Chipboard alpha and paper flower reorg

Happy fall!

This weekend ended up being a hectic one. I thought there would be plenty of time for crafting, but all I manage to get done was a quick birthday card and a little much-needed reorganization. Even though I swore off buying any new crafty stuff until I sat down and did a few scrapbook pages (or at least printed some photos), I got sucked in by the Target Dollar Spot.

I am such a sucker, I know, sometimes the items aren't even worth a dollar! But chipboard alphas for $1? Can't pass it up. I got four (two sheet of multicolored Halloween-ish letters and two packs of glittery orange letters). I also got a pack of Halloween paper, some ribbon and two cute plastic bins that I needed to find a productive use for.

Add all of this to my JoAnn and Two Peas in a Bucket purchases that arrived last week and I could barely walk to my craft table, never mind sit down and be productive. Yet I was going to my friend Jackie's son's second birthday party on Sunday and knew that a store-bought card just would not do. So I piled the stuff up even higher on the floor and got crafty for a few hours on Saturday afternoon, after my exhilarating but exhausting zumba class that morning.

No, there is no photo of the card. Oops. I really need to get a new camera. Or a scanner at home. It was cute though, used some birthday themed paper (also from the Dollar Spot, but not this trip) in primary colors and a foam number 2. Not my best work but my desk was so messy, there was barely any room.

Sunday after the party I took some time to organize, deciding to move my adhesive gems and other bling from the acetate box they were squooshed to one of the new Dollar Spot bins. Still haven't figured out where the bin goes yet.

The I focused on my chipboard letters. I have been wanting to store all them together by letter but the compartments of the embroidery floss boxes I had them in were too small. I finally put my chipboard letters into the the nuts and bolts organizer that my husband got me at the local hardware store. Unfortunately there are only 25 compartments, so I get to be creative and mix the Ms and Ws together since they can be used almost interchangeably. Still not sure what to do with the numbers, so I may have to do more combining.

Because I had to combine, I could only fit the letters that were already in the floss boxes -- mostly ones that are mix and match type letters and not whole alphas that look the same. I still don't know what to do with these. I have about 8 packs, from Making Memories, K&co, Basic Grey and a few random ones from Target. Some are in sheet form and some are separate letters. Right now they are standing up in a plastic box but that's temporary. I also have sheets of plain chipboard letters looking for a home. I put them in an ArtBin Super Satchel box but not sure I am loving that. I am torn as to whether I should punch out the letters or leave them in sheet form. Not sure which will make me more likely to use them.

I then tackled my growing paper flower collection. I originally sorted by material/flower size, with different colored flowers from the same manufacturer stored together. Then I bought a lot of 50 assorted Primas off of eBay, a bottle of yellow Primas (on sale at Michaels for $1.99!) and a tube of Primas from Two Peas (on sale for $2.50) that were not going to fit into the box I was using. Never mind the giant tube of white Primas I got from Two Peas that I intend to dye to match my projects.

First I thought I wanted to sort by color and store each color in a separate bottle. I thought I's use the Making Memories flower bottles:


I have six of them from ordering from www.cropchocolate.com. (If you haven't checked out this site, it's pretty cool - they feature one item and it's usually about 50% off. I also got four sets of MM clear stamps from them.) Plus I have a few Prima bottles I could use.

I sorted my flowers thinking this was the plan but then realized I need more order than this. I don't think I want to have to sift through an entire jar, even one sorted by color, to find the perfect flower. I know many people do this and use the bottles as a decorative display, but I need my storage to be more functional than decorative. So I sorted by color and by type into two plastic embroidery thread boxes. I had to put them sideways on one of the wire shelves of the door of my craft closet, but I think they will still stay pretty organized.

So now I am excited to get my craft on this weekend! I need to make three birthday cards and am thinking about making a set of thank you cards as a birthday present. My craft desk is still a bit of a mess but I plan to concentrate on putting more stuff away tomorrow night. Oh how I miss half day summer Fridays!

Couple Friends

Two posts two days in a row, whoo-hoo! Go me.

This is a page I did over the weekend. I was doing some cleaning and came across my friend Jackie's wedding invitation from 2005. Looking at the invitation got me thinking about how I regret not having gone to her wedding. One of the main reasons I didn't go (besides it being 7 hours away and on Labor Day) was because that weekend I moved in with my husband, who was just my boyfriend at the time.

But another reason was because the guys hadn't even met each other yet and she was really little more than a girl I met on Craigslist that I scrapbooked with. I guess there was no way then to know that we would all become such good friends! I do feel fortunate that we all hit it off since I know it can be hard to find couple friends where both girls and both guys get along. I'm not sure that I captured that message as much as I would have liked but I guess it's an idea for a future layout.


