Organize your Stuff: Week 12 (round 4): Ribbons & Fibers Part 2

Ok. Last post the POW threw down the gauntlet to sew on a layout, so do not let it be said that Creative Me could not rise to a challenge! Here is our ribbon and fibers layout with sewing!

…yes, it is hand stitched and not sewn by the sewing machine, but OCD Me refused to let the sewing machine out of solitary confinement… even if she had been double dog dared by the POW. Party Pooper. In retrospect, the POW does concede that there would probably be heavy drinking involved and/ or broken machinery if the sewing machine was let loose, but then again, we all love a good train wreck!

The more we scrapbook, the more we are surprised by the Creativity that emerges in our household. On Sunday, we will have a layout that Fabulous Spouse put together in an attempt to prove that he too can make a layout that looks like product vomit…or at least a little bit of an upset tummy!

Have a fabulous Father’s Day weekend!!!

Organize your Stuff: Week 12 (round 4): WOYWW …Ribbons & Fibers Intermission

Hello fellow WOYWW –ers! PA Me loves this point in the week, because she knows it is not that bad, and she likes to watch OCD Me pace around wondering if someone is judging her for the mess we have made of our workspace! (FYI- it is a good thing that this is not what’s on your kitchen counter…then we would have reality cameras and people in hazmat suits here!).

For more fabulous desks (not kitchens… well unless one crafts in their kitchen…), please click over to the Stamping Ground!

Creative Me is in summer mode, which swings between extra crafty and taking a siesta with PA Me and looking for the Cabana boy to refill her Margarita glass. This week is a crafty one! We have a layout in progress, and we have wacked out some cool starburst cards inspired by Operation Write Home (OWH) who are looking for cards for the troops to send home to their loved ones. Summer is slow for them this time of year, but the troops still want to write their families! Send OWH a card or two if you have the chance!

Papers for this card were ancient Cosmo Cricket.
The eyelet is from Michaels or Jo Anns from around 2004, so manufacturer unkown.
White Ric Rac from the wall at the scrapbook store, manufacturer unknown.

If you like the flower/ rosette, the POW wanted you to know that there is a tutorial in the last post.

OCD Me is girding her loins for the summer invasion, as there are only 5 days left of school, then Girl Friday and her brothers will be about the house all day every day! The POW vows to keep them in check, but PA Me will believe it when she sees it. Inner Hoarder is crying. Guarantee: minimum one inch of paper, and countless other things will go missing this summer. Girl Friday is very creative.

Final thought in this ribbon and fiber intermission. Question of the week: do you sew your layouts/ cards?

It is well documented that our sewing machine is in solitary confinement right now for tension issues and a purely sociopathic hate of Creative Me. The POW would like to give it another try, but Creative Me is not on board yet. We will see.

Organize your Stuff: Week 12 (round 4): Ribbons & Fibers Part 1

This week is Ribbons! My ribbons were tamed during round 2 (here). The POW is happy with this organization (Artbins from Michaels).  OCD Me thinks that it makes sense, Creative Me sees through the Jedi Mind tricks, and has no problem finding what she needs, and PA Me finds it hard not to put stuff away as the system is so easy!  It is ROY G BIV with neutrals in one, red through green in the second (Inner Hoarder sees that one splitting in the future) and blues and purples and felt boarders (mostly from Queen & Co) in the third. 
Here is this week’s Tuesday Trio Design Team Sketch (#71). The design theme for this one was Birthday. Inner Hoarder had bought these cute little bear brads from the Eyelet Outlet at CKC Portland back in March and has been dying to use them. Creative Me fell in love! This is the result of that love…

Creative Me also made flowers using 5/8 and 7/8 inch circle punches. It is a great way to custom make a flower for a card or layout and use up some of those scraps.

Here is how...
Punch some scraps...

 mash them up, then ink...(ink sticks to the ridges)

add mist (oohhh Creative Me LOVES mists!)...

When it is dry, pile it together and add an eyelet (we all have a bunch of those hanging around!) or brad to make the center!

Hope that you make many of your own and have happy crafting this week!

Organize your Stuff: Week 12 (round 3): Ribbons Part 2

This Week’s ribbon layout:

I used my solid color cardstock, so that the ribbons would really pop, and a couple of pumpkins from my stash from Jolee’s (from like 2004).


Well, we survived the snow, Thanksgiving, …and Black Friday (BTW whichever retailer decided to start black Friday on Thursday…I loathe you! And my family is not happy to have a truly functionally sleep deprived mom walk in the door at 7:15 AM to go to bed after a day of Thanksgiving cooking followed by black belt marathon shopping- when all they want is waffles).

Here is the after for ribbon. 

After spending three days snowed in with 6 inches of snow (seriously, people who see snow more than once every 2 years, it is not polite to make snarky laugh sounds come out your nose! It was CRIPPLING! I almost did not get my Safeway Thanksgiving dinner in a box!...The POW almost had to go all Donner Party (for non US followers or those who slept through Pioneer expansion, look it up in Wikipedia) and eat the cat…not really, but it would have been Otter Pops and frozen peas, and that scary thing from the back of the fridge that has freezer burn, but the Inner Hoarder hasn’t thrown away yet) not only did OCD Me have the ribbons organized, but Creative Me knocked out two pages from Fabulous Spouse’s Iraq album (from 2007 and totally on my to do list) as well as the above Halloween layout.

As for the Kitchen Keepsake Challenge, we are entering our last week, so look forward to a layout that represents: Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. As Luck (and weather) would have it, after Thanksgiving, I always make from scratch Turkey Soup! It is totally worthy of any Jersey Diner, so I hope you like it!

