3 baskets on the top of the shelves are my projects/alterables (paint cans, notebooks, etc.) On the next shelf down in the 2 small white boxes are my envelopes (whtie, cream & clear) In the yellow gift bag with the daisy on it are my nuggets and peppermint patties that I bought recently....I need to keep them accessible in case I need a chocolate fix while I'm stamping!!

In the 3 drawers below the envelopes are my 12x12 scraps, rub-ons, tag sheets from SU! and other misc. things that I don't know where to put. The the right of the 12x12 scraps in the white box is my acrylic and unmounted stamps. Some are in CD cases, but I don't like that one whole stamps set doesn't fit in the cases. I need to come up with another way to store them, but for now that are all just thrown in a box. Any suggestions on how to store them??

On top of my acrylic/unmounted stamps is my Xyron machine. Ya know....I just had to have this and used my 40% of coupon at JoAnn's to get it and I have NEVER used the machine!! I guess I'm just not sure what to use it for. I just use my regular 'ole Mono adhesive. If you have one of these, what do you use your's for?

In the 4 photo boxes with the pink lids, 2 are empty, one has spare ribbon and one has my keepsakes in it.....notes, cards, letters, ticketstubs, etc. The the right of the 2 photo storage boxes in my Cuttlebug machine and in the 3 drawers below the machine are my folders & dies. I like to have it at an arms reach because I use it all the time!

Below the shelf on the table is a carosel of junk...I mean stuff. I picked this up at Hobby Lobby, thinking it would be great to put things in for a craft show.....if I was to ever do one. It was supposed to be $30 or $40, but it was mismarked for $19.99 and then I got to use my 40% off coupon. I couldn't pass it up!! Eyelets and brads from a share that I did, along with ribbon on clothespins, embossing powders, misc. tools, sanding tools, and other glues/adhesives.....ModPodge, E6000, spray adhesive, sealants, Scotch Tacky adhesive, cleaner refill, etc. Behind the carosel is my heat gun hanging on the arm of the shelving. Next is obviously the sewing machine. I wanted to get it out on my table so that I actually use it. I have never sewn on cards before so I thought I would give it a try. Does anyone know if you have to have a special needle/certain size to sew on paper or not?

Well, that is post #1 of my craft room. I have plenty more to show you, but I'll save it for another day. I've asked a couple of questions in red. If you have any answers or suggestions, please email me or leave me a comment. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks for looking and enjoy your day!

Zoofari Rhino

Here is one of the cards I was able to make while hiding out in my craft room yesterday. This is for one of Emerson's friends who turns 3 in a couple of weeks. My mojo wasn't quite working when I first woke up yesterday, so I picked some paper, and then went from there. I wouldn't have thought these colors went together at all, but I just went with it! I think it's turned out pretty cute....nothing fancy (do I say that too much? I think that should be my blog title!!), but I figured it's just for a 3 year old boy, so he won't care if it's not all fancied up!

With having 2 girls, I struggle when I have to come up with something for a boy or doing a gender neutral baby card. The girly stuff just seems to flow. I figured boy = animals and pulled out my Zoofari set. I know some people don't really care for this set or even think the birds in the set look constipated, but I think the animals are cute :)

Supplies:
Stamps: Zoofari, Small Script
Paper: SU!-Old Olive, Apricot Appeal, Whisper White; DCWV-The Stack III
Ink: Black StazOn, Apricot Appeal
Accessories: Large & small oval punches, tag corner punch, watercolor pencils, gamsol & blending stump, diamond stickles (for teeth), silver brads

Ginger Blossom Mailbox

This is a mailbox that I recovered a little while ago. When I got my order of SU! goodies with the Ginger Blossom paper, I just had to rip it open and do something with it. I hadn't done a mailbox yet, so I thought "why not give it a try?" After I adhered the paper, I went to start to embellish it and realized that I didn't have any ribbon or anything else that matched the paper!! Poor planning on my part....I was just so excited to use the paper! I think the mailbox is a little plain without any ribbon, etc. I'll plan my project a little better next time :)

I have reserved ALL of Sunday to be in the craft room and get some things done. I can't wait!! I'll have some goodies to show you next week. Thanks for looking!

2nd Project from Workshop

I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but it's amazing how busy life gets and I don't even get a chance to get on the computer until the weekend!

Here is the second project that we did at the workshop....the 2-5-7-10 box. I used Charmaine's idea for doing a box. I used the tutorial from SCS to make the box. I used all solid color cardstock, along with the coordinating Print Designer Series papers. Pretty easy for everyone to have their own color of box since I am a paper addict, along with a punch addict, etc. I wish I would have brought my camera to show you how cool the boxes turned out. I wasn't sure if they would be "blah" since they would all be tone-on-tone, but they all turned out sooooo cute! On my box I used Apricot Appeal cardstock and DS paper, along with the Polka Dot & Paisley and Polka Dots & Petals stamp sets. I brought a few different stamp sets that people could use, but most used the same ones that I did.



I definitely liked the way that these turned out and will do more in the future. Thanks again for the idea to do these!