Wanna see my room?

Hello, everyone! I guess you think that I haven't been creating but I have .. I currently have 4 DT projects that I can't reveal yet .. but I will soon!  Promise!

 So, since I did a bit of re-organizing in my office/scrap room last week, I thought I would give you the quick cook's tour!  I really struggle with wanting to keep my office area looking more like an office and less like a regular scrap room. But I am trying to find a happy medium and I think I am on the road to achieving that .. though it looks more crafty with each bit of re-organization!

This first photo (above) is what you see as you walk down the hall to my office. I have a couple of awesome cherrywood curio cabinets that I once had in my living area ... but they have migrated here and I dearly love them.  You can see Mr Cricky sitting there on old typing table from when my hubby was still in business .. he's now semi-retired.

Upon entering the room this is what you see next. (And please excuse the Native American artwork if you don't favor it  .. a friend of ours was quite an artist and I love keeping some her stuff where I can enjoy it.) 

 I used to have more of an L arrangement but this new U shaped working area is working better for me.   If I'm paying bills, I can focus, but if I'm crafting, I can look out the window and enjoy the view.

I use my cherrywood desk for office projects but also that is where I ususally sit to choose my papers. See all those drawers under my desk? Totally full of nothing but paper .. and that's not even all of it. I did actually purge last week but am hanging on to all my faves and then some.  I do have a glass top on my desk, so when I have to work there because the craft table is FULL at least I don't have to worry about ruining the desk.

The craft table is purely functional. I have been intending t switch this out with an IKEA table but for the moment, I'm pretty happy just using this.  My drawers mostly hold supplies such as my adhesives, my sharps as I call my craft knives and blades, 2 drawers are devoted to hold all my bling, one drawer is for my stamps (thanks goodness I don't have much of that addiction .. yet!). Let's see what else .. there's a drawer for my Stickles and Liquid Pearls, one for inks, one for cardmaking basics, one for holding white cardstock for my Imagine. The other 3 are misc embellishments. I have 3 clear totes where my kneehole is that hold my ribbons. I have tried lots of storage ideas but have found that what works best for me is to sort my ribbon by color and keep those colors in separate ziploc baggies. Then the  baggies go in the totes. I also have a few Iris cases sitting around that are for my kit club items that haven't been used yet. Once I start using them, I merge them with my other supplies.

Just another shot of the drawers under my desk where I have my paper sorted by manufacturer. I look through these frequntly, so don't feel that there is much out of sight, out of mind going on.  Okay, now it's confession time: see those 3 totes 12.7 qt size ... crammed full of my Prima flowers with a handful of Petaloo.  Wish I could say that's all I have .. I do have a few other jars of them here and there. (It's a sickness, I know LOL ..  but I love them!) They are sorted by color .. which works great.

This is where my Imagine (early birthday) is going to live .. if the replacement ever gets here! I had it for one day and then it went crazy banging and trying to pull the mat through and wouldn't do anything else. PC says I should have my I back early next week, ugh! I hope it will be worth the aggravation! Right now my Gypsy is sitting there keeping the table warm.

Oh, my! This is not a pretty sight! Remember, I'm still organizing! But here is where I store my mats and my cartridges although I rarely need them since I use my Gypsy. I have additional trimmers down here as well as another tote that hold my old, old punches. The drawer holds ink cartridges, photo paper and cables.

This corner needs some work too but I keep my cropper hopper tote there with extra albums, pages and protectors and things like that. The small bookcase hold reference material, Xyrons, my heat gun and glue gun. I store my old Sissix die cut machine there and use it occassionally for embossing.

To the right of the closet is another Iris tower cart that holds all kinds of things. Sitting on top of it is an old Creative Memories paper organizer which holds my solid cardstock  .. looks like I need to stand it up a little straighter!  The drawer beneath it holds the remainder. There is a drawer with paints and foam stamps, a couple of drawers of ,, you guessed it .. more paper .. but this is where it usually ends up right before it makes the give-away box.

Inside the closet is another one of these paper organizers which holds misc patterend paper that I don't sort by manufacturer. Once a set starts getting used up, it gets moved over here.

Hmmm, I said I wasn't going to show this but here I am doing it ... tons of chipboard on the left, photo boxes full of photos .. as is the expando file.  Off to the right is where non-scrappy stuff lives.  Well, and my old sticker binders that hold little used paraphelnia.

