More scrap space photos..

I was asked a question a couple of times on two peas so I decide that I should maybe post the answer on here as well. The question is what do I have in stored in my drawers and how do I store my items... Well the easy answer to the first question is easy lots of stuff. LOL no seriously my drawers are full of all things scrapbook/craft related. So I decided to show you the insides of some of the drawers. These drawers are all located on the left side of my desk chair/standing area. I put supplies that I really didn't have to worry about the girls being interested in on this side of my desk since it is the closes to their desk.  The first drawer is full of random office supplies that I use in scrapbooking and in my planner. I didn't take a photo of that because I really didn't think it was all that interesting. But the 2nd drawer is full of punches that I absolutely won't get rid of. I have had these forever and the ones that I didn't keep I just gave to the girls.

The 3rd drawer is my bakers twines, twine, jute and threads. I have them stored in an IKEA drawer organizer. And since they don't take up the whole 18inch drawer I added my push pin heart, and needles to the drawer too.

And finally the 4th  drawer is my ribbon storage. I had my ribbon stored like this before but I wanted a space that supported the whole 12 by 7 piece of chipboard so that it wouldn't warp and putting it in a drawer was the best decision. Plus I don't get stuck with the pin that hold the ribbon in place anymore because I can now grab them from the sides and I haven't been poked once since they have been stored in here.

I think that is enough of what is in my drawers for now. I have been scrapbooking the kids' albums and honestly I am excited to get my pages done of the photos that I printed. And once I have done that I will actually post a picture of the layouts that I completed for each one of my kid's albums. Well good night for now. Smiles, Tracy

The space is still coming along...

There are a few more things that have been scratched off my list since my original post showing my space. And I am so glad that the handles have been added to the bigger cabinet drawers and I have to find some drawer pulls that I really like to add to the other 5 drawers without handles at this time.

The other thing that has been completed is that my paper storage have been cut to fit into the expedite. And I love the look of them all lined up and organized. I went through all of them and pulled out patterned papers that I knew that I would not ever use. And of course gave most of it to the girls and add a little stack for my garage sale.

The space is honestly more comfortable. And I watch tv in it rather than scrapbook at this time and I am hoping that will change shortly.

Well here is a photo of the inside of one of the 11 drawers that are on my desk.

 This drawer is for my adhesives, cutting blades and stamping supplies. I just wanted to add when I say adhesives I mean all things stick ability. This includes washi tape, epoxy stickers, magic mesh , and hot glue all the way to runners and liquid glue.

I did put the bulk of my refills that were unopened  in the cabinet on the very top shelf. It was good to have all those things in one spot instead of 2 little drawers so now I know that I have well over 24 refills of ATG so I don't need anymore of that for awhile but I need hot glue gun refills so that I can work on some decor item repairs.

Well I gotta go to bed.

For those who have been wondering what I have been up to...

Well alot. I have been working major overtime at my new job and lets just say it has been extremely stressful to be at work for those long shifts. I have never had an employer require mandatory overtime that means we have to work 14 hr shifts.

But enough about that...I have some very exciting news. I am so happy to say that I'm sitting in my new scrapbooking space right now as we speak about to share with you all what I have accomplished in a 3.5 weeks. I love what this room has become for our family. Its so nice to have a space that we all can enjoy now together. So here is the photos of my new space...a little disclaimer, it is still in progress. It is not complete. There are handles still to add to drawers, a shelf to hang, new Stampin Up stamp storage cases to convert my cd cases to, and clutter to get off the top of my stamp storage and put away somewhere??

But here you go....

And I can honestly say that I love this space. It actually is not my style but it's both hubby and our style put together. And although I liked the idea of painting furniture, nothing could provide me with the storage that I needed except for IKEA kitchen cabinets. I designed my space before going there, how many drawers, what each drawer would hold and so on. And I was pleasantly surprised when my hubby put it all together. I was perfect, except there was an issue with my stamps. What to do with my stamps, well I already had wanted the SU dvd type cases because they were bigger, and could hold more which meant that I could easily increase my stamp storage by changing the container that held them. So step #1 get rid of black spinny thing and get the IKEA CD/DVD tower. Perfect! Step #2 order the SU cases and get at least 8 sets to complete my goal of condensing my storage. And then step #3 be patient, and wait until they get here...I'm working on the last step right now. LOL.

But once they are here and also my order of new stamp pads, I can get my stamp pads hopefully in the tower with my stamps. I am hoping because I don't want to purchase anything else for this room. I need to start on other rooms of the house but because Hubby made me pinky swear to stay focused on one room at a time, I gotta do it. But next is my entryway and the 1st bathroom. I know I just said one room at a time, techinally the hallway isn't a room.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. I plan on having a day at the park tomorrow with the kids since we have been in the house so much this last week. Besides remodeling, I was also really sick.



