Organize your Stuff: Week 7 (round 3): Ideas Part 2

Goodness what a week! I do not know what it is about ideas week that always seems to put PA Me in charge. I can always seem to find something else that needs to be done ahead of it. You know… help with kids homework, teacher conferences, sports practices, cooking, cleaning, doing three layouts! Fabulous Spouse, who seems to be watching a lot less football this season, even tried to help out and brought down all of my magazines from upstairs.

I think that all of those magazines were a little overwhelming. OCD Me started making mental lists into which all those ideas could be sorted. The PA Me demanded a sidebar with the POW. This was supposed to be a slow and methodical process, emphasis on the slow. In a battle between the spouse and the inner voices, the POW had only one recourse left. Alcohol. After a glass of wine, the universe seemed a little more stable, and it was back to work.  I am by no means done, but I have made a start! After all, I had told the girls from Two Peas that I was doing three layouts this week to try and capture the Glee Club theme this week.

This week was Country Music week at Dixie Pieces. Yes, that is right Carrie Underwood and Country Music. Like I said last week, country is not my genre of choice, and doing it two weeks in a row was a little frustrating for the POW. However, wine glass in hand I did my best to tackle it yet again. This time, instead of getting saved, you DID lose your car, boyfriend or dog! Oh, and you did it through a haze of red, white and blue Americana and patriotism. Like the previous weeks, we had 10 song titles from which to choose our layout title. So, these are my three…

This was our first and only trip to the Rodeo. We went while Fabulous Spouse was in Iraq, so I figured that you could not have anything more Patriotic or screaming Country Music!

This layout was from just this last week but the title made me laugh, as my Elusive Middle Child finally gave up his training wheels, making the sidewalks safe for no one!

Finally, on a softer note, this past summer, our first nephew arrived! Fabulous Spouse and I both remarked on how tiny he seemed. Partially because it seems that I can only birth linebackers, and it had also been so long since we have been around a newborn.

Although they were all special to me, in the end it was the Rodeo layout that I submitted to the contest. We will see if it captures the heart of Dixie (Pieces, that is)!

Organize your Stuff: Week 7 (round 3): Intermission!

Usually, I post on Mondays and Fridays, but today is special.  The POW has rallied the troops and gotten her act together for a rare Tuesday Edition!  Today is Tuesday, and it is the first Tuesday that I am on the Design Team for Tuesday Trio! (YEAH!!!!)

This is the card that we did for Sketch #39. We had to do something 3-D, so Creative Me chose pinwheels, because my secret word is wind (רוח). I also had my Girl Friday, who SO wanted to help, use her thumbprint as the bumblebee! Here is the card and the inspiration sketch from Tuesday Trio!

Also, here is the list of all of the other Fabulous Gals on the Design Team! If you are looking for ideas, they are also some of the sites you should visit.  Each one of them is talented in different ways in this papercrafting art. Welcome and Congrats!

Chen Rosenberg

Dailly Gelber

Jeannie DeGruccio

Maya Dahan

Michal Shoval

Orly Shamir

Shir Benovitch

Organize your Stuff: Week 7 (round 3):Ideas Part 1

Ideas are those thing that get our mojo going to create. They can be magazines, books, blogs, threads on message boards… just something to give you the Ah-ha moment. This week is one that I kind of glossed over the first time (link here). This is because the Inner Hoarder does not want to let go of any of the boxed up magazines that I have from the 1990s, and PA Me not at all interested in going through the pages of these magazines to try and save some of the best ideas and recycle the rest. My goal is to go through at least one magazine a night. PA Me told the POW that to expect any more would mean a strike and a repeat of last year’s Misery reenactment. As the POW is still having flashbacks from that particularly nasty episode in inner personality relations, she agreed.
These are some of the places I have gotten online inspiration lately...

Here is this week’s card from Tuesday Trio (#38). I had my flowers fall like they were in the wind (רוח). And used sticles (a kind of glitter glue) on it as well. This site is an example of the places where I get my ideas these days. Every week there is a new sketch and a challenge associated with that sketch. Some weeks you go Seriously?! …and others you go Wow! I think that most people, myself included, choose to do cards based on these sketches, but some (shout out to you Shir Benovich!) take it a step further and applies this sketch to a scrapbooking layout. You Rock Girl! (As a PS- I just got picked for the design team! Yeah! The POW is in heaven!!!) So check them out!

Two Peas in a Bucket, of course, as that is from where the inspiration for this blog and my organization come. They have a message board (or boards) and are teaming with sample projects and groups doing everything from cards, to heritage albums, to multi picture layouts. There is a niche for everybody if you need it (unpaid service announcement) *smile*.  Without this site, I would never have read the works of Zen Master Wookiemouse or been taken on this journey by the Fabulous Crisann (and everyone else on the organization threads!).

