I hope you all had a wonderful Easter this past weekend. B. and I did our annual tradition of coloring eggs the night before Easter and we spent a relaxing afternoon with family. It was cold and rainy out, so the kids had to do their Easter egg hunt indoors at our sister & brother-in-law's house. My husband's sister hosted dinner this year and we all made something to go along with the dinner like we've always done for every get-together. I took my broccoli-rice casserole and low-fat brownies. We even managed to take some nice family pictures of everyone together which was actually my sister-in-law's idea. Glad she thought of it because these family gatherings have become more dear to me as we have lost a few family members during the past year including two of my husband's aunts (one around Christmas - both of which are my father-in-law's sisters)....
Or maybe it's just my middle-agedom kicking in making me all sentimental. Anyway.....
I have been busy the past several days during this wintry spring, rearranging, cleaning, and reorganizing my scrapbooking room. My scrapbook table used to be up against the wall and so I decided the day before yesterday, that I'd like to move it so that I can take advantage of the light coming in from the window. I like this set-up a lot more than how it was before and now I've gained some space there on the end of the table for my sister-in-law to sit at when she comes over to scrapbook with me someday soon...
I had had a navy and tan checked valance with red embroidered stars on this window for the past 8-1/2 years along with a roller blind that I had custom-ordered to size from Penney's. I wanted something that gave me more privacy but allowed lots of light to still come into the room when the blind is up. But I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money either. So I went on the search for some sheer curtains with hopefully a floral or lace pattern on them. I was also hoping to find something with an attached valance. I found exactly what I was looking for at Sears this afternoon - for cheap. These were only $10.98/panel with embroidered flowers and with an attached valance. They are very pretty and so I'm quite pleased with them. And they look pretty from the outside of the house too...
The night before last, I spent time redoing my Cricut cartridge shelves. I had my cartridges stored upright (like a row of books) before. But because I have so many cartridges, I had to store them two rows deep on the top two shelves making it impossible to see all of my cartridges at a glance. So I decided to store them like this, labeling the ends of the boxes with my handy-dandy Dymo label maker. I went through an entire roll of Dymo label tape and then some but it was totally worth it. Now I can see all of my cartridges at once plus I've gained a spot for my box of embossing folders and Cuttlebug dies....
The three boxes on top hold my everyday general EK Success slimline punches, acrylic paints, distress crackle paint, and ribbon. I organized my ribbon in that box before I started blogging, but basically I just have my ribbons sorted by color, wrapped around pieces of foam core board and held in place with little pins. There's quite a bit of ribbon in that box but I've also used a lot of it since I put it all in there.... these next two photos are from February 2010 when I first organized my ribbon this way...
The bottom shelf holds my little box of seasonal and Solutions cartridges that didn't come with a box of their own and my Jukebox. The two blue Iris cases hold my Martha Stewart snowflake and Christmas punches with my Artbin box of Spellbinders and other wafer-thin dies on top.
This is behind my table. I have my Sizzix dies, scrapbook idea books and Scrapbook Generation sketch books stored in that media tower. The basket on top holds all of my Glimmer Mist. The binders next to the media tower hold sketches that I've either downloaded from Scrapbook Generation, PageMaps or various other sources. My scraps are stored in that Cropper Hopper accordian envelope thing there on the floor. I will come up with a better storage system once I gain more room when the computer desk (not shown) gets torn down (someday soon I hope).
You can see B's craft table there when you first come into the room. Her lastest obsession has been making oven-bake clay creations. She's made some really cute things. It can be a challenge trying to get her to keep her area neat and tidy at times. I tell B. that I will use her table for my sewing machine if she doesn't clean her area up. lol! Of course, I want to keep encouraging her to do crafty, creative things with a special spot of her own, plus I like when she's in here crafting with me.
Getting back to my part of the room.... I'd like to come up with some type of nice table skirt to hide all the Artbin and Iris containers underneath my table. I saw a really nice one on Pinterest yesterday where they used a shower curtain with lots of ruffles. Not sure how they did it though. I'll think of something. Anyway.... the small bookcase in front of the window has three small milkcrates on top that hold my Ali Edwards and other phrase-type stamps, journaling stamps or most used stamps and my Thickers and other misc. alphabet stickers.
The first shelf has all of my Craft Mates containers with small embellishments such as brads, eyelets, small bling, etc., my Tim Holtz box of embellishments, another big container of sorted bling that I bought in bulk a long time ago, and a shoebox-sized box of packaged bling and i-rock stuff. The bottom shelf has a few more books including both of the Tim Holtz Compendium of Curiosities, dictionary/thesaurus, and title idea book, Crop-A-Dile Big Bite, my container of alphabet and number stamps, a small box of chipboard shapes and another container with organized doodads for making charms and stickpins....
I hope to convince my husband to get me an Expedit from Ikea when the computer desk gets taken down. I need a place to store my albums and the tons of pictures and photo boxes that I have no nice place for.
All of my seasonal stuff and certain other themey stuff like birthday and baby is still being stored in the closet in their own boxes. This system is working quite well for me and makes it so I don't have to search in several spots for something since it's altogether in one (or two or so) boxes of whatever subject it is I have in there. So far I have Sterilite boxes for Christmas, Halloween, birthday, baby, Valentines/love, spring/Easter, Girly, summer & vacation/road trips. I not only include embellishments in these boxes, but any dies, embossing folders or punches that I may have that go with that subject or holiday. This has freed up a ton of space on my scrapbooking storage shelves and in the drawers.
General everyday border punches are still being stored in an over-the-door shoe organizer on the outside of the closet door. And my shape punches are on the inside of the door (I showed this quite some time ago on here).
I hope you enjoyed my little tour of my redone scrapbook room.
'til next time....
