Organize your Stuff: Week 9(round 5): Embellishments

The POW apologizes for being a day late with this post.  We woke this morning on Samoa and found that we missed Friday all together! LOL!  Actually, she finally found a few spare minutes in her hectic sans Fabulous Spouse life to get this up, and Blogger was down. Sad Face. :(

The POW also has a warning that this is another picture intensive post. …so, consider yourself warned.

Now that we are in Round 5, most of our embellishments have been corralled. Zen Master Wookiemouse did a fabulous job on her blog (here) of listing all the different ways and means of storing embellishments.

She stores hers by color, but Creatve Me still thinks in terms of brads, buttons or flowers. So, that is how we have organized. OCD is proud that once organized, we have kept the system up. However, it must be noted, that this did not all happen in one week… or even one round. PA Me has made sure of it. However, that may also be why we have been able to stick with it (unlike our annual New Year’s resolutions!)

Here is our eyelets and beads (organized in round 2).

Our brads (round 3)

Our buttons (round 4)

So, what is left? you ask. Flowers. Yes, they grow like faux dandelions in the garden of your embellishments. And yet, Inner Hoarder has such a hard time walking by and not picking them up! Even now that we have a flower making Cricut cartridge, they seem to just bloom upon our shelf! We are still contemplating how to store them in the end game. Any ideas?

As promised on Wednesday, here we are with our many military layouts (promise that these will be the last ones for a while) from Christmas Break.  Fabulous Spouse has sucessfully finished his training in California, and landed a short while ago in South Carolina to finish his stateside training.  We wish him luck!

Welcome to MNFI

The Palace where Fabulous Spouse worked

Embassy rooftop pictures

Charlie's Angels photo op

5K Fun Run... in the desert

Hope you have a Happy New Years Eve!

Organize your Stuff: Week9 (round 4): OLW Blog hop & Embellishments part 2

Goodness! Who would have thought that a long weekend could go so fast! Thanks to all of the Operation Write Home Blog hoppers for visiting! (OWH Blog Hop card here, and Iraq layouts here).

In honor of Memorial Weekend, my Tuesday Trio Card for Sketch #69 (an anything goes sketch) is a Happy Memorial Day card! Yes, there are more buttons! Yes, Fabulous Spouse has already noticed that we are in violation of button probation, but Creative Me does not care… because it is embellishment week!

Today is WOYWW!, (See the rest of the desks at the Stamping Ground-here) so this is what my work desk looks like now that Creative Me has finished our One Little Word (OLW) Homework. PA Me has been distracting Creative Me a lot lately, so we got this done just under the wire!

Speaking of OLW, Here is what our homework looks like right now. OCD Me is not one hundred percent happy with it, but the POW keeps reminding OCD Me that if she wants perfect, then she should keep better tabs on PA Me… and besides Creative Me almost never does perfect. Each layout is always a work in progress…until the next project comes along!

This Month, Ali Edwards gave us a PDF to write down the task/ mission/ goal/ objective/ thoughts/ or stuff to tackle …and our progress (not negative) with our word and these tasks. The POW will be the first to admit that this was a busy month, and that we seemed to be putting out fires and embracing Survival Mode rather than Embracing Life! (speaking of survival mode, The POW and the scanner are not talking right now, so here is the 8.5 x11 without the text.  Will try and update after volunteering this morning).

However, we are happy to report that we are all embracing our new family well, and that the WMD is actually sleeping in her own bed! Even Shark Bait (“Shark Bait! Ooh Ha Ha”- from finding Nemo. Sorry couldn’t resist!), has been behaving less like an almost terrible two year old (especially at dinner) who needs to be fed to the sharks, and more like your average almost loveable toddler who you want to eat up because he is TOO cute. The POW is almost ready to let the poor priest that we keep in the attic for emergency exorcisms go, almost…

The real breakthrough, though, is that OCD Me finally convinced the POW and Fabulous Spouse to get a smart phone! Woo Hoo! Our last new phone was in 2003 when the Illusive Middle Child helped us out and put our phone in the washing machine because it “looked dirty”. The Upside, We are embracing technology. The downside, technology has left us in the dust and is not looking back. OCD Me is a manual reader, but there is only like 20 pages to the manual, and none of those pages answer any of my questions… like how do we attach a photo to our contact? Because every time we take a picture and then try to attach it, it just attaches to the “find out your data usage” phone #. Seriously?! However, we did figure out how to download angry birds, so the rest is gravy, right?

As for embellishments, here is the link to round 2 where we took everything out, but OCD Me focused on beads and eyelets. This is the link to round 3 ( part 1 & part 2) where we got our brads under control.

buttons-before

This time we are working on buttons (go figure). Creative Me wanted something pretty/ inspiring (like little bottles) and OCD Me wanted things that transported easily to crops. The POW just wanted to make sure that we all understood that we were on a budget and that nobody went to Ikea without permission! The goal is to get a bunch of these magnetic tins and put up a dollar store cookie tray at my work desk with the tins attached. Wish us luck!

