After the Purge, Part 3 (and Bonus Dog Pictures)

Well, the before and after pictures for this side of the room aren't all that different, so here is an after picture.

After

On the left of the picture is my cutting and scoring station and a white basket to hold finished cards. Behind the basket is an electric pencil sharpener used by the whole family, which means it doesn't count as a craft expense, right? Of course I'm right. Also on the side table are an old Fiskar's 12" paper trimmer that has served me very well for at least 15 years and a first-generation Scor-Pal.

There are two paper folders on the Scor-Pal: one regular and one teflon. I score with the regular folder and use the teflon folder to press the fold down. (The teflon folders tend to wear out oddly if used to score on the scoring board, and they are so expensive!) The teflon folders don't make the paper shiny where they rub and are a critical tool when using heavy-weight cardstock. Learned about them from the fabulous Julie Ebersole. She's a genius!

The white drawers under the table hold embellishments (sorted by color), StampinUp and Brilliance inks, heat embossing supplies, and adhesives. There's also a larger drawer of surplus adhesives and rarely used adhesives in the unfinished area of the basement.

How does a stamper function without a bazillion kinds of adhesive? It's a mystery.

Now let's explore the desk.

After

The artwork on the wall includes three paintings by my mom. Mom derisively called them "sketches" and was going to throw them away...but the colors are too fun to trash! She also painted the darling owls on the right. The Celtic cross hanging on the left was a gift from my aunt, and the trivet with leaves in relief on the right was a gift from my friend Liz. The framed cork board in the middle holds a bird calendar, my color wheel, a list of birthday cards I need to make, and other miscellaneous things that don't have another place to live.

On top of the left drawer tower rests a CD storage basket full of sentiment sets and an adorable little owl stuffie that is so-soft-I'm-gonna-die! Whenever I get stressed, I look at the cute little guy or hold him in my hand. Instant blood pressure control! The top five drawers hold dye inks (mostly Archival, Memento, and Hero Arts). The bottom drawer holds white cardstock scraps because I have so many of them and need them to be handy.

Tucked against the tower is a pencil cup with Tombow mono adhesive and Scotch tacky glue, both of which are my primary glues for gluing papers. I store the Scotch bottle upside down so it's always ready to go. Behind the glue are squirt bottles of Glimmer Mist, Hero Arts stamp cleaner, and distilled water.

There are two Ott lights on my desk, and yes it bothers me that one is black and the other is green. They don't match. Ugh. But they both work great. It's so nice to have good light, even when I'm stamping at midnight, which doesn't happen as often now as it used to.

In between the Ott lights are pencil cups that hold, well, pencils, pens, and other tools (scissors, extra bone folders, pop-up white erasers, needle-nose pliers, etc.). The stationery organizer holds acrylic blocks, the stamps I use on the backs of cards, a CD case holding stamps to use on envelopes, post-it notes, and an adorable decorated clipboard made for me by my friend Lisa...whose craft room is miles ahead of mine. Having all these frequently-used tools front and center is so convenient.

The small, 6-drawer tower holds Copics and my embossing buddy and embossing ink (don't ask why they aren't in the drawer with the rest of my heat embossing supplies because I don't have a good answer for that). Stamp cleaning supplies are on top. I use an old Huggies travel case with a damp washcloth for regular cleaning, and a stamp scrubber sprayed with Hero Arts stamp cleaner for dye inks that stain stamps. I have an extra stamp scrubber across the room in a drawer with extra washcloths. Because. You know. Extras.

Tucked between the small drawer tower and the larger one on the right are my Omni-Grid quilting rulers and MISTI, along with the ink index I created because the colors on ink-pad cases often bear only a passing resemblance to the actual color of the ink inside them. The 6"x6" quilting ruler and my craft knife are the most used tools in my arsenal. A word of caution: if you've never used a craft knife and quilting ruler to cut paper, BE CAREFUL. Just sayin'.

The large tower on the right holds ink: pigment inks of the fast-drying kind (Fresh Ink, among others), Hero Arts ombre pads, and Kaleidacolor pads. On top of the tower is a coffee cup my sister bought me in Ireland. It's too small for coffee (I like big cups, and I cannot lie) but perfect for looking pretty and holding Tim Holtz watercolor brushes.

And there you have the full craft room. Up next, the hidden area in the unfinished basement, the birthday card organizer, and a few more of my favorite products.

And now what you really wanted to see....

It's much easier to photograph them when they are tired, LOL!