Thought I'd mention that this is where the albums are that I'm more "currently" working on.  There is a drop down desk which a great little work surface.  But inside there is where I keep my mists, paints, diamond dust and that sort of thing. I also keep my Cricut cartridge booklets and overlays in photo boxes there.  The rest of the credenza is for office supplies and personal things like my Willow Tree Angel collection. 

Here is where I have moved my Expression for the time being. 

The door beside the Expression is where I do have a clear shoe organizer to hold some of my favorite punches. I actually need to get another one of these.  My room is very broken up by 2 doorways,  1 window, and 1 closet which doesn't leave alot of wall space for hanging anything, especially since a large portion of the room houses the curio cabinets and computer armoire .. so I'm happy making do however I can.

I have hung a couple of layouts though.

This one has a magnetic board and I change it out quite frequently with the newest or most favorite layout.

Around the corner and in the formal dining is another bookcase on which I have stored more completed albums.  I have another one of these in my sunroom but I'm quickly running out of space and think I'm going to have to start giving some of my work to the kiddos sooner rather than later.

I hope you've enjoyed the tour .. kind of scary putting my "life" out there for everyone to see!  It's not magazine ready but it sure serves the purpose  for me!  I'll just keep tweaking as I go!

See you back Friday for Stuck on U Sketches reveal day!

It's Party Time! ~ SOUS 3-18-2011

Another quick page ..   a mix of Imaginesce Birthday Bash and Echo Park For the Record.  Had fun journaling around the edge of the page.  And using real candles on my layout. And please note my Baker's twine .. finally broke down and ordered a sampler set! Marianne has turned 2, can you believe it?!

Another great sketch from Becky Fleck's Page Maps 2 ..  Hope you enjoy this one! Be sure to visit Stuck on U Sketches to see what the other design team members have done with the sketch! Remember, you have 2 weeks to link your project.  

And another chance for some great blog candy ... visit SOUS for all the "fine print."

Be back later with details .. I hope! This has really been a crazy busy month! Between babies being born, kids having birthdays and granddaughters getting married  .. not to even mention what the office is like right now with us being short an audiologist ... oh, and I forgot... there was also all that car buying and selling hoopla. I'm sure things will slow down soon .. at least here at home .. and get back to normal quickly enough. 

Hope you have a fabulous weekend.  I am hoping to make it out to the Cricut Stampede for a couple of hours and meet some folks ... if I can!  And I'm dying to start scrapping some photos from the wedding last weekend. Maddie and Marcos were the happiest and most beautiful people on the planet! They were both glowing!

Echo Park's For the Record ~ Generations Crafting Design work

Have you seen Echo Park's new For the Record line? It is full of lots of great colors and patterns .. just a little bit of something for everyone.  You can see the whole collection at Generations Crafting.   It is promoted as more of a vintage collection but I did not see it that way or choose to use it for vintage photos.  Used it for some photos of little Peyton instead. I especially like the black polka dot paper which really make the whole collection just pop!

 I hadn't planned to do a project with FTR until after this coming weekend because of our busy schedules.  However, the commitment was kind of weighing in on me, so I just jumped in there one night and did a couple of simple, quick pages .. sometimes that is all you can do when you have a busy month!

The first layout I paired with a half page BoBunny die cut from last year that had the same colors and helped to frame my photo.  The black scallop is from the Sticker Elements, as is the ballon, the flourish, the title and subtitle. The "remember this" was cut from one of the papers.  Then all I did was add some Prima flowers (Paloma, sparkling) and some cute ribbon flowers from the craft store.

The work was already done for me in the second page! There were a couple of sheets of the 4 square variety and I thought they would look great with a circular photo right in the center. I framed it with an unfinished Artisan Element from Pink Paislee. The pretty little floral swag was from Angelica Frannsen's Etsy Shoppe.  I just misted it for color and then curled it around the edge and added a ribbon.   My title was simply taken again from the Sticker Element sheet.

That's it for today. Tomorrow will be a new reveal for Stuck on U Sketches.  Mine is another quick page but the other designers have done some wonderful projects that you won't want to miss!

