12 Days of Christmas - Hand Made Presents, day 7

Make a shadowbox for your loved one. The base is a 7Gypsies display case and each cubicle is 4x6". I chose to crop and cut my pictures to showcase some paper and stamped images behind. Then I embellished the frame with punched out tags, hearts and ribbon. The letters for "LOVE" are done with "letter-it"-stamp set (Soft Suede on Very Vanilla card stock). I hand cut the letters and mounted them on Baja Breeze card stock and handcut them out again.

This particular one I actually gave to my husband for Valentine's Day, but I cannot risk on posting this years project. The recipient might see it here. You'll get to see it after the holidays :)

Craft room process (everlasting??)

As some of you may know, my craftroom has (and probably always will) gone through several changes - well... I think something would work and then I find something better :)

Like this first set up - this was created when we just moved to our current home 2½ years ago. Well.. I guess it served me well for the 12 months it stayed as such :)

I thought the IKEA Expedit shelving would be THE best solution, but quickly realized that the vertical supports were limiting the items I could store in the shelves, although they at the same time provided some support for scrapbook papers and books (I still have couple lower ones as my side tables). I also QUICKLY ran out of storage space for my clear mount stamps. So these are my solutions now for the stamps and for my ribbon and punches.

What is so great about this stamp storage, is that the cubes (from Solutions Store here in Ottawa) provide support for the stamps and I can store the stamps in "themes" and easily take one with me to a workshop or to the cottage :)

And the ribbon storage are IKEA picture rails and the old style punches are stored on IKEA kitchen railings. Works perfectly. The new style punches store nicely on the picturerails.

The hardest for me was to find perfect storage for my markers. I want to store them flat, so 1st I used poster tubes (which you can see behind the new system) and stored red markers in the red tube and so on. I was actually able to fit all 4 tubes in the Ikea Expedit small cube (as seen on the 1st picture on the shelf above the red drawers).

 

Then I bought a marker storage from a competing scrapbooking company - nice option, but the markers sat VERY deep in the container and I had hard time getting them out. Then I learned about this system (just 2 weeks ago). It is called "the ultimate pen storage" by Crafter's Companion (this set has 6 levels, each fitting 12 pens - you can get them individually or in larger sets - they mount either flash or little angled for easier access. They click together nicely, so they are very sturdy - and you can add to the side too!

 
 My 12"x12" papers I store in a Cropper Hopper file cart - best thing ever! (both this and the pen storage I got through Amazon.com.

I have 2 carts - one for my Stampin'Up! Designer Series Papers (current only!) and one for retired stuff plus non-SU! papers.






My 8½"x11" papers I store in a regular sized filing cabinet (2 drawers). I have the neutral colours and special colours on the lower drawer and the other colours on the upper - this, as well as the DSP storage cart, are located right behind my chair, so I only need to swing around and I have access to ALL my papers!

My embossing powders I like to store in larger containers - easier to just spoon over the card and shake extra back to the container!

 This is my storage for buttons and other trinkets. They are housed under the glass top (the table top is from IKEA). I got the white containers from Chapters and glued them together with Crystal Effects :-) each compartment fits 4 Stampin'Up! button/brad containers - perfect! and the small muffin pan houses other types of trinkets for my scrapbooking projects.




And then I have my "display wall". This is actually just a piece of MDF painted with nearly tempting turquoise coloured chalkboard paint and then I mounted 3 black IKEA picture rails. This goes with me to craft shows!


And then I have a place on one of the shelves for my business supplies like catalogues, class schedules and other advertisement pieces.




Hope you enjoyed the tour. I'll do an update (most likely at the beginning of next year) when I get the room organized (AGAIN!)







Christmas Bazaar #1

Overview of our VERY tight craft display area

On Saturday I attended a Christmas Bazaar at the Promenade Retirement Home in Orleans together with my upline Cathryn. I was in charge of the display board for DSP and I also brought the display shelf to show case some products.



Card display and Cathryn's great banner and couple of ornaments

Cathryn made the most beautiful banner, which she is going to hang at her house for Xmas... I asked how much she would sell it for (if someone would want to buy it) and she said "there is no such money in the world". I guess it took some time to create :)

Be of Good Cheer DSP and Fan Fair DSP

I made 3 Christmas ornaments (like on the cover of the Stampin'Up! Holiday Catalogue), and I have to say... my Xmas tree won't be decorated with ONLY hand made ornaments - nope! BUT DO NOT DISPARE! there is a "short cut" to the ornament - don't use the ornament stamp set - don't get me wrong - do BUY the ornament stamp set, but use it on cards, where you only need 1 or 2 ornaments.




Fan Fair DSP, Postage Due stamp, Story Time DSP

For the actual 3D ornament you will need 20 medium sized AND 20 smaller sized ornaments - imagine if you would stamp them and then you'd have to INDIVIDUALLY cut every single one out with the framelit! I can see one ornament per week with this rate! So back to the short cut: CUT the ornaments out of Designer Series Paper (DSP)  and the best part is - you can cut several (4 to be exact) layers of DSP with one run!!! So for the medium sized ornament - fold the 12x12 DSP in four equal width stripes (each 3" wide) and run the ornament framelit through once cutting all 4 layers - this will cut the cutting time by 4, as you only need to run the framelit through 5 times!

 

Display case with buttons, CardStock, Ribbons etc.

Can you see the tile coaster on the picture next to the display case? That is one of the items that I will be teaching at my Christmas Gift Class on December 15th!! Oh and there might be couple of card samples for my up coming Xmas Card classes too (November 12th, November 24th and December 10th).

 

And I'd be happy to teach you (and your friends) on how to make those ornaments - as long as we use DSP and not the stamped images :)