I started with the invitation, which was printed on white cardstock, and built the layout around it. Then I saw the small aqua friend tag (top right) that came in a large coordinating kit I recently picked up at BJSs and it became the basis for my color scheme. I recently bought a bunch of Basic Gray paper off of the clearance rack at AC Moore (25 cents apiece!) that coordinated with the aqua. I selected two sheets from the Blush collection for the top and bottom of the layout.

It took me forever to find letter stickers that worked until I remembered these from K&Co. They were on a sheet with fall colored letters that surprisingly contains an entire alphabet in each style. I wanted to emphasize the ampersand and again it took awhile to find the perfect one. First I thought chipboard but I couldn't find anything the right size. Finally I found this aqua ampersand on a sheet of pastel colored letters (not sure of the brand as I had removed it from the original packaging).

The K&Co journaling tag, from the Wild Saffron collection, just randomly seemed to work as I sorted through my recent purchases. I liked that it used both the aqua and the red from the papers and it was (almost) big enough to tell my story. When I wanted to add just a bit more, I saw that the red label (also K&Co Wild Saffron) would be perfect, plus there are so many of them in the package that I don't know how I'll ever use them (a good problem to have I suppose).

I've been thinking about paper flowers lately, having recently bought some Primas from eBay (50 various sizes for $2.50 -- good deal?) and a whole can of white Primas from Two Peas that I am still waiting for. I am trying to find a better way to store them, as right now I have them in a small divided box, separated by type, which I will obviously outgrow. I also think I'd like to sort by color.

So while I was looking at my current stash, I saw the large gridded cream and aqua flower, which I have several of, and it seemed like a good opportunity to pair it with the dotted aqua flower that came in the same set. I thought a brad would be good in the middle but then I saw the K&Co Wild Saffron felt embellishments and liked that I could incorporate the red and a bit of yellow. I thought the bottom needed a bit of pink to bring in the pink of the top patterned paper so I used a small pink paper flower with another felt embellie. I attached the flowers with Glue Dots.

I put the friends tag underneath the top flower a bit and added "Couple" using small Making Memories ledger stickers. Finally I added some hand stitching to bring in some more brown and help ground the letter stickers. I made the stitching holes using a template that I made by piercing through a sheet of plastic packaging and then sewed some zigzag stitch using two strands of DMC embroidery floss. The top right corner seemed bare (I seem to have a problem with that) so I lightly traced around a random die cut swirl that was on my desk, pierced holes and back-stitched.

Daddy's Girl

OK, really bad blogger I have been. But it was kind of starting to feel like work, with how nice it was outside there for awhile (finally!) and I said that I was out when it started to be too hard.

However I have actually done some scrapbooking lately and I thought I'd share one today. It uses an old photo as I am in a quandary about photo printing. More on that later. First the layout:

This one is me and my dad, as you can see by the cute little Studio G stamp that I used for the subtitle. This is an OLD photo, from 1994, that is in one of the four icky magnetic albums that I am trying to redo. Yes I know I should pull all of the photos out to minimize further damage, but the idea of having to store all of those photos in some organized way or risk having to resort them is too much for me to handle. So I am s-l-o-w-l-y redesigning these pages.

I knew I wanted to use this cute bird background paper from the DCWV Glitter Summer Stack (or is it spring?!) and the cordinating DCWV chipboard flower, which I ended up topping with a blue foam circle and clear gem to minimize the hot pink. Then I found the red vinyl stickers in my stash that I bought last year from Michaels' holiday clearance, figuring they didn't really scream "Christmas." I thought the black Making Memories rub on letters were a nice constrast.

It took me awhile to settle on the b&w polka dotted paper, which has been in my stash forever. I used my newish Fiskars Upper Crest border punch. The photo mat is a randomly a page from a yellow lined hotel notepad that was on my desk. The ribbon was already cut in my ribbon scraps bin, it's $1 kind from Michaels. I added the green dotted Making Memories leaves for a little contrast. The subtitle lable was the only item I used from the large K&Co kit I got at AC Moore, even though I planned to use more of that kit on the page. I stamped it with Staz On using the aforementioned Studio G stamp.

Finally, I though the upper right corner seemed a bit bare so I back-stitched with some black embroidery floss. That made the center seem a little bare so I added the sentiment sticker, the negative from punching the black dotted border and some cross-stitches. Ta da! Nice father-daughter moment captured.

So as to my photo printing quandary, the printer I have does not play nice with Vista and I have no way of knowing how much ink is left. I also think it is just not printing as nicely and I have started wondering how long the pictures are going to last. I thought it was more economical to print myself, and also more freeing since the pictures can be any size. I was also doing a lot of digital scrapbooking so it made sense.

But I am starting to think that for longevity's sake I should get my photos printed professionally. I want to use more of my paper scrapbooking stash and I think this will encourage me to not just default to digital. Also it is taking me so long to think up layouts with different sized photos and I think I am falling into the trap of thinking I need to scrap every photo. Maybe it would be easier to go back to having mostly 4X6s?

I am thinking about checking out www.scrapbookpictures.com but I'm open to suggestions.