Welcome to my crafty blog... a "garden" of colourful cards, quilting, sewing projects, knitting...and what ever else happens along the way!!


Friday, September 28, 2012

My Little Crafting Corner

It's always fun to see how others design a crafting space and storage solutions. Along with card making and crafty projects, I have to find ways to organize my supplies so that I can easily access them when needed.

I have a portion of a bedroom as my crafting space, and I have used the bedroom drawers and a desk that were purchased years ago for my son. 

Here's one little corner of my space. 

 Lots of Drawers for Storage

White Set of 6 drawers sits close to my desk with a variety of supplies:
Top Drawer - supplies for heat embossing; glitter; stamp press; stamp-a-ma-jig
2nd - extra inks; SU Stamping wheels and stamps
3rd - Embellishments: brads, adhesive pearls and rhinestones; 
4th - Extra rulers; Scissors; Creative Memories Cutting System; blades
5th - Copic Markers; Water colour pencils; Pastels; small paper pads
Bottom - Heat Gun; Refill bottles of stamp cleaner; distressing tools

White Bin - holds all of my paper scraps organized by colour families. 
I usually look through this bin for scraps of patterned paper or card stock, 
before I cut into any new or full sheets.

Wooden 5 Drawer Unit - pictures for scrapbook layouts; Extra Supplies (adhesives, glue dots etc); Cricut cartridges and supplies; Wooden Stamp sets (mostly SU);



  
3 Drawers in Desk:
Top - Scor-tape, adhsives; glue dots; re-inkers; glue sticks; pens; post it notes; etc
2nd & bottom drawers - Papertrey Ink stamp sets stored in CD and DVD cases

On my Desk - files for cling stamps (C.C. Designs; Stamping Bells etc); extra scrap paper; Ott Lamp; glue pens; inks; ATG tape runner; markers; pens; pencils and rulers in containers.

White Wall Unit - inks; ribbons; Stickles; Flowers; buttons; eyelets


Ink Storage and Stamping
When I started collecting the new PTI inks, I realized I needed a different system to store them. So I designed a small unit that sits under the white wall shelf unit and my husband made this for me. It will hold 25 ink pads. (Unfortunately, I'm almost at capacity now!! I'm going to have to re think this one!!)



When I first got my ink pads I wanted a quick and easy way to 
identify them. I stamped the colour on the bottom of each pad.



I added a label to the edge of the lid. Each ink pad sits 
in the shelf so that it is stored upside down. These labels 
take all the guess work out of finding the right colour.



Here's a view of all of my ink storage. The wall unit houses my 
inks from Close To My Heart (the first inks that I bought when I started 
stamping) and a few Stampin'Up inks. The smaller unit that my 
husband built sits underneath the wall unit for easy access.



My "stamping" area has a cutting pad and a pull out drawer.  
(This was originally my son's computer desk.)   The drawer holds my 
paper cutter, Scor-board, acrylic blocks and a stamp cleaning pad.



 More Drawers = More Storage
The set of drawers to the right of my desk have other items that I use every day. The drawers are rather deep for the type of items stored. I would love to have some of the units that have 2" deep drawers so that I could more easily store these items: Paper punches; border punches; extra ribbon; embroidery floss; Baker's Twine;

Jet Maxx Storage and Die Cutting Area

 I bought 4 of these cube units when they were on sale at Micheal's.

The drawers under the Cuttlebug hold: 
* All of my embossing folders and impression plates
* A few of the larger dies that don't fit into the box
* Extra paper die cuts  
(I store them in some of the clear plastic boxes that the stamps come in)
* Stamps in CD and/or DVD cases (SU; Clear Dollar Stamps)
There are 3 empty drawers. I originally had planned on storing my PTI stamps in this unit, but found that I liked them close to my desk for easier access.

The drawers on the right side hold:
* Cuttlebug Plates, embossing pads, shims for my Cuttlebug
* Coaster board; magnetic sheets and tape; extra supplies
* Felt
The two boxes below the drawers hold:
* Christmas stamps and punches
* Christmas embellishments, papers and extra cards

On the side of the unit, 2 magnet sheets were adhered, so that I could store border dies. I also find that when I'm die cutting small pieces (letters/ numbers etc) I will pop them onto the top edge of the magnet sheets to store them in a safe place until I'm ready to put them back into their pouches. So far I haven't lost or misplaced any dies, so it's one thing that really works for me!!



 Main Die Storage


This is my third attempt at finding a storage solution for my PTI dies. I took a box and cut it down to allow access to the 'pouches'. I covered the box in a vinyl adhesive  to give it some additional stability. 
As you can see, it is getting very full. I have some Spellbinder dies at the back of the box, so I may move them out to one of the smaller drawers to free up space - I have a "few" more dies on their way to me from my latest PTI order!!