Oh can you share any ideas that you have about how you got your Cropper Hopper paper holders to fit in the expedite. I would really love the info. Because mine don't fit at all.

Office/Scrap space update

Well I just had to stop in and update the photos of my space while I had a chance to. I have a really busy week and it is Thursday. So far this week, I have been on a couple of job interviews and met with a potential client to make cards for her shop. I am so excited because this is exactly what I need to be doing right now. Trying to establish myself here is different from Minnesota but that is because there I knew so many of the store owners from actually being a customer but here I have none of those connections. But that is ok, it just means that I have to work a little harder.

Well here are the photos of my space, well not right now cause it is a mess...I am cleaning it up but I was crafting a few samples for the shop so I pulled out a little of everything. This is the space behind my chair. By the way, I got the chair from Goodwill for $6.00. It is the exact same color as the wall paint for the room and I have no plans of painting this room so this worked perfectly. And that frame leaning against my cabinet is actually my wall calendar that I am working on for the kitchen. I didn't go with that patterned paper on the top but this is where I am at with this project so far, the frame is painted and distressed, I took a piece of a ruler (that was used in the inside of my cabinet drawers to divide them for my dies) to screw in hooks so that I can hang the calendar part below the scrapbook page. As you can see the frame is a shade off from the cabinet, and that is what I meant when I said my house is a several shades of teal. But not several shades in one room, each room has a shade of it except for the kids rooms. They all got to pick their room colors and they didn't have to match the main room colors/shades. I still have to paint that crate that is on the floor. I am thinking black.

And of course the little one just had to get in the shot so you all could see that she could fit right in her little space. I plan on painting their chairs so that they match the room although they aren't the same chairs. I love the way that these little metal school desks are perfectly distressed to match the space. That was a happy accident. I originally was spraying they black but the Rustoleum paint wasn't working right. It looked like dust and I actually rubbed a lot of it off, so I went back with a wet clothe and it rubbed all off. I don't know why it did that. I shook the paint can, and followed the spray painting directions but the paint didn't work. And at that point I was way too hot (which might have been the issue with the paint) to go to the store and get a different brand so I just wiped off all that I could, sanded it and then painted over the tops with the same paint from the cabinets...and I loved it. It almost looks like chalk paint. I then sanded it some more and wiped them down once again and placed them right where they are now.But other than those things, everything else is just the same as it was in previous photos. I still have several projects that I have planned but those will be getting done little by little.

This week I've been really productive in getting cards done. I really like that I can now craft while cooking, teaching the girl to write her letters and pretty much any other time that I can get a few minutes in my space. I also really like that I have been cleaning up the space now in 15 mins or less. Mostly because I don't pull out lots of things, but also because things are so easy to put back. I really like that...But here are ome photos of the completed cards. I really needed some sympathy cards so thatis what I have been making. It is a hard card to make mostly because it is for a time that is not a celebration for most so I pulled out product that I had that I didn't like that much if at all. So sorry Chatterbox I loved most of your lines but this one wasn't my style or even anything that I liked at all. But they made some really cute cards. I tried not to use too much black but there really wasn't any way around it.

Here is a list of the products that I used. I don't know what company made the stamp though.

Papers-chatterbox

Cardstock- Bazzill/ AC

Dies-Cricut (gypsy), Spellbinders circle die, Fiskars border punch, sizzix branch die

Seam binding-unknown (sprayed with TH distress ink black soot and perfect pearls)

Twine- Walmart

White embosing powder

Well have a great weekend. I am so far. I have been crafting for a few hours today and plan on crafting some more this evening.

Well I was laying on my bed this morning surfin the web after the boys were off to school. And usually I would be up and moving or doing something but the house is clean, the laundry is done, breakfast doesn't need to be made yet cause the girls are still sleeping. So I took just a moment to look at some scrapbooking blogs. And began to doze off, and just then I dreamed about the perfect use for the desk that I have in the garage. Yeap sometimes I dream about scrapbooking/decorating ideas lol.


But let me be honest about this desk, I don't like it at all for myself (which is why it's still in the garage) its actually perfect for the youngest boys room, and so I was eventually going to get around to painting it and putting it in there...and I say eventually cause it wasn't something that I looked forward to doing at all. See this is the same desk that I painted just a year ago to put into our very very small bedroom in the apartment until we moved into the house. I hated it almost instantly because it was in our room and I knew that I would never be able to craft in there. The lighting was bad, it was away from the kids, it was really cramped and the drawers weren't big enough to hold anything at all.