Another site that I am currently visiting is Dixie Pieces. I am on Week 5 of a 6 week Glee Club Challenge. This sparked my attention because each week is a specific genre of music(as I have been lamenting in previous posts!). This week is Carrie Underwood country music! Ok, the POW is officially not amused (but that is just because I am a Northerner, and country music is not my thing). I love concept, and Southern Gospel: Country Music Version actually led me to create one of my best, or at least most endearing layout in a long while. But with only 6 Weeks to explore all the different types of music out there, I thought two weeks of country is a bit excessive…even if your website IS called Dixie Pieces (and Dixie implies Southern for my non-USA readers, and Southern usually means likes country music). That being said, it still gives me ideas and helps me create (even if it causes the POW to think very dark thoughts).

This summer, I found another site that combined a book club and scrapbooking. Had I more free time, I would have done more with this, and I might go back after the Glee Club ends, if I don’t stumble along anything else online. It was The Open Book Challenges. This used cover art and the content of the book as inspiration for a layout. Books ranged from deep thinking books to Twilight. I only did one of these, but I did read a book that I probably would not have if I had not found the site! (here is the blog entry with the layout I did).

I guess my final online site, for now, would be Scrapbook Calls. This is where I actually found some of the above sites, by checking out their Design Team calls, contests, and challenges. It is pretty cool, just to give you a feel for what is out there, and it is updated a couple times a week.

Back at the end of the week with how Ideas- the magazine portion is working out…

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 3): Photos Part 2

Question of the Week: One photo per layout or lots? 4x6 or all different sizes? What's your scrapbooking photo style? As you can see from the layout further down, I use lots of photos and lots of sizes. I blame the invention of the digital camera, allowing us to take a million and three photos of a twenty minute event… more if it is longer or your kids get a hold of the camera. To further enable us photo junkies, Costco (my enabler of choice), Snapfish, Wal Mart, Target… just about any place that you go (even your corner chain pharmacy)… will convert these moments to print for as little as $.13 a photo usually in an hour or less (except when the machine breaks, and that only happens when you actually need the photos and cannot wait until the next day or next hour), and they can do enlargements and wallets too for just a small upcharge!

Let’s get to the Layout for this week first (as PA Me finds digital storage a very dry topic).

and here is my mini challenge card

This was my response to the Dixie Pieces Glee Club Challenge for Week 4: Southern Gospel (country version not AME version). I came to the decision that no matter what, I was never going to be a country music Southern Gospel Gal. I blame my Northern upbringing, and that my ears were conditioned to place twangy, traditional country music in the same category as waterboarding and Geneva Convention infractions against the humane treatment of prisoners. “Whip me, beat me, take away my charge card!--to paraphrase a favorite movie from my youth, “Space Camp” (it has a young Joaquin Phoenix, you should Netflix it!)—just don’t put on the country music!

Ok, I feel better now. Actually, it was not that bad.  We played BINGO in the forum. I focused more on the religious aspect of the genre. Like I said earlier, instead of losing the truck, girl, and the dog, in these songs you get saved. Since I fizzled out of the Organization Challenge in early May last round, I never got to my Easter vacation. This one layout is from the most important part of our trip, “witnessing” my Fabulous SIL receive her First Communion and Confirmation. (*sniff*-off to grab a hankey!)

As for my photo storage, this week I tackled some of my digital storage. For those of us who have made that great leap of technology from celluloid and Kodachrome (which is discontinued now BTW) to digital, backup and labeling is key. On my first digital vacation, I realized that I was left with IMG00001 through IMG99999 and was crushed by the fact that I just wanted that one picture from when we went to eat at that place on day 3…and it meant that I had to flip through thousands of frames… This was NOT acceptable to OCD Me. Now, I have a terabyte external drive (yes a terabyte), and OCD ME tries to upload to the internet (for me Costco) once a month, and she has individual folders on the computer. My desktop has folders that say Photos 2010, Photos 2009 etc. Inside that year folder, every day and event is separated into its own folder. I can have 01-04-2010 Girl Friday makes snow angels (the 01 is important, so the computer doesn’t try and reorganize and put October, November and December between January and February). If there is more than one event in a day, like on a vacation, OCD Me tackled this too. Now it is 07-04-2010a Fourth of July Parade, 07-04-2010b Neigborhood BBQ and 07-04-2010c Sparklers & Fireworks. This way I can always find what I want pretty quickly.

Eventually, I will get to tagging my photos, OCD ME thinks that’s great. However, I have heard that as you change systems, the tags can drop. Since I am still using a Microsoft operating system, and they seem to change every 2 years or so, and PA Me is not ready to invest the time to tag, when it is not going to stick.  So this is it for now, until OCD Me gets bored or Bill Gates promises not to change anything on my computer or Fabulous Spouse can be tricked into buying me an iPad...I know, I know...when donkeys fly (check out the opening sequence to the original Shrek).  Next week: Ideas!