Orignally I stored my dies in these photo albums, by mounting them on card stock and adding a bit of magnetic tape. However, before long this system was not working - I had several binders and never seemed to be able to find what I wanted.



I didn't want to re-do all of the work for each of these pages, so I found that I could adapt the photo album pages to my new system. The pages were top loading, so I closed the top off (sewing or scor-tape works) and them slit an opening so that I could remove the card stock/die from the same side as the punched holes.


Each page is labelled with the appropriate die 
and then filed into the box in various categories.
If you look back at the box of dies, you can see the colour coded labels 
and how they are stored. This makes it very easy to find what I need.




I also created an inventory of all of my dies using the same categories. (see the outline of these, with a few examples, at the bottom of this post) 

I can take this list to my desk and check out what might work for my project, then go back to the storage box and quickly pull out my die. When I get a new die I hand print the name of it into the appropriate category. At some point I will probably update this on the computer.











Closet and Shelf Storage





I store paper, magazines, scrapbooks, my Cricut, envelopes, Close To My Heart Stamps and other odds and ends in the closet.















 Papertrey Ink Card Stock


 12" x 12" Paper Storage


This post has been very long; if you're still with me .... thanks for visiting!!!
If you have any questions about the various items I described, you can leave a comment below or e-mail me for further explanation. 

Have a Great Day!
Karen C.


Categories and Sub Categories for My Dies

NATURE
1. Flowers (Flower Fusion dies, Pretty Peonies)
2. Leaves (Leaf Prints; Sending You)
3. Trees (Floral Foliage; Trendy Trees)
4. Garden (Garden Variety; picket fence)
5. Butterflies & Birds (Little Bitty Birds; Butterfly Dreams)

HOME
1. Food & Beverage (Table Setting; Fruit Fusion)
2. Friendship Jars
3. Handmade/Clothes  (Loves Lives Here; Dress form; Buttons; Flip Flops; Pocket)
4. Heart-2-Heart Series
5. Star & Hearts (die collections)
6. Home Office/ Library ( Spiral note Book die; Edgers #5; Library Card  pocket)
7. Alphabets/ numbers

SPECIALTY THEMES
1. Boy Basics (Out of This World)
2. In the Sky (Up, Up & Away, Clouds, Airplane)
3. Animals (It's a Jungle; Sweet Baby)
4. Movers & Shakers ( Spinners; Zippers)

TAGS 
(Tag Sale; Library Card Tag; Tiny Tags)

FRAMES 
1. General Use (Ad Sense; Label Basics)
2. Framed Out Series
3. Fillable Frames
4. Banners & Borders ( Photo Finihers; Double ended Border die)
5 Doilies & Limitless Layers
6. Mat Stack Collections

CHRISTMAS/WINTER
 (I don't have sub-categories for this section).

SPELLBINDERS
1. Ovals
2. Circles
3. Squares/Rectangles
4. Labels

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Papertrey Ink September 2012 Blog Hop

 Blog-hop-logo 
It's time for another Papertrey Ink Blog Hop.

 
http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c64e753ef017744c09849970d-pi
This month we were challenged to make a packaging project using fabric or felt and PTI dies. The inspiration photo and Nichole's  outline provided me with a few ideas:

It's all about wrapping it up.  Whether you are preparing early for the holidays or have an upcoming birthday or two, try experimenting with fabric & felt packaging ideas.  Use any of our Favor It dies with felt and a little hot glue gun action or stitching.  Use a pretty piece of fabric like you would wrapping paper and make a custom tag to coordinate with it.  Not into sewing or gluing?  Wrap a kitchen towel or cloth napkin around a special bottle of wine and top it off with a hand-stamped gift label.  Or rip a strip of fabric to use in  place of ribbon and finish it with a pretty handmade gift card. 
 



 I loved the idea of creating a little "pouch" to hold a small piece of jewellery. Since I just finished making several Friendship Bracelets (based on Papertrey Ink's Stamp-A-Faire Challenge)  I thought it would be fun to see if I could use a variety of PTI dies to create a felt pouch. The bracelets that I made here  used Raspberry Fizz ink, so I knew I wanted to use it here for an accent colour.


 I started by cutting two pieces of white felt using the Library Card Tag die. One of the felt pieces was cut so that it would become the front pouch. I decorated it with Raspberry Fizz felt snowflakes, cut from the Winter Penguin Die collection. The smaller of the two snowflakes looks more like a little flower, but I decided to 'go with it'!! Each of these pieces was glued to the white felt with a liquid adhesive and then a mini pearl was added.