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and pups,
Susan

After the Purge, Part 2

Thanks for the lovely feedback and questions about organization! I answered comments on After the Purge, Part 1, and will be happy to answer more after today's post.

Note that Part 3 of this series will include the other side of my craft space, which includes my desk, embellishment storage, paper trimmer, etc. In Part 4, I'll go into more detail on some of my favorite products and storage details (including the birthday card organizer that several of you asked about!).

For Part 2, let's take a look at my big bookshelf and the baker's rack. Here's the before photo.

Before the Purge

The bookshelf is a 7' tall shelf, so it holds A LOT of stuff.

After

1. The white photo boxes on the top two shelves hold wood-mounted stamps. Very few of these were purged in The Latest Purge as I've already purged wood-mounts so many times. Most of these are classics...timeless and wonderful. Some clear stamps get put into the photo boxes, especially very specialized stamps that only get used occasionally (Valentine's Day sets, for instance, and vintage sets).

2. The two little boxes on the right of the second shelf are full of random ephemera. The boxes originally held Christmas cards from Barnes & Noble. The lids are magnetically sealed and lift easily. The contents are useful for those rare shabby chic/collage cards I make. Their contents were seriously purged to include only small stuff that will work on cards with lots of white space!

3. The green boxes and wire CD case on the third shelf contain clear stamps, organized by theme. These include Autumn, Odds & Ends, Food & Drink, Graphics (borders, backgrounds geometric shapes), Botany, Birds & Bees (actually all animals), and Christmas. I purged enough sets that I might be able to move the Christmas stamps into the green boxes and eliminate the wire CD rack, but just didn't think of it before looking at the pictures. (Edited to add...I did eliminate the wire rack. YAY, me!)

4. The fourth shelf contains four white photo boxes: office supplies (post-it notes, pencils, erasers, binder rings, staples, etc.), Christmas cards I make throughout the year, Karen's Card Shop cello bags, and miscellaneous cards I've made for my own use, organized by theme (thank you, get well, etc.). The two green plastic baskets contain Cuttlebug accessories and dies. As I said last post, I'm trying to have a minimalist approach to dies: I'm not going to go wild with them. So far, I've held to that resolution.

5. The fifth shelf holds a three-hole punch, corner rounder, basket of bottles (alcohol, Friskit, rubber cement, etc.) and empty CD cases, and two pretty aqua-colored boxes full of Zentangle supplies.

6. The bottom shelf contains books and magazines of a crafty nature and my super-long metal ruler for cutting large sheets of watercolor and bristol paper.

And now for the baker's rack.

After

1. The large jar on the top shelf holds washi tape and my natural-noise sound machine. Love the ocean waves setting...very relaxing!

2, The second shelf holds my Buddha board and a basket of blank A2 envelopes.

3. The third shelf stores my paper. In the green hanging file box, we have specialty papers such as glitter paper, handmade inclusion papers, vellum, map pages, old book pages, marbled papers, and such. One of the Cropper Hopper accordion files holds smaller watercolor paper, and the other holds scraps of colored card stock. The Cropper Hopper vertical paper holders obviously hold whole sheets of card stock, starting with the white card (Papertrey Ink, Neenah 80# and 110#, and Gina K) and then colored card (StampinUp and Papertrey mostly). There are extra packs of Papertrey white on the far right because I get hives if I have fewer than two back-up packs.

4. Across the bottom of the baker's rack reside four 12x12, three-drawer storage units. They hold things like stencils, Creative Memories circle and oval cutters, fabric and accessories, cutting supplies (spare blades for trimmer and craft knife, eyelet setter, and such), odd-sized envelopes, washcloths for cleaning stamps, small punches in basic shapes (circles and squares). These are supplies I use but not all the time. There's also a large pad of watercolor paper tucked on the floor between the baker's rack and bookshelf.

5. Tucked under the baker's rack are a couple of dumbbells and two 12" squares of plywood. These make a lovely book press when I'm covering boards or need to flatten watercolor panels. I just wrap whatever is in the press with waxed paper, put it between the boards, and place a dumbbell or two on top. Works like a charm!

For context, the entire craft nook looks like this:

A bit of explanation of the overall organization. First, I don't want everything to be too convenient for me as I sit at the desk. For instance, if I am sitting and get an idea, I have to stand up and cross the space to pick paper, stamps, and most tools. If I decide to use the Cuttlebug, I have to stand up and move. I can't sit and trim or score at the desk...I have to stand up. This is all by design. I have some back issues and sitting too long isn't good for anyone. 