Finally, welcome back from the hospital, Dailly!!! Tuesday Trio is back and running! I am reposting my Design Team entry for this week’s challenge below, and will have a new card on Tuesday for them. Welcome back Dailly, glad that you are doing better and Happy Holidays!

Organize your Stuff: Week 12 (round 3): Ribbons Part 1

Well, today we are snow bound! Don’t laugh Midwesterners or people who see snow more than once every two years… we had 6 inches in two days in our little town in the Greater Seattle Metro. That is worse than a full fledged ice storm in the south! Our weather bunny made a point of telling us that we were warmer than Barrow, Alaska (the northern most point at 34 degrees Fahrenheit), but one of Fabulous Spouse’s co-workers in Montana told us we were insane, as today they had 12 inches of snow, it was a high of -4 with a with a wind chill of -20 degrees Fahrenheit, and everyone went to school and work no problem. I bet they have more than 3 snowplows for the county too!

Since I could not go out, we ate in! Here is the Chicken Marsala that I made on Sunday…and braved our horrible not really that snowy roads to get the pictures from Costco to enter at Kitchen Keepsakes (If they don’t plow soon, I am nominating Fabulous Spouse for Snow removal director. The county cannot hear your theories on snow removal from living in the land of the Alberta Clippers while growing up through the TV…I’m sorry. It is true. Same with the football coaches, dear. The sound only works one way)!

There are two techniques that I used for this quilting panel (a total scrap user upper! So there Inner Horder!).  First, I used bamboo ink to distress the bright whites that did not go with the Graphics 45 base page.

Then, rather than cuttung up another sheet to put squares that match the base page, I just broke out the exacto knife, and cut holes in my "quilt"!

This week is ribbon week! Last round, OCD me did a pretty good job of collecting the ribbons that the Inner Hoarder had collected over the years, and put them in a DMC Floss style container (actually a fishing lure tackle box with removable dividers). The fibers are mostly all on bobbins, roughly by color. I found that suddenly, Creative Me was using ribbon more!… well because she could find it! However, the POW has noticed that the Inner Hoarder has been holding out on us, just a little. Also, it seems that the more ribbon that Creative Me uses, the more ribbon I seem to have!

This week is really a tidy up week for OCD Me rather than a reinvent the wheel one. This is good, as I am theoretically busy…if I can ever get out of our development! Fabulous Crisann at 2 Peas asked us how many of us used sewing machines on our pages, and so far it has been mostly a resounding:
 BAAAAHAAAWWAAAAAHHA!!! LOL –from Luvs2lilboyz,
DO I sew? BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Oh sorry...um, no- scrappin usmc,
Uh - no!-weaser,
SEW what is that? Oh that was based on the class I took in Jr. High and was doing so poorly I was flunking-lovesribbons.
No! I don't sew on layouts!-scrappinJudy
She [MIL] keeps the machine, I give her my sewing. It's a win-win really-Kris74

The only real yes was:
LydiaInk- Yes! Mostly by hand because my sewing machine is generally stored away and I'm too lazy to set it up

My sewing machine lost its electrical attachment when we moved in 2008, and PA Me has not made it to Sears to get a replacement cord yet.
See you at the end of the week!



Organize your Stuff Challenge: Week 12 Ribbons & Fibers

First, I would like to tackle the Question of the Week for this week by our moderator, Crisann the Fabulous: Remember during the first three weeks of this challenge when we worked through the space audit/brainstorming/clean slate challenges? Is your studio transforming into what you envisioned or have you changed directions along the way?

Realistically, the answer is a definite maybe. I am almost halfway through my hostile takeover of the Dining Room, and the mess that I cleaned up at the end of week 3 is back, and I am fighting insurgents planted by both Fabulous Spouse (piles of mail and memorabilia) and Girl Friday (a 5 yr olds crafting mess runneth over and over and over). As I reintroduce items to my scrapbook room, I realize that in my mind (like many scrapbookers…I think) I have much more storage available than in reality. According to my Inner Hoarder, I do not have an excessive amount of anything (except stamps, but we will deal with that next week). However, I am still completing at least one layout a week, and usually incorporating something from whatever week it is, and I do not feel out of the loop while doing it. Here is this week’s layout, using DMC floss to “connect-the-dots.”

As for this week, for many people, it can be daunting. Ribbons, threads, and fibers…when left to their own devices… can overwhelm a scrap space and become a snarled mess to rival any jewelry drawer. Some, left unchecked, can multiply in the dark (I have seen it happen). Fortunately, or un, while I have a healthy amount of fibers and ribbons in my scrapbooking, I have yet to succumb to a full grown fiber fetish (partially because I think that Fabulous Spouse hides in a corner going “this is not the ribbon you are looking for…move along” in his best Jedi voice).

Those ribbons, fibers and threads that I do have, OCD Me has corralled for the most part (well more than half, at any rate). However, as OCD me always tries to tell PA me, there is always room for improvement. …and lets face it, there are some ribbons, etc that have escaped their tackle box prison, and others that are still at large, having never been captured, tamed, and kenneled with its kin. This is my before ribbons… Like OCD Me said, not bad- but could be better.

So, I sat down with my unruly ribbons and got to work. At some point, Girl Friday got a hold of my camera and here is an unflattering picture of me (post bathroom cleaning and mid ribbon wrangling). It was a few hours worth of work, especially when OCD Me got the idea mid-organization to sort by color rather than thread/fiber type. I also had gotten a $1.50 Clearance jar, and this was to be the home for those ribbons who were still on spools and needed a home. Eventually, I may put together some sort of dowel system, but between swim lessons, little league, boy & cub scouts, and church functions… reality and PA Me have to put their feet down. So, for now, here is my after, not perfect, but getting better.