Illusive Middle Child & buttons-after

Finally, today’s blog is the last chance to score some blog candy! Winners will be drawn for Friday’s Post! We will be sending three lucky viewers some simple stories pieces and some other goodies for leaving us comments (and hopefully becoming a follower- but not required). You can still leave a comment on the Friday post (prize #1), the Saturday post (prize #2), or today (prize #3)!

OLW Blog Hop List
Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com/blog
Jamie http://jmpgirl.blogspot.com/
Cherie http://cheriandrews.blogspot.com/
Jill http://jillconyers.typepad.com/
Amanda http://scrappnbee.blogspot.com/  <---You are HERE!
Lynn W http://www.crafty-creativity.blogspot.com/
Rebekah http://istampscrapcraft.blogspot.com/
Melissa S http://blog.mshanhun.com/
Lisa A http://backtoallen.com/writers_blog/
Sam http://learncreatedo.wordpress.com/
Jenn http://www.studiojenn.blogspot.com/
Junelle http://yesandamenblog.blogspot.com/
Jen S http://www.byjen.com/
Monica B2 http://questtoperfectimperfection.blogspot.com/
Cindy http://seriousplay.typepad.com/
Nikki http://www.inkyart.com.au/
Karen D http://womenontractors.blogspot.com/

Organize your Stuff: Week9 (round 4): OWH Blog hop & Embellishments part 1

This is just a quick post this morning to celebrate the Men and Women serving this great country during Memorial Weekend! To help Celebrate, Creative Me made some more cards for the fabulous folks at Operation Write Home (OWH).

If there is any doubt in your mind that this is a for real and awesome charity (sending blank cards to the troops to write home), fear not! Awesome Auntie has received two OWH cards from her husband (my brother-in-law) since he left for Iraq in April.

Here are my cards…

Since it was embellishment week, we had to use buttons (LOVE them!) even though Fabulous Spouse put us on button probation for overuse… (that’s okay, Creative Me snuck a clear button on to his Iraq layout on the previous post on the Bingo Travel Card…maybe we do have a problem!)  We especially love the heart button with the yellow ribbon.  The POW does, however, want to show that we can be more than just buttons, so...

We also made a much simpler card using the same liquid glass that was the adhesive for the buttons to add dimension to the patterned paper and stamped phrase.

The POW did snag us some blog candy for this weekend. One name will be drawn from this post (don’t really need to be a follower, but it is easier to get a hold of you!), one from yesterday’s Iraq layout post, and the final one from our June 1st post! Winners announced June 4th! So, that is 3 chances…Woo Hoo!

Happy Hopping!!! And a great Memorial Day Weekend!!!

You should have ust come From Trish at Mouseprint Creations
and next is Sharon at Sharon's Shenanagans!

Organize your Stuff: Week 9 (round 3): Embellishments Part 2

This week brought change into the life of the POW. Our Glee Club Challenge was over… and no we did not win anything (the POW is a little sad about that, but hey! It builds character!). Football season officially ended (yeah?), and there was no more looming Halloween countdown…only leftover candy and the inevitable accusations of candy stealing.

As for organization, OCD Me took the Inner Hoarder aside, and promised her container shopping in exchange for the locations of her hoard of illusive brads. Like the Goonies hunting for One Eyed Willie’s buried treasure without a map, the search was afoot! No Pinchers of Power here, but in the end OCD Me discovered that the Inner Hoarder was better at hiding things than she thought! We filled nearly 5 DMC bins with brads, and left our “fancy brads” out in an easily accessible bin.

With a little extra time, OCD Me also collected our relatively small collection of flowers together so that they could be kept in one place. They were already sorted by color, for the most part, so it was just a matter of convincing PA Me to put a little extra effort into the search and clean process, and Voila! Extra credit! Two embellishment areas tackled!

For the layouts this week, the POW decided that we were going to tackle Oldest Child’s football season before we got bogged down with the upcoming holidays. This layout is a little simpler than the ones we did for the Glee Club Challenges, but you have to understand that we had six games and about 100 pictures per game! Narrowing 600+ photos down to a 4 pg layout is an accomplishment in my book! Not to mention, the Illusive Middle Child was in there too as ball boy!

In the second layout, Creative Me found that she wanted to mirror the look of the threads on the football, and with a little bit of nostalgia from the last post, she decided that she wanted to use eyelets to do it. Fortunately, she had no problem due to the fabulous bead and eyelet sorting of OCD Me from last round. I do have to admit, that while OCD Me may be one of my least favorite personalities, as she usually involves work, it is definitely worth it in the end!

OCD Me is now eyeing the buttons that she uncovered in her hunt. While the POW wasn’t looking, it appears that the Inner Hoarder had set her eyes on amassing some of them as well. We will see if this new found love of organization holds, or not. PA Me is undecided… as usual!

Have a great weekend, as next week is Alphas!

Oh, and I have found a new challenge to follow for the next 4 weeks. A new website has just launched called Kitchen Keepsake, and they are doing a Food Network theme challenge.  Fabulous Spouse loves the Food Network... so Challenge it is!  The first week's theme is Paula Deen!  I guess that means that I actually need to do some cooking... PA Me is not so sure this was a good idea...

Organize your Stuff: Week 9 (round 3): Embellishments Part 1

For those who celebrated Halloween this weekend, and are just coming out of a sugar coma (I know, I know…you were just taste testing for the kids…) welcome to Embellishment week!

Now, now. Don’t start hyperventilating. While Embellishments seems like a really big category to tackle…ok it is… some of the things that we may consider embellishments have been given their own weeks later in the challenge: alphas (week 10), stickers & rub-ons (week 11), ribbons (week 12), chipboard (Week 19), diecuts (week 20). So, if you are hoarding any of these items, you have a reprieve!

The Fabulous Crisann, Fearless Leader of Round 3, posed this Question of the Week: What embellishment can you not live without?

For me, this changes as my tastes change. Currently it is brads, but buttons and flowers are really close second and third! I used my brads to help me with this card for the Tuesday Trio Sketch #41 card. Part of the TT Challenge said that we not only needed to use the Sketch, but that we needed to incorporate wings. Since I had just opened my CTMH Hooligans On the Go Kit and used the embellishments for a mini challenge card for the last week of the Glee Club Challenge, the big corduroy brad, and the little button brads became Creative Me’s muse.

Fabulous Spouse took the tines off of the button brad, and suddenly I had a pig! Have you ever heard the term “when pigs fly?” …trimming up a chrysanthemum style flower gave me the wings for my flying pig! The card is a congratulations card, because sometimes when you think it will never happen, it magically does!

In Zen Master Wookiemouse’s blog, she stated that there are two primary ways to store embellishments, by color and by type. Last round, OCD Me went through and sorted the minutia that was beads and eyelets… remember when eyelets were the embellishment that you could not live without? This time I am focused on my brads which have multiplied like Gremlins let loose in a waterpark . To make it worse, they are just EVERYWHERE! It is like the Inner Hoarder has squirreled them away like nuts for winter in hopes that I will forget and move on to something else…or worse- go out and buy more!

All of my embellishments need a better storage solution than the one that OCD was able to cobble together last round, but some organization is better than nothing. Wish me luck with my Gremlins (another Netflix 80s find for those of you who have never seen it!) and I will see you at the end of the week with a layout!

Organize your Stuff Challenge: Weeks 9 & 10 Embellishments & Alphas

Whew!  What a week!  I finally caught up to the Scrapbook your Stuff Challenge, only to have my blog hit counter hijack my site and and redirect me to the yellow pages every time I clicked on it. *grrrrrrr*

However, my site is fixed (yeahhh!), and here is my layout from this week (using some of my alphas).

So, this week I started embellishments.  Wow.  If there is one thing that I seem to have a lot of... ok I have a lot of, well, a lot of stuff... and one of those things is embellishments.  The POW and OCD me worked well together, and had a plan for all of the maddness... and they took lots of pctures.

I began by emptying all of my crop bags (I have 3 of them) into a 70 gallon Sterlite bin.  I added the pile of embelishment from upstairs, and the stray embellishments that have been taking vacations in my dining room, scoping out the joint, and checking out the neighborhood.  Now, for someone whose scrapbooking storage consisted of a closet until 22 months ago, it was a pretty full bin.  Next to it is my two Close to My Heart embellishment trays (sorted by color), my brad container from the fishing department at Wal Mart, and some other bins from failed organizing.

After I did this, OCD me took charge which was OK.  Group therapy is working, and the Inner Hoarder and PA Me still have the magazines from idea week to play with and distract them.  Everything that was not CTMH was sorted ino sub categories all over my floor.  Since this is the main hallway, and I knew that Girl Friday was in hiding, waiting to pounce on any weak or straggling embellishments, this spurred me on to complete the task as quickly as possible.

Fortunately or un, OCD Me has flitted in and out of my scrapbooking life since I began, and so my brads (minus a few strays) were already sorted, envelopes were together, same with buttons, never got many flowers, but beads and eyelettes were everywhere.  That was where OCD Me and the POW spent most of their energy.  Fabulous spouse, having hit a low point in sports, found it entertaining to watch...and help...and fend off stealth attacks by Girl Friday (although some beads did give their lives so that the rest could live).  Here is the before and after.

This actually took about 3 hours, but there were SO many little beads, and tiny brads, and eyelettes!

From there it only took another hour or so to get the rest put together and into "temporary" storage (the tax return has not come in yet).  The Inner Hoarder was actually impressed...yet again... at how OCD Me can organize a big pile of stuff into a little one without purging. ...What can I say... its a gift!...

What made my day though, was that there really was nothing to do for week 10.  I am an acrylic stamp junkie and so my Alpha stickers are few.  OCD Me already had them living happily together in a Cropper Hopper Pouch, and so all I had to do was take this picture and call Week 10 done as well!