So I never worked on/at the desk, but instead used it as a self to store some of my supplies. And that's all that I used it for. And since I am being honest I really didn't want to repaint it cause I just didn't want it in the house for some reason. But the boy needs a desk, but at the same time who said he needs that one. So as I was dozing off I was thinking of the drawer handles which are black, and the drawers are a very light baby blue (that surely wasn't the color that I thought it would be at the time I chose it). And I just had painted our old tv stand to go in the room as a temporary/maybe permanent piece in the room. It's current purpose is to hold the stuff that I have been stating that I have no place to put, but even then I had no way to store it. So the drawers...(sorry it took so long, lol) the drawers are perfect. They can come out of the desk and fit right under the self on the tv stand. And I already have both items. I haven't painted them yet or even checked to make sure that they can fit, but I am off to do that right now. I'll be back. And really I can get a before picture of desk so you can see what I am talking about...

Well after taking care of the girls and cooking breakfast and putting up the girl's laundry (which I was waitig to do when they woke up) I finally got to take a photo.

This is the desk (while looking at it again, I think what is wrong with me, it's a perfectly great desk for a kid, but I really don't want it in his room?) and the color isn't so bad, but I would have to paint it either way it goes so why not use it for what I want to instead.

And this is a photo of the drawers sitting on the actual tv stand shelf. It is so small but it is perfect for now. I just have to wait to get better furniture. But now you can see that there is other items that weren't pictured before. That black cd tower thing is used to store my cd cases full of acrylic stamps. Which are still in their boxes and I am really hoping once this part of the room is done that I can pull them out and get them up away. But ontop of the tower is an old cassette tape holder that holds my Colorbox chalk inks. I am thinking that I should hot glue together since both turn and it will be perfect to make sure that they stay put. But I also think that I should spray paint the cd tower an amber color. But I haven't found that color in a spray paint at all. And especially not a spray paint for plastic.

Getting closer to the finish line...or so I hope

Hello bloggers. I am so excited to say that I have completed a huge task. It actually wasn't a huge task but it really did feel like one.

This is what my ribbon looked like on Monday and some of Tuesday..

and this is what my ribbon looks like this morning...

Isn't it just the most beautiful thing!OK maybe its not but I am so excited because there was ribbon all over the great room for a day and a half. And the girls were playing for the last two days with empty spools. But it feels so good to have that mess up and the organized ribbon stash really moves me.

I am so mad at myself for not doing that with all my ribbons before. I got rid of about 150 rolls of American Crafts ribbons before my move last year because I couldn't bring them with me. Sad, if they were only rolled onto the cards like all the rest of my ribbon, I would have had them in my box. And they would be here right now getting put away.

So the lesson in all of this is I can never replace all those AC ribbons so I need to get over it and also not matter the brand, unwrap and add them to my stash. Forget the packaging and labels...they take up too much space.

Well the room isn't done, not even close but here are some pictures of what it actually looks like right now. It isn't perfect (or clean) but it is getting closer to the finish line. And all the stuff on my "table" is what I need storage for. Along with a few more boxes of books that I haven't even made it into the house yet.

I also found some cute little nightstands this weekend which were for the kids rooms.

Here is the boy#2's nightstand...I would do a full view of his room but there are pictures of family and friends in there so I will not do that. I did paint it black. And now he needs a small desk and bookshelf... And I got his table for $3.75.

And here is the girls' nightstand it is so perfect for their room. And of course there is much more that I need to do in their room like paint the walls, a color that we all can live with. LOL and a nice dresser with 8 drawers instead of the chest of drawers that they have. And a nice little bench that they can sit on under their window. But doesn't that lamp shade just scream at you for some kind of flowers and ribbon decorations...it did to me too that will be next. I got their table for $3.oo.

Sorry about the blurred pictures but I took them on my phone, and I don't have a clue how to make phone pics look better. Maybe I will take a better picture of everything once their rooms are done too? I hope to remember that...

Making prgress...

Well it was a long weekend and I had the most relaxing time. I was honestly so excited about doing my scrapbooking space, but after thinking about it, I used that time to enjoy my families company because there was a lot of thinking that I really needed to do before I started unpacking more stuff. There are several issues that I am trying to figure out but there doesn't seem to be anything that I love 100%. So instead of running around to garage sales trying to find anything that I could use, or checking thrift stores for sales, I kinda just want to think it through a little more.