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 3): Photos Part 1

Photos! Without these, there would be nothing to scrapbook. Depending on when you started taking photographs, and when…or if…you switched to a digital media… there could potentially be a lot of work in your future.

We tackled our “cold storage” last round (round 2 blog here). This was everything pre digital, and it was enough! Now, on my scrapbook wish list is saving to convert the negatives from these pictures to digital, a not minor financial undertaking, as much of these photographs were taken with Advantix film, a much smaller negative than 35mm.

This round, ODC Me is off to update our digital storage, while PA me is left with cleaning the rest of the pantry with which the POW tasked her last week as punishment for not wanting to deal with scraps. We got the bottom three shelves organized. Four more to go.

My Creative Me went overboard this weekend. She knocked out three pages for a chipboard mini-album that she started in April, and created this fabulous… yet disturbing… over the hill birthday card for the Tuesday Trio weekly challenge Sketch#37-with a desert motif as the site inspiration piece.  The desert scene is hand painted- I told you she was disturbed.  The palm trees cut out of patterned paper that needed to be purged a long time ago. I think that we are excited about Halloween at the end of the month, since the neighbors are already decorating in skeletons and spider webs and such!

As for my Glee Club layout for Friday, Dixie Pieces has asked for a Southern Gospel theme. I have lived in Charleston, SC twice (for 2.5 yrs total), so I thought that I might have a fighting chance. However, the POW is completely stumped. The Moderator’s vision of Southern Gospel music is much different than mine (granted, I am by no means a Southerner, originally from the Northeast, and now it the Pacific Northwest). I may be showing my ignorance, my naïveté, whatever…but my vision was more AME, “Sister Act”, matching robes, a couple of spontaneous “Hallelujahs”, an organ/ piano and a tambourine or two. This version is country music, except that instead of losing the girl, the truck and the dog, you get saved. It is OLD SCHOOL twangy country music and the Artist is Jeff and Sheri Easter…Google them. The moderator had not even heard of “Sister Act”, and thought that it was a singing group. If Southern Gospel as I knew it was outside of my purview, country music Gospel puts me way outside the box! Wish me luck this week!

Organize your Stuff: Week 5 (round 3): Scraps Part 2

For a moment, PA thought about pitching the scraps, because it just isn’t worth the time to straighten up! However, the Inner Hoarder perked up at this thought, and she personally saw to it that she and OCD Me straightened the few pieces that were out of place because when PA Me scraps, she never puts things in color order (ROY G BIV).

As for my Glee Club challenge at Dixie Pieces this week, it was Children’s Music- Raffi. Ironically, I struggled more with this layout than with alternative. I guess some part of me is anti-establishment, or maybe the POW was put in charge of babysitting too often in her teenage years. Confession: As a parent, I have never owned a Raffi tape, or any kid specific tape/ CD. I don’t think that I could handle it over and over again. As it was, I had Blues Clues narcolepsy! I swear, that green striped shirt showed up on the TV (and they played the same one episode Monday through Friday, so the kids could “learn”) and I was asleep on the couch before the first paw print. Nope, the car radio was mine. I worked hard to survive to adulthood, and I was not going to give that power up to someone whose diaper I had to change. I know, take away my Greatest Mom Ever mug now.

So, here is my layout. I just love this BoBunny Learning Curve line!

Here are my scraps- a library pocket tag.

Here is one of those pom poms I told you about… smaller than tumble weeds, but worse than dust bunnies!

Organize your Stuff: Week 5 (round 3): Scraps Part 1

Question of the Week:  What do you consider a scrap?  Anything that has been cut from it's original 12x12 or 8.5x 11.  Girl Friday has worked her Jedi mind tricks on me, and convinced me of this.

Here is my card for Tuesday Trio Design Team Tryouts this week sketch #36. No girly colors allowed for this challenge (pink, red, orange). Creative Me rose to the challenge and this is the result:

As a side note, the POW talked Creative Me out of Need to get Lucky? and into Good Luck.  Hopefully, it was a wise choice.  Next she has to do a Raffi themed layout for the Dixie Chicks Glee Club Challenge. She’ll be busy for a while.

As for scrap week, OCD pretty much keeps this one under wraps. Due to the voracious appetite… er… helpful hands of our always creative Girl Friday, scraps are a pretty endangered species around here. I have it on good authority from a Organizer (LoveRibbons-shout out to you!), some day the black hole of creativity that hovers at the edge of my crafting universe will someday disperse, and then I will be stuck fighting with the Inner Hoarder to let go of MOUNTAINS of scraps.

Last week I showed you where some of these scraps live, organized on top of the paper. Here is my working accordion folder that needs a little love from OCD Me, and not too much love from girl Friday, while the POW keeps PA Me occupied with other things, and threatening to make her clean!