Organize your Stuff: Week 21-Pens

To all of my blog readers, I am again sorry for going missing in action this week. It is the end of the school year and PA me has taken over as the POW is held captive to all of the end of year activities, and has been unble to escape.

Just this week we had Little League (twice), Boy Scouts (twice), Cub Scouts bridging, Spring Band Concert…oh, and a birthday and anniversary. Yes, I am making excuses. Yes, I got up every morning, looked at my little shoebox of pens and pencils and markers. Yes, I continued downstairs without touching them to go receive intravenous caffeine from my coffee pot, and then went off to work without a backwards glance. I did not log on to 2 peas in a bucket, because then I’d have to fess up that I was behind. My pictures sat too. I did not finish, I am sad to say, until this morning. Here it is though:

The inspiration is from Audrey Neal’s be AUDacious: The Open Book: Challenge 2, Beside a Burning Sea.  It actually looks like a good book, but right now I haven't had the time to read...only us the cover for inspiration for our camping trip....but here is the link for those who need a summer book club...

http://audneal.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/the-open-book-challenge-2-beside-a-burning-sea.html they are doing a book club for scrapbookers.  I started with book 2, as I am like 900th on the list at the library for book 1(it is probably on he Opah book club list or something) and there was no wait for book 2.

The flowers are all 5/8 inch circle punches that have been folded…kind of cool. Maybe?

So pens are downstairs… still in their sterlite shoebox. LO…for last week that I am blogging now, is done, and there are still 2 ½ weeks of school until summer. Oh, and I signed up for 52 Card Pick Up (because I am totally crazy...I blame you Fabulous Crisann...not really) from big picture scrapbooking and will be working on that now too… I am already behind—Thank you PA Me!

Well off to do my other scrapbooking homework!

Organize your Stuff: Week 20-Diecuts

Ok, the piles upstairs are getting smaller and smaller (as the Inner Hoarder and PA Me keep telling me not to look at the mountains of memorabilia-Week 24), and the dining room gets more and more full.

Here is this week’s layout, as I continue to work on my Easter mini-album.  It's not fancy, but it has a lot of pictures, and four diecuts:

The question of the week is this: Now that we are 2/3 of the way through this experience, how are things coming together for you?

For me, despite the ongoing need for some mental group therapy, things are going very well. I have created a layout or project every week, and I have discovered the wonderful world of blogging (although I am still working at it…OCD Me says I need a Blogging for Dummies manual so that I can do better). I am 90% sure that this hostile takeover is going to end in success! … still ignoring the memorabilia.  It should be added to Vizzini's list: 1)Never fight a land war in Asia, 2)Never go against a Sicilian when Death is on the line, and now 3) Never try to usurp the space of a serious (or not so serious) Scrapbooker, or marriage might be on the line! Yes/No?

I do not have many diecuts. What I do have, have come from crops or my first 2 years of mommy scrapping when diecuts were IT! …not so much any more. The POW thought easy! Just dump most of this into Girl Friday’s stash and call it a day. But the Inner Hoarder can remember that baby layout for the illusive and rarely photographed Middle Child… the Easter layout that never got scrapped because we moved…again.  Wild Asparagus frames and phrases...that are well Wild Asparagus! PA Me started to comfort her, and OCD Me began to stomp her foot, because it is highly unlikely that any of these will see the light of day on a layout which she is overseeing…

Agreeing to disagree, and feeling a little disappointed at not getting to purge, the POW decides to put them in a small cropper hopper sleeve…figuring that eventually the POW will need more room for paper, and at that time the Inner Hoarder and PA Me will get overruled. Token purging- 1 sheet of Valentine diecuts to Girl Friday.

Gearing up for another fight-Pens and Pencils next week

Organize your Stuff: Week 19- Chipboard

Happy Mother’s Day Week to all of you who use being a mom as your excuse to scrapbook (don’t worry that’s the reason I do it too *wink*). This week is chipboard, and to be honest, it is one of my newest most used tools. Last year I discovered the world of handmade mini-albums. They are the cool answer to that 400 photo long weekend… you know the ones. For this “layout” the POW has forced me to step it up and start the family Easter vacation to California (I started with a kit from http://www.scrapyardchicks.com/ using jillybean soup papers and enhanced it with We R Memory Keepers). Here is the cover with a chipboard tulip (itinerary on the flip side), chipboard letters wrapped with wire and beads on another chipboard page, and finally… the start of the photos on the inside.

Question of the Week: How do you decorate your chipboard?

Usually I adhere paper on top and either leave the edges naked or ink them. Girl Friday likes to play in paint to much. However, on occasion, I do break out the paint, and for the above pics, the edges are painted and the C and A are as well.

Here is the tiny stash of unused chipboard that I have. Chipboard also lives in my scrap class bag, and I have a request in with Fabulous Spouse for a case of chipboard from U-line for my birthday! OCD Me barely had to lift a finger…I think she actually yawned at this tiny stash, the Inner Hoarder laughed and PA Me did not even bother to play.

Die cuts/ cut outs for next week…only 9 weeks left!

Organize your Stuff: Week 18 Tools & Adhesive

Question of the Week: What is your must have tool? Mine is my perfect layers tool. I used it this week… I use it any week something is matted. If you are among the many saying what is a perfect layers tool? It looks like a ruler, but is notched the length of the ruler to give you an exact strait edge to the depth you want (Currently, exclusively at HSN, used to be on QVC when they did scrapbooking). Slap a picture anywhere on paper, put a (insert fraction here) inch side pressed along the edge of the photo, use an exacto blade along the edge of the perfect layer…

Voila! Perfect mat!

Every time we start a broad category like this, my Inner Hoarder starts having fits. She is convinced that that something that I got somewhere will get purged down to that donate pile or...*gasp*be shared with Girl Friday (translate: will be broken or lost within 72 hours). However, since I do scrap regularly (now), and I have always cropped, OCD Me was quick to comfort her since that part of the week…like so many of the others recently, she has already finished. This was not enough for the POW, however.

So, this morning, the POW re-read Zen Master Wookiemouse’s blog. Yes, OCD Me told her, it says tools, and I got the tools organized…We are done! Nope. The POW was sure that she had seen something…yes, there it was. When the Fabulous Crisann has listed her version of the weeks as links in the initial post of each week, she had posted Week 18: Tools and Adhesives. I hate the POW.

Adesives!?! During clean sweep week, OCD Me made a huge pile of those things, because there was no Adhesives week. Now the POW wants me to get up and really do something for the first time in weeks! PA Me is not happy. She has been doing pretty good these past few weeks, doing a layout, taking a few pictures, maybe straitening up a little… She and OCD Me have actually been getting along.

So, upstairs I went to tackle the mountain of adhesives which OCD had collected just a short 15 weeks ago… It is a BIG pile, but it is mostly Xyron, so it really is just a matter of finding room in the hutch. Still, PA Me kept trying to remind me that laundry still needed to be done-- I reminded her laundry… move boxes… laundry… move boxes. Boxes won.

Now 11 weeks to go…Next week-Chipboard.