Honestly the more that I think about it, it's clear that there is going to be some plastic in the room, but how much is my concern. I didn't want tons of it but really there is no way that there isn't going to be a lot considering I have a lot of stuff to store and right now my budget doesn't include purchasing new storage containers especially when I am still decorating a whole house.

But I have organized one cabinet. I can't really show a picture of it cause it is just too messy around the cabinet to have on record lol...The cabinet has a ledge/desk folding down compartment which is a perfect place to put my diecutting machines. And because of the size, whenever I get a gift of the new silhoutte or craft robo (these are just wishes lol), I will still have enough room in there to store and use them and that made the cabinet a perfect place to be my diecutting storage too, the drawers are full of dies (none of my wafer thin dies are in there)and here is a photo of one of the drawers...

And here is the other cabinet so far too, it is almost full and I still have 3 boxes to unpack (not including my 2 mini boxes of cd cases filled with stamps). The great part about my previous systems for organizing is that I honestly love them and it was easy to stay organized. I am thinking maybe just maybe I should buy some material and put it over the fronts of the cabinets but now as I type it out it seems like a bad idea. LOL

So there are tons of things on my to-be-done list;

-organize my ribbon (just making all ribbon fit into the system that I like, no more spools of ribbon, or ribbon cards for each individual collection/company, all are getting unwrapped and put onto my 6x12 cards sorted by color)

-re-label all plastic containers (using my computer instead of my label maker)

-find (build/paint) a shelf to go between the cabinets to hold my cd tower, ink pads, tools, all 8.5x11 & 12x12 cardstock that is still sitting in boxes.

-hang license plates of the places that we have lived/traveled to (which I still haven't unpacked/found??)

-create 9x9 layouts of those states to hang on the wall underneath each license plate (using IKEA wire and double hook method)

-touch up wall in areas that have scuffs and marks on it

-create family wall calendar

-purchase a bookshelf/expedite to be shared with the kids books, family games and some scrapbook stuff (mostly scrapbooking decorations that I have made).

-find a way to store other ink pads because my current system is too small

Well that is enough for now. I will try to make sure that I update as I go along, and take photos...smiles, Tracy

Two posts in one week...

Well as any of you have come to know that if I start working on something, I have gotta get it finished. Well I have finished the bookshelves and the desk and table have been painted and I can honestly say that I have no plans on painting anything else just yet. I mean really it has been really hot here I think all the days the last week have been 100 or more. I also know that I can't paint anymore in the garage without some type of fan. Although the door was open, it was sooooo hot in there. But I stuck it out and got it done.

Now I want to share of photo of the work so far, but I don't want anyone judging my messy space lol. I mean really I am still unpacking all my craft stuff and trying to figure out exactly how to merge there spaces into one. What I think is going to happen is that I am no longer going to have the kids bookshelves in the office. I mean they have 5 boxes of books but now that I have typed that, that won't work. I am thinking that we are going to have to have some type of bookshelves in the office and something for each child's room. So that is something that I will have to look for this week. There is no rush to get it but it would be nice to get it soon.

I have a couple of things that I need now in order to organize my space in the office, like more vertical paper storage. I am thinking that I should get a few usps boxes and decorate them. I really like that idea although I love the plastic cropper hopper ones, but these would let me bring more color into my space, but I did recently see where someone cut patterned paper to cover the fronts of their CP paper holders. I am planning to do that first and see if I like it and then I could easily coordinate my papers to match the room and then still use a couple of usps boxes.

So here is my work in progress....

Yes it is a mess but it is just the beginning. I am still painting things, looking through boxes trying to find my license plates that I have from other states that we have lived in and visited together. The theme of the office/scrapbook space is Explore/Travel. And I have a bunch of stuff still in boxes, in my XXXL navigator and rolling totes, which you can't see cause I have most of that tucked under the table, outta site. LOL The chair is actually from my oldest's room desk, we still need several chairs for this space (which I plan to paint 2 the color of the bookshelf and 2 some other color that isn't black)

I want to create a sign with a quote but I have not done vinyl in my cutter before and since I refuse to buy anything new for that machine (because I really want one that will let me use MCC without issues) I am holding out. I am also going to try to find another way to get what I want done without me spending money on those items for the sign.

For the record this is what I have spent so far on the room...

Paint $25 Lowes

Paint $25 Lowes

Bookshelves $10 (for both)

Table $14
Desk-Free

I also have to find my frame stash. I have no idea what box they are in and I don't seem to remember what box I packed them in either. I should take a pic of the mess on the other side of the computer desk area but I would feel too embarrassed by that so never mind. But I am glad to show what I have done so far, I still got a ways to do but it is really starting to feel like it could be an amazing place for all of us to us together. Well until next time...Smiles, Tracy