I've been a Bad Blogger!

I just realized I haven't posted anything since January 5th. I have been trying to finish my 2013 Project Life and keep up with 2014 so there's not much to show. Since I'm just trying to get it done at this point there's nothing fancy or exciting about it.
I have a few layouts planned, but while cleaning my room I got a little carried away and decided to re-organize yet again. Hubby agreed that I should just bite the bullet and make the dream room that I want. New cabinets and all, but I just can't seem to commit. I tend to rearrange things every few months so the thought of built in cabinets seems so permanent. What to do, what to do...

So this is my excuse for not getting any pages done.

At least the floor is mostly clean, but I have no work space right now. This was at the end of the day when I had put most things back in my room (from the living room, kitchen and the family room). I need to get some more "nice" looking storage boxes to put things in. If you look at the bottom jetmax cubes you can see most of the open shelves have papers and stuff on them. Two of them have nice black boxes that are organized and labeled with their contents. I would much rather see the boxes than the loose papers so I need to pick up about 10 more boxes. I also need to clean out some of the drawers and make better use of them. I'll keep you posted.

Project Life cards from Scraps

With a new year comes new resolutions. One of mine is to use what I have. It's so easy to buy all the new pretty supplies, but I have a room that is overflowing with supplies. I don't need to buy anymore.

So today I spent most of my time trying to use up some of my scraps. I am doing my own version of Project Life and find myself taking up a lot of time finding the right filler cards. I have a few of the Becky Higgins kits and a couple Simple Stories kits, but I get bored using the same products over and over. All of this led me to using scraps and making my own cards.

I started by pulling out some scraps of patterned paper and some old paper stacks. After I had a few patterned papers that went together I looked through my solid cardstock scraps and pulled out the colors that matched the patterns.

I cut the papers in various sizes and started gluing them together.

Once I finished with my first papers I pulled out another set of patterned papers and solid cardstock scraps. I did the same process of cutting them to various sizes and gluing them together. I made 4x6 cards and 3x4 cards.

I now have two different sets of Project Life cards that I can use in my books. I had a good time putting these together and putting my scraps to good use so I will definitely be making more of these.

New and Improved Scrapbook Room

My room is finally put back together (for the most part). I still can't put anything in my closet because the builder has to come back and fix the hole in the wall, but my workspace is up and running.

Before Picture:

After Picture:

I painted the walls a creamy color to brighten things up and then I got started putting things the way I wanted them. I used my Jetmax cubes to form the base of my desk. In the before shot you can see that I had some of the cubes at the end of my desk, but I had a bookshelf in the front. I like the cubes alot better because they provide more storage.

To the right of my desk I have four more cubes with a top on them to provide another desk/working area. In these drawers I keep my most used items, such as pens, adhesives, stamp blocks and white cardstock. On top I keep my Copic markers, stamp pads and occasionally my cat.

On top of my main work space I have a shelf (I think it was made for shoes) that holds my Cricut Imagine machine. Below that I have a plastic container that holds projects in process, my paper cutter and Creative Memories picture trimmer. I also have my Gypsy on my desk at all times. I don't think I could use my Imagine without it.

That's it. That's my room. I didn't make any huge changes, but things are a little neater and more organized now. I also found that I have 2 or 3 containers of items that I need to sell. Now if I can just find the time to put everything on Ebay....

Have a wonderful day. I'm going to spend some time in my room now.
Cindy

Cleaning up my Scraproom

Okay, so I've been cleaning my scraproom AGAIN! I've done pretty well and I'm left with just a couple of piles of paper.

These papers are all leftovers from projects. Mostly scraps, but some full 12x12 pieces. I have decided as a personal challenge that I will try to use most or all of these scraps instead of putting them away somewhere. My challenge is to not pull out any new paper other than background pages as needed, until these papers are used up.

To help me in my challenge I picked up a copy of Pagemaps 2. It's full of scrapbook sketches to give me lots of ideas. I love using sketches because I think my pages come out so much nicer. I will pick a random sketch and make a layout with it. I will not add a title. That way I can finish the layout at a later time and customize it to my photos.

As I make my layouts I will post them to my blog along with a picture of the sketch I used. If anyone would like to join me in this challenge I would love to hear about your progress and if you also use sketches. Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon to see my progress. Cindy

More organizing

Happy Monday everyone. Hope you had a good weekend. I'm still in organizing mode. Unfortunately I still have a lot to do. I've been buying so many cartridges lately that I decided I needed to find a way to organize my booklets. I have a Gypsy, so my actual cartridges and overlays are stored away in boxes. I love to look through the book though, especially for layering. I was keeping my books in a drawer - not in any kind of order. I didn't have very many, so it wasn't hard to flip through them to find the one I wanted. Now that I'm up to OVER 70, it's getting a little harder. I saw a post on Okie's blog about how she organizes her Cricut books and thought it looked like the perfect solution. I started out using the tabs you can buy at any office supply store. I liked those because as I add more carts I can take out the paper insert and re-alphabetize. Well, I ran out of those and forgot to get more when I went to the store so I decided to use my Cricut to make paper labels. And you know what, I like them more than the store bought ones. They are bigger and easier to read. The only problem is that it will be a little harder to add new cartridges to the mix. That's okay though. I'll figure that out when the time comes. (I really don't need anymore carts!) So here is a picture of my drawer with half of the booklets done. I haven't finished yet, but I will soon. It really is a lot nicer to have the booklets alphabetized. Now it takes no time at all to find what I'm looking for.

Now if I can just finish this and the rest of the room so that I can get back to crafting I'll be happy. It seems like an endless process. I'm never super organized, but I should at least be able to see the top of my desk, right? Maybe I should take a picture of my desk right now and post it. Naw, I'm not that brave. Maybe after I finish organizing and cleaning. Stay tuned to see if that ever happens. LOL. 

Trying to ORGANIZE

No layout or card today. I actually woke up early this morning and thought it would be a great day to do some crafting. I had the house to myself because hubby was golfing and my son was working. Well, somehow the crafting didn't happen. I started off with the laundry (yay me, my hubby is going to be so proud!) then I proceded down the stairs to my craft room. Once I got there I saw what a mess my desk was and decided I should do a little cleaning first. Well, there's never enough storage (because I keep buying stuff) and I suddenly remembered the sale at Michael's Craft Store. The Jet Max cubes were on sale for 50% off and today was the last day. So out the door I went and picked up a cube. Yes, just one. I don't have much room to put more of them, but I saw this new style and had to get it.

I'm not sure what I'll put in it yet. I was thinking cards, but we'll see. I put it together, but ran out of steam before getting it filled. I really like the dividers in the drawers. They are in both drawers and are removeable.

Anyone else have this type of cube? If so, what do you use it for? I would love some suggestions? I'll let you know once I get it filled. Have a nice weekend.