As I'll show in the next post, the stuff on the desk is super handy.

I feel so blessed to have this dedicated stamping space. It's fun and functional and not horribly expensive. The sliding door behind the curtain is HUGE (the ceiling is 8.5'), and the door looks out on a four-stair walk-up to our backyard (a dreary sight right now, not to mention the mess of giant muddy paw marks all over the outside of the glass...hence the closed curtains!). The natural light is fabulous, and I'm out in the open of our large finished basement, so I'm not isolated even when on a creative binge! Also, there's a wet bar to the left with a sink for convenience and a Keurig for refreshment.

Because coffee is warm liquid happiness.

I'd love to know what about your craft space makes you happy. Please share!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

After the Purge, Part 1

Perhaps some of you will find it useful for me to write about how my hoard supplies are organized and the thought process behind that organization. Maybe you'll find inspiration to purge your own hoard supplies or re-organize in a way that makes it easier to find and--surprise!--actually use your stuff.

Of course, some of you may be avid collectors who enjoy having rather than using. To each her/his own...I'm not preaching, just sharing what works for me in the hope that you'll adopt, adapt, modify, or discard my suggestions as suits you.

I'm a practical minimalist of a sort. This doesn't mean I don't have a lot of stuff or buy new stuff. It means I try to curate my hoard in ways that eliminate what doesn't turn out to be useful to me. Over time, my ability to try new stuff and discard what doesn't work for me quickly has improved enormously. It's an evolving process that suits my mild an*l-retentive, obsessive-compulsive tendencies. During this particular purge, I found myself letting go of some stuff that I've held onto for far, far too long.

So let's take a look at one before/after area of my craft space.

Before

Here's the final result, which certainly looks tidier.

After

Let's work from the bottom up.

1. The three-drawer unit on the left contains markers. The top drawer is StampinUp/Memento markers, which might end up going away eventually as I hardly ever use them. The second drawer contains scrapbook markers, which I use regularly for things that don't get posted on the blog, like my signatures on the back of cards for Karen's Card Shop. The bottom drawer contains a bunch of Sharpies, which also get used. (At one point, I gave most of my Sharpies to the preschool at church, and then I had to buy them all over again because I kept needing them and didn't have them and ohmygosh how frustrating. Live and learn.)

 Sheets of craft foam rest on top of the unit. They are perfect for popping up larger panels on cards.

2. The middle three-drawer unit contains watercolor stuff (watercolor crayons, pencils, Peerless watercolor sheets, Twinkling H2Os) and colored pencils. The black folder on top of the unit holds my watercolor brushes. I'd love to start using these supplies more, especially now that Tim Holtz has a pure white watercolor paper that coordinates with my Papertrey white cardstock. 

3. The three-drawer unit on the right contains inking supplies such as stipple brushes (a favorite!) and sponges in the top drawer, a bunch of spare ink pads in the middle drawer (I purged about half of these, mostly Memento dewdrops), and odd ink types that I use, but rarely (Staz-On, StampinUp craft inks) on the bottom.

4. The six-drawer unit to the right of the bookshelf contains punches, mostly themed ones (hearts, stars, snowflakes, ocean animals, leaves, etc). I purged just a few of these because I really like and use most of them, but I got rid of (or moved to my basement storage) the two white bins full of basic shape punches in the before picture. My plan is to buy a set of circle dies to replace all but the 1" and smaller circle punches (which are too useful to let go). I haven't used the scalloped circles and squares in years, and my Creative Memories oval cutting system is far more useful and used than the oval punches ever were. And I'm not sure why I ever bought the larger square punches as squares are a cinch to cut. The smaller square punches (especially the 3/4" square that's fabulous!) joined the smaller circle punches in an empty drawer on the baker's rack for now. I'll show that later. 

5. On the top shelf, one of the white photo boxes houses my reinkers (replacing the purple box in the before picture). The photo boxes are handy for storing cards I make far ahead of time, like Christmas and Thanksgiving. The second box is for Thanksgiving Crusade cards. 

6. Baby wipes (always useful), magazines, notebooks, and my birthday card storage book complete the top shelf. 

7. On top of the bookshelf rests my adorable Cuttlebug, a gift from my friend Eva. I felt cramped with the baskets of dies and Cuttlebug accessories on the top of the bookshelf, so I moved them to the large bookshelf to the left of the smaller one. I am intentionally keeping my dies limited to this one basket. It would be too easy for me to go crazy and buy LOTS of dies that never get used, which would violate the simple, minimalist vibe I try to cultivate for myself.