Thanks for stopping by! And thanks, Floren, for providing the opportunity to work with these wonderful supplies!

Smile ~ Graphic 45 Once Upon a Springtime

Hello, everybody! I am back with more DT projects for Floren at Generations Crafting, this time using Graphic 45's Once Upon A Springtime.  I love the colors in this mid-season collection.  I had this nice fmaily photo that I hadn't scrapped yet and it was a perfect pairing.

For contrast I chose a dark charcoal stripe pp from last year's G45 Le Romantique.  And then used one of the photo mats to accent my photo. Although the Once Upon A Springtime screams for fussy cutting, I had seen so much of that (these papers were highlighted in a number of kit clubs) that I chose instead to simply cut the little bunny family. 

My banner was cut with my Cricut Give A Hoot cartridge and embellished with bows topped with small roses.  The small dots that you see on the banner were chipboard pieces left from my Basic Grey Hopscotch project and were the perfect added touch. My letters were also some left over Creative Imagination foam stickers that I love!

Here's that little famly again .. I think they may have to appear again on some pages of my new little grandsons, don't you?

I added some gemstones to the floral print on the photomat and then placed a little heart chipboard in the corner.

___________

Next up is yet another frame!  They are so easy, fun and addictive!  Here you can see the gorgeous teal color of this patterned paper.  Using the frame as a template, I then applied the papers with Modge Podge and did a bit of inking. Normally, I paint my frames first but this one was already a nice finished color, so that wasn't necessary.

Added some of my favorite Prima tea roses from Floren's store, as well as a gorgeous Prima Say it with Pearls flourish.  The tag was just the right size for embellishing the frame.  Although I am not big on fairies myself,  I decided to use just one as it complemented the frame so nicely.

I forgot to mention that this is little dggd Peyton who recently had some new photos taken .. I am sure you will be seeing more of these ..

Just one last close-up of the right side of the frame.

Right now these papers are on sale 25% off.  Click Here to order yours before they are all gone!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cousins ~ SOUS 3-04-2011

Yay, it's Friday and time for another reveal day at Stuck on U Sketches.  This week we have all our new designers in place alongside our returning designers as well as Nanne, Leah and myself.  But we also have a very special Guest Designer this week .. none other than the uber-talented Original SOUS designer Sandy Windsor! We are so excited to have Sandy designing with us this week! You can visit her blog HERE. 

We have a terrific sketch this time that I thought I would post here. This is another of Suepup's designs. Thanks, Charlotte, for creating such an awesome sketch! 

My layout this week is doubling as a DT project for Generations Crafting using BoBunny's new Gabrielle collection, named after  designer Gabrielle Pollacco, who currently serves on the BoBunny design team. The papers are just out of this world gorgeous and I just layered and layered to my heart's content!

The photo I used is of my daughters and their cousins. My neices live in Colorado and my daughters live in Texas, so getting them together is not that easy to accomplish now that they are grown.  You know how it can be, weddings and funerals.

To my gorgeous papers I've added a crochet piece to serve as the circle in the sketch. Then used some Dusty Attic window and vines to finish this very special page.

I painted my Dusty Attic windows with some warm white paint, then added Crackle accents when the paint was dry. On one piece I added a cut-out from the Gabrielle papers and put Crackle paint on that as well. The bling and flowers are from my stash as was the ribbon and lace used beneath the photo.

Here is a close-up of the vine which I painted with a dark green paint, then highlighted with Peeled Paint inks and distress stickles. For more highlightling I used some Alabaster inks.  I cut my vine in to 2 pieces and used one lower on the page.  All the butterflies were hand cut from the papers and adhered with foam squares.

I added a bit of bling as paths for all the butterflies and used some jewels and Stickles on their bodies.  Here you can see the ribbon and lace in better detail. My lace was actually ivory but I stained it with Tsukineko Walnut Stain to get the brown that I wanted. I topped it with some pleated brown ribbon from BoBunny's Olivia collection.  My title was cut using my Cricut Heritage cartridge.  

I also used my Bobunny Gabrielle papers to create the layout done below as another DT project for Generations Crafting. Better scoop up these papers before they are gone!   

Thanks for coming by today! Be sure and visit all our designers to find out more about their creations!

 And thanks, Sandy, for being our very special guest .. and friend! We've missed you!