Here's the 'back' of the pouch, showing the full size of the Library Card Tag. The two pieces were stitched together using a bright pink embroidery floss with a blanket stitch. You can see the white reinforcement around the hole at the top of the tag. I wanted to thread a ribbon through this, but I was concerned that the felt would stretch out. I cut two card stock circles from the Tag Sale #1 die and glued them on the front and back of the felt opening.

Here are the Papertrey Ink dies that I used:

Tag Sale #1;    Winter Penguin Snowflake dies;    Library Card Tag


A small ribbon was added to the front (handed stitched in place) so that it can be pulled through and tied on the top flap of the pouch. 

You can see a small semicircle that was cut out of this portion ... I thought I would need this to make it easier to retrieve the bracelet inside  (originally I was going to mount the bracelet onto a piece of card stock). If I were to make this again, I wouldn't make this cut. 

You could used Velcro to create a closure for this pouch and then decorate the front of the pouch with a button or flowers.

Thanks for visiting today. Enjoy the rest of the Blog Hop.
Karen C.

2012 Stamp-a-Faire Round-Up

Papertrey Ink held a wonderful "Summer Camp" event on July 21st, highlighting many techniques, videos and tutorials and encouraging crafters to enter cards and projects for each of the challenges.

Completing each challenge allowed one to earn a variety of camper's "badges".

Even though I didn't participate on that day, I have completed all of the challenges and created detailed blog posts for each challenge. I thought it would be fun to see them all together so here's a final look at the wide range of projects that I completed over the last 2 months.


Top Badges:        Knots - Craft Conservation - Rainbow 
Middle Badges:   Correspondence - Memory Preservation - Friendship
Bottom Badge:    DIY

MORNING MAKE AND TAKE CARD



CRAFT CONSERVATION BADGE
Limited Supplies Challenge


FRIENDSHIP BADGE
Beaded Friendship Bracelet Challenge
RAINBOW BADGE
Tie Dye Challenge
 DIY BADGE
Homemade Embellishments Challenge
http://karensrainbowgarden.blogspot.ca/2012/09/inspired-by-saf-homemade-embellishments.html

Karen C.


Monday, September 24, 2012

Inspired by SAF: Homemade Embellishments

 Papertrey Ink held a "Stamp-a-Faire Summer Camp" event on July 21st, 
highlighting many techniques, videos and tutorials and encouraging 
crafters to enter cards and projects for each of the challenges. Even 
though I had planned to participate, I just didn't get anything finished 
in time for  the challenge deadlines!! I have been highlighting lots
of projects this week - all inspired by the Stamp-a-Faire videos and 
techniques. Thanks for joining me as I shared these projects with you.

Many of the Papertrey Ink design team members contributed to the Homemade Embellishments Challenge.  Heather Nichols created fun little felt badges that could be used on cards, tags and scrapbook layouts and this video inspired me to dig into my felt and embroidery floss stash. I chose red and green felt and Fine Linen Bitty Dot Pattern papers to create 6 badges that could be used in a Christmas album or on Christmas tags. You can see how I used them for my Homemade Gingerbread Mini Album here.



One & Two


Three & Four 


Five & Six

Supplies: (PTI, unless noted)
Sentiment Stamps - Little Bitty Bird, Everyday Treats, Friendship Jar: Holiday Fillers; 
Tiny Tags & Tiny Tags II
Inks - Kraft and Chocolate inks; 
Paper -  Fine Linen Pattern Pack; Harvest Gold
Dies - Large star - Tiny Tags die;   Medium Star - Boy Basics: Out of this World;  
Small Star punch;   House - Little Bitty Bird Additions;  Heart - Heart Prints Die Collection; 
Other - Green, Red felt from my stash; red rhinestones, mini pearls;  ivory embroidery floss

Once I finished these, I decided to try my hand at badges that could be used for baby tags/gifts. I used stamps and dies from Hanging Out to create the focal point for each of the badges and then finished up by making them into gift tags.

Baby Girl
Badge: Hibiscus Burst Felt; pink embroidery floss; jeweled butterfly; 
Hanging Out die cut dress; Tiny Tags II (sentiment).
Tag: Tag Sale #1; Blush & Hibiscus Burst card stock; Just for You (vine) with Simply Chartreuse; Hanging Out (sentiment) with Hibiscus Burst


Baby Boy
Badge: Blue felt; yellow card stock; light blue embroidery floss; mini pearls
Tag: Tag Sale #4; yellow and blue card stock from my stash;
Hanging Out (sentiment)


This is my last project  from the SAF challenges.
Additional Stamp-A-Faire project posts can be viewed  here

Thanks for visiting today.
Karen C.