And that's one section of my reorganized and purged craft space. Any questions? I love answering hoard-organizing queries!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

And the Winner Is...

Catherine Bowers!

Catherine, please email me your snail-mail address, and I'll get this package of goodies out to you early next week.

Thanks to all of you who commented on my before post. There are so many good ideas and resolutions there! I'm working on the after post (which will probably be several posts).

Looks like this weekend's weather will be deja vu all over again. Time to blog and stamp!

A Resolute Give-Away

On Saturday, we were snowed in because of this:

Unknown source, but brilliant and true.

Seriously. We had highs in the 60s days before this storm hit, and we got 7"-8" of heavy snow. As the snow fell, I felt an inescapable urge to purge my craft space and craft storage in the unfinished part of our basement. Here are the before pictures.

Yikes! What a mess!

After four hours, the spaces looked quite different. After pictures will be forthcoming.

In the meantime, please share either 1) your favorite crafty organization or storage tip or 2) your crafty new year's resolution in the comments. One comment will be chosen at random to receive a box of purged stuff from my craft hoard, including stamps, ink, punches, dies, and other stuff. The box is a medium USPS flat-rate box. Mailing address of the winner must be in the United States. (Sorry to my international readers...feel free to comment anyway!)

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and resolution,
Susan

P.S. Deadline to comment for the give-away is midnight, EST, Wednesday, January 16.

It's Not Failure If You Learn Something

Every now and then, stamps free-fall in your lap, and you get a chance to experiment and play around  once again with styles you tried years ago and failed to make work for you. A stamper friend at church gave me three boxes of wood-mounted stamps to choose from and pass along. Most were not my style and have already been passed to another stamper at church, but I pulled some out to play with, including these two large Greek architecture stamps.

These two stamps appeal to the historian in me, but they present challenges to my style. First, they are LARGE, which makes it hard to leave much white space around them. Second, they have a Victorian schoolbook vibe that is at odds with my crisp, modern, stylized sensibilities. Third, they beg for coloring and/or mixed media treatment. While I might own most of the coloring options open to we stampers these days, you'd never call me an expert in any one of them. And we've already seen what a mess I make of mixed media.

I decided to try to crop the images, do a little tearing and inking. I truly DISLIKE the results.

The coffee ink was a nod to the vintage feel and the blue was reminiscent of the Greek sky and architectural blueprints. But they just don't work, do they? Perhaps if I'd switched them...but no. Just no. It looks messy and lazy and weird to my eye...a big swing and miss.

So why share them on the blog? Well, my hope is that you'll see that failure isn't fatal. It's always an option, though, and happens pretty often in my crafty room. I'll play around with these stamps some more, but it's highly likely they will join the other rejects and end up in another stamper's collection where they might be more valuable and constructive.

The important thing is to keep trying to grow and stretch yourself as a crafter or artist. Push, play, fail, succeed, grow. It's only paper, and it's all good.

Even if it ends up in the circular file.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Simple Impressions Inspired

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm ready!

Today's card comes from a fun source of inspiration by Lizzie Jones. Lizzie's card is much more lively and more colorful than my version, but I couldn't have made mine without seeing hers first.

The stitched rectangle die was a gift from my lovely friend Eva, who took time to meet me for coffee last week! The stitches echo Lizzie's card, as do the colorful, overlapping banners. The white-on-white, empty space, and bling are, of course, mine.

As 2019 begins to settle in, I hope the peace, love, and hope of the Advent season carry through for you. They certainly are staying with me.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Happy New Year!

We had a delightful black-tie and champagne New Year's celebration with friends this year, and I hope you rang in the new year in the way that made you most happy...whether black tie and late night, or jammies and early bedtime, or something in-between those two extremes.

A whole new year of stamping! Are you making any New Year's Crafting Resolutions? I'm going to think about it but would really appreciate your suggestions. What are you resolving to accomplish craft-wise this year? What resolutions would you like me to make on my blog (other than more regular posting, perhaps)? Any ideas?

Let's celebrate the new year on the blog with balloons and another birthday card...because I need lots of birthday cards this year.

PTI's Balloons and Banners is such a versatile little set! And I forsee getting lots of use out of that teeny tiny little star stamp. So cute!

To add a little interest to the die-cut balloons, I glued the bottom and popped the top of each balloon with the Thin 3D Foam Squares. The effect is subtle but fun.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan