Organize your Stuff: Week 17 Punches

Punches! Woo Hoo! Another Easy week! (Sorry, my internal monologue was damaged in the unfreezing process…) My Inner Hoarder is sticking her tongue out right now as punches are currently the IT thing in scrapbooking classes. The POW is just happy that OCD Me took initiative in December, and re-organized. Again it is that everything old is new again…but with a twist!


Here is my layout for this week…

Question of the Week: Are punches Old school? Nahh! A Cricut can do a lot… and a Cricut with after market software can do even more, but seriously, am I going to let that technology loose with Girl Friday?! …and then there is the portability issue… I find it easier to grab my Iris cases of punches for a crop or class than to haul out my Cricut Expression, cartridges, cords, extension cords, and fit it into my 3 feet of crop space with everything else… OCD Me has the punches sorted into three 12x12 Iris cases: punches, corners, and borders.

 

I store these cases on the “printer” shelf of the hutch (which was part of Fabulous Spouse’s office at the last house… I guess I did a hostile takeover of that too…).



Here is some of the detail work possible with punches. Like a wedding, it is a combination of something old, and something new, with the new border punches… I triple layered three Martha Stewart border punches, with each strip ¼ inch shorter than the one behind it.

And the old Fiskars border punch-Leave it to Weaver with some .99 ribbon from Michaels (which I got for .25 in November)…

Next week is tools, and PA me is already cutting therapy to work with the Inner Hoarder on a strategy for that one!

Organize your Stuff Challenge: Week 16: Paints, glitter, stickles

Fortunately, as my life hits the trifecta of being overworked, over-played (with schlepping 3 kids to 2 sports, 2 scouts, 2 religious ed programs, all day grown-up scout wilderness training, mass…) and underwhelmed to deal with my over-messy home (PA me is tired and exherting her willpower)…I came upon another week that OCD Me and the POW have already taken care of.  Short of brining my stuf down stairs to enter my scrap space, I was pretty much done.  Time for a Layout..

Question of the Week: If you could have only one, what would it be? For me- paint. It is cheap, a multi- tasker (a la Alton Brown of the Food Network), and it crosses over into my kids life/ arts and crafts. I do not own much glitter (3 bottles of clearance holiday Martha Stewart glitter), or much in the way of stickles 2-crystal and 1 distressed brown Tim Holtz. (*gasp*) I know… Inner hoarder hasn’t heard about these yet!

I do like stickles though, because it can add the bling that you crave in this phase of your scrapbooking evolution, without paying the double or triple cost of getting the paper pre-glittered/ embossed.

For my layout this week, I used Little Yellow Bicycle, but opted out of the cooler… but more expensive paper, and created my own…

Next week... it is on to punches...

Organize your Stuff Challenge: Weeks 14 & 15- crops, inks, and embossing powder

Let me first start by apologizing for taking last week off. We were in Monterey, CA to celebrate Easter, and unfortunately, the Easter Bunny did not drop off free WiFi with the Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. However, we did get lots of pictures (and a few minor boulders passing as pebbles from Pebble Beach and the 17 mile drive) for future layouts… but for this entry, I am still scrapping February…

Here, I finally found an excuse to use some of that mulberry paper I found during paper week, but haven’t used since 2003! …and Inner Harder feels vindicated… in person this actually looks really cool, as the edges were touched with Versa Mark ink and gold embossing powder. …and then just like that (and bell bottoms and leggings)… something old is new again…

As for crops (Week 14), the POW and OCD Me have this one mastered! The first rule to crops: have enough storage. Here in the Pacific Northwest, that means bags too… as you have a 75% chance of rain or greater, September through June. My first bag, the purple one on the left was from 2005, when I went to my first 3 day crop and the POW realized that I did my best work from 1AM to about 5AM…just like term papers in college… hmmm… Next came the wooden shelving…a must. When it comes to crops… when you can’t spread out, spread up! OCD Me definitely endorses Zen Master Wookiemouse and the need to preplan layouts. I have yet to under plan, but I definitely get more accomplished with a plan… and without it, OCD Me SO over packs!!!

Now, on to Week 15… The first part of this week is a progress check of before and present…

All of my voices agree that we are making progress, and even better, Fabulous Spouse thinks that it is looking good too. As for inks and embossing OCD Me tackled that ages ago. She is a firm believer in saving for storage, as it will make your life your life easier in the end. Therefore, the embossing powders live in a sterlite container with the embossing gun and one of my several versa mark pads. Most of my inks are in one of my two carousels, and the re-inkers are on a shelf in the hutch that they sit upon.

And, so that is week 14 and 15! Next week is paint, glitter and stickles.