my lonely craft area... so sad and unused.

• I give myself permission to take a break from crafting when I am sick
• I give myself permission to take a break from SCHOOL when I am sick! (this is the hardest thing for me to do...)
• I give myself permission get frustrated that everytime I get sick, I get REALLY sick and develop this HORRIBLE cough and lose my voice. It's THE worst thing on the planet for a choir teacher... *sigh*

I have been SO sick this year and it seems like ever since I got H1N1 in October my immune system has stopped fighting, or is unable to fight, or whatever! But I am downright MAD now. Why do I get so sick, so often? I have started taking liquid vitamins (apparently they are superpower vitamins) and beyond that, I don't know what I can do.. Any suggestions?? 

It could be worse.. Which brings me to my next point.. I was blog hopping (because I am sick and can't do much more than that) and came across this story about Linda Burnasakorn.
Wow that is some heartbreak! To lead an absolutely normal life, get sick, then wake up from a coma with no feet and no fingers.. It takes my breath away.. I am going to donate to her cause and I hope you can find it in your hearts to do the same. I have NEVER done this on my blog, but her story is so real and heart-wrenching that I couldn't resist spreading the word.


PS.... Look at my hit counter.. I'm about to hit a HUGE milestone. Do you think I should celebrate?

That's me!! Well... Not really, but as the years go by and as the scrap paper grows I am constantly adapting how I do things around here. Previous to this organization I had my papers in a rubbermaid tub and had them loosely organized by colour in rainbow order (Roy G. Biv hahaha) and it looked like this:

It was alright. The problems I ran into were: I forgot what I had, I didn't go to the tub as often because I couldn't SEE everything, and after a while I got lazy and didn't file them EXACTLY where they were supposed to go (aka I just threw it all in the front).

So! What did I do? Well I've seen a couple forums on Splitcoast about cutting paper down to usable pieces right away if you know you're going to use it for cards.. Well, I occasionally scrapbook so I don't cut my papers right away, but once they're in the scrap bin? I probably won't use it on a layout. So I thought, what the hay! I'm gonna cut down all my patterned paper scraps and this is what I got:

There was a thread on splitcoast I was talking in that centred around storage of nestabilities. I saw this idea on the web somewhere, and stole it!!! It was kind of frustrating to put it together, and more expensive than I'd bargained, but I love having my dies out in the open so I can just walk over to the wall with my image I want to cut out and hold it up against all of my choices..  You can see I don't have a lot of nesties, but I am happy with my collection, and don't often find myself wishing for a different shape. Materials:

Bulleting Board. (It cost me about $35!!!) like this one

Magnetic Sheets (about $15)  like these

I used Zip Dry adhesive to glue the sheets to the dry erase board, and voila!

The second thing I want to show you is my CD rack I use to hold many of my unmounted and clear sets. I have two binders full of stamps, but I would love to move all of them to this kind of storage because I'm really liking, again, SEEING my stamps. I use things more when I can see them..


The rack is from Ikea. In Canada it's $16.99... Find it here. It hold 35 cds.. My problem right now is I don't have a lot of empty jewel cases.. That's what I need to buy when I go out next!!

I love looking at pictures of people's well-organized stamping space, and I LONG for that one day. But the reality is that I will probably never have one of those beautiful spaces because 1) I will never have enough $$ to make it happen, 2) My hubby and I aren't handy, 3) If we ever moved to a house with more bedrooms it would probably be because we were having another child etc.... SO what I have to do, is do the best I can, with the money that I have available for this craft, in the space that I posess. This is how the room is set up:
I took pictures of my space being used. This is how it looks on a daily basis. Granted, I should have dumped out the garbage bin before I took the photos, this is pretty much how it looks. I just switched some things around because I got a Slice for Christmas and I wanted that on my table, and I've been having problems with my copics, so I moved them away from the window and heat register and onto my Cropper Hopper cart....

Click on the pictures to see a larger version....
































I am frequently commissioned to arrange/compose pieces for choir, and I have a portable keyboard that's just for inputting music into the computer. It fits on my table when I push all my craft stuff to the side..

So this works for me! Ian wishes that this space could have been a library/reading area because he owns literally thousands of books, but I was like, I will use this area on a daily basis, and besides, LOOK AT ALL OF MY CRAP!! So I won.. hehe

Oh man I've wanted this die FOREVER!! It's "Labels One" from Spellbinders, and man I love it.. It's just so classy!! LOL

It's been a long week of rehearsals and concerts and I'm glad I have a night to chill out and stamp. I'll hopefully get more done after dinner.

To make this card I first cut out the image layer with the die cut, and leaving the die in place on the paper I stamped the image, poured clear embossing powder over it, embossed, then sponged different colour inks to create the background.. Then I took the die off the paper and voila, a white border! I love this look.. What I don't love are the flowers, but it looked so plain so I added them as an after-thought.. Stamps are SU! and so is the patterned paper. The green paper is Papertrey Mellow Moss. Thanks for lookin'!

t's not ideal, but this is where I create. I currently live in a two bedroom condo with my son and my fiance, so space is tight. I have taken over the "dining room" and it is now my stamping/scrapbooking/office/music space. Takes the word multi-functional to a new level.


This is the table where I stamp. I refinished it myself a couple years ago and it's actually a nice table to stamp on. I do, however, stamp on a basic grey magnetic mat to protect the table. The stuff that surrounds the mat always changes, but the Making Memories carousel and cutter always remain.

Behind me to my left is my paper rack. Each section can hold about 200 pieces of 12x12 paper so I've divided my paper up by brand. There are some brands (Basic Grey) that I've divided up by line because I've had 100+ pieces just in that one line (Blush and Scarlet's Letter to name a few).


















This is my newest organizational addition. I have wanted a clip-it-up for a LONG time, but my LSS's don't carry them (and won't be brining them in) so I asked my mom to check out the price in the US. It was $60 and I just didn't want to pay that, so I got her to buy me two packs of clips (100 for $13) and I found this picture display apparatus (by Umbro for $25) that resembled the clip-it-up, so I bought it and tried it out. It's not as stable as I imagine the clip-it-up would be, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper.