Organize your Stuff: Week 17 (round 4): WOYWW & Punches

To start off this Wednesday, here is a look at our desk. As it is punches week, you might note the row of Fiskars border punches on top of our stamp wall/ mini milk crates. It is actually a little tidier than usual at the desk today, but that is because Creative Me and Girl Friday have been working on a small, yet very important project… a tooth fairy pillow!

Girl Friday has discovered her first wiggly tooth, and as is tradition in our home, now has to make the little cloth sack (with Mommy supervision from Creative Me of course) to put under her pillow to keep her teeth…and treasure… safe. Girl Friday picked out the fabric at the store herself. It is no small wonder as she has thousands of stuffed elephants strewn about the house.

To see other desks and what they have left behind, go to Julia’s Stamping Ground for the complete list of WOYWW-ers this week.

As for this week’s card, we had to incorporate printed text in our Design Team entry for Tuesday Trio’s Sketch #76. Our text came from a 1930’s German dictionary that the Inner Hoarder found at St. Vincent’s (like Goodwill, but for Catholic Charities). It is slowly being defaced and added to Creative Me’s crafts… a total score for $1.99!

The colors were inspired by an Australian site that we found while hopping around the net (probably from one of you WOYWW-ers!) called Just Add Ink.  They post on Fridays, and this week (JAI 76) it was an inpirational photo for your mojo (and as Austin Powers can attest, we are nothing without our mojo!). We just LOVED the colors!

We used punches in a couple places on this card. Creative Me used the Fiskars notebook border punch on the background piece of text (totally covered in glimmer mist!!- sorry, still a favorite new technique). We also punched out the sentiment, and put liquid adhesive on a circle punch to mount the rosette when we were making it.

It is another quiet, and cool, week here in the Pacific Northwest. The weatherman has said that we have had 78 minutes of weather above 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) this year, and 18 hours and 45 minutes above 75 degrees (also Fahrenheit). Oldest Child has returned from his mission outreach trip, and is now at Boy Scout sleep away camp. Fabulous Spouse is two time zones away in Connecticut (where they still have real Chinese food) *sigh* and warm summer weather. Therefore, the POW is entertaining the troops, and making sure that Girl Friday and the Illusive Middle Child do not drive Awesome Auntie crazy.

Hopefully, we will have a layout…and a lost tooth… for the weekend!

Organize your Stuff: Week 18 (round 3): Tools & Adhesives Part 1

Welcome 2011 and the first post of the year!!!

This marks the One Year Anniversary of Tuesday Trio weekly paper crafting sketch site! Happy Birthday TT! To celebrate, we have a real challenge… a Circular Sketch! The bonus challenge is to make it vintage, and so here is my Design Team Entry for Sketch #48:

It seems that Creative Me has gotten us into a sticky situation through this past year. Our shelves runneth over with adhesives (glues, sticky stuff, tapes). The Inner Hoarder has helped with this mess, as she is my resident shopper, and you know…if it is on sale…. Oh well! Now it is up to the POW and OCD Me to pick up the mess for the next post!

Fabulous Crisann gave us the Question of the Week, this week at 2 Peas: What is your one “must have” tool that you cannot scrap without?

Last year, I picked my perfect layers (you can see it here). It is still my #1. However, as a close #2 I picked my Tim Holts tonic paper piercer. The funny thing is that I got this a free gift with purchase about two years ago, and now, I cannot scrap without it!

This tool can pierce through paper for setting brads (and Creative Me is a total brad junkie!) or things with prongs, marking a hole to be set with a crop-a-dile or eyelet. I have used it to clear glue bottle(and Stickle bottle) blockages. I have even used it, as with this card, to hold items in place as I used an embossing gun on small items. In short, it is a great multi-tasker (a la Alton Brown) and it just Rocks!

Also, this week is tools! Here is the new tool bag that Santa brought me! 

Not including your templates, dies and die cutting machine, this week covers that box marked- Other! Most importantly, how do you store those things you use to help you create (and that we have not tackled yet)? Do you have canisters on your desk, a lazy susan (rotating circular device), or boxes. Do you sort by type (all your paper cutters stored together) or by the things that you use the most and least (dust those least items…spring cleaning just came early). Where is that eyelet setter stored? That bind-it-all? Those gianormous xyron machine that you got several Black Fridays ago and haven’t used since you volunteered to laminate things for the PTA?  Do you put Everthing away in boxes?  or hang it on pegboard?  I would love to see your solutions, or you can visit Zen Master Wookiemouse again!

Well, off to start the task of cleaning up!  See you later!

Organize your Stuff: Week 17 (round 3): Punches Part 2

OK, Readers! It is time to party like it is 1999! …or not. I had a 1 year old in 1999… not nearly as much fun as today! Maybe we should party like it is 2010! At any rate, it is time to make those New Year’s resolutions, …if possible, complete those ones from 2010 …or just let them go…

As a bit of fun, Marit of Marit’s Paper World in the Netherlands has been hosting Blog hop 2000. This takes the top 2000 songs of 2010 from Netherland’s Radio 2 and has them put to paper art. Kind of neat, eh? This is the page that follows my “I’m Dreaming of a White…” Snow page during Week 15.

It represents Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” as we almost had no turkey or egg nog or pumpkin pie due to the snow and horrible road conditions. That morning, however, we did make it to the stores (but did not tell the kids) and got a proper Thanksgiving (a la Safeway Thanksgiving Feast) done for dinner.

Creative Me has been pushed to the back lately, as the POW and OCD Me tried to make the Perfect Christmas… maybe next year. Let loose again, Creative Me did not fail. Since this week was punches, Creative Me used photo corner punches on the left page, and Fiskars threading water on the journaling tag.

This is pretty neat actually.

You start with a strip of punched threading water.

Score at the indents.

Cut along score marks (if thick paper and this was).

Stagger pieces… with a space slightly smaller than the pieces… (blogspot has decided that this picture needs to be rotated and I cannot fix.  Sorry!)

Place remaining pieces. Voila! Pleat on a curved surface!







Punches that everyone should own:
At least 1 corner rounder, a circle punch (at least ½ inch), a scalloped punch. (Level 2:Threading punch like Fiskar’s Leave it to Weaver). However, like everything else in scrapbooking, the more that you use your punches, the more you will seem to need, and remarkably, they will breed like rabbits (or Gremlins with a cookie after midnight) when you are not looking.

As for Punch storage, there are many cool ways to do it. I have seen every manner of Ikea gadget (where were we before Ikea?) to shoe racks on doors (another cool idea). However, my room only has 2 walls and no doors, so neither of these storage solutions worked for me. However, if you were blessed with 4 walls (darned you open floor plan!!!) and a door, Zen Master Wookiemouse did a fabulous job of gathering all sorts of links with different ideas, if you need them, here.

OCD Me did the punch organizing last round. Since Creative Me LOVES to go to crops, OCD Me had to find a solution that worked. For now, I have three (3) Iris 12x12 clamshells that hold my punches. The first has shapes, the second has border punches, and the third has corner punches.

They store in my hutch on a roll out shelf that was originally meant for a printer. Great Easy Access! So, as a New Year’s challenge, break out that dusty punch in your drawer, and like the Velveteen Rabbit, remember why you loved it and play!

Next week, Miscellaneous Tools. (Remember that eyelette setter and some of those other tools you may not have used in a while?) Uggh! We will get through this together!

Organize your Stuff: Week 17 (round 3): Punches Part 1

I hope that everyone has survived the Holiday Season! This week is the beginning of the last milestone of the year- New Years! (Or is it the first!) So shake of that eggnog and cookie coma, put away those latkas, and let’s get Scrappin! New Years is a time for resolutions and a chance to start anew!

Speaking of New Year’s Resolutions- here is my Tuesday Trio New Year’s Eve Card (Sketch 47). For any of you who want to put in a Christmas Card for Sketch 46, you could win a blinkie (it closes Saturday Jan 1st!).

I used a Fiskars Notebook border punch on this card to create the resolutions piece of the card. It started as plain paper, but I used two CTMH ink pens to add the lines and make it look as if it really did come from a notebook!

Punches seem to be one of those things that you love or you hate. It does not mean that you are a punch snob if you have 5 or less, but that you might not have had the right teacher to inspire you! Believe it or not, these are not your 1980’s punches, and to be honest, Creative Me used to be a punch snob too! Until 2008, I probably had 2 (and 3 pairs of those scalloped type scissors). Now I find that a couple of punches can add that something to a layout (especially at a crop or workshop) to bring it to the next level without having to haul my Cricut or die cutting machine. Even the magazines are using punches again! ...and you thought that punches were dead. (I’m not dead yet!-Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Besides, Girl Friday and the Illusive Middle Child can be entertained for hours with a couple of punches and some scrap paper. The end of the week will have my storage- which may be very different from yours, and a Layout!

What is your Scrapping or Organizing New Year’s Resolution for 2011? (OCD Me wants the Inner Hoarder to take a long vacation so that she can clean!)

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!