Not more storage!!!

Cubicles in a box

The brand new drawer units are to the left. Two drawers each

Jake and Gracie, when I asked for help

Living so close to Michael's, Hobby Lobby, JoAnn's, and Walmart is dangerous. One little stupid idea pops into my head, and off I go. When I lived in Marshall, IL., driving the 14 miles to Terre Haute to shop at the box stores would make me hesitate, leaving a good amount of time for common sense to kick in.

Nope. Not anymore. I rearranged the studio after deciding I was staying at this location, and decided I needed another 2 drawer units. Last year I purchased 6 cubicles, online, from Michael's during their 70% off sale of craft storage. Michael's no long carries the 3 drawer units online. In fact, none of the cubes are available online. So I didn't have a lot of hope when I hit the store yesterday afternoon. Oh, those of little faith! 2 drawer units, and they had 3 boxes. I bought just 2. I did show some constraint.

These were not all that difficult to assemble, except when I could not get the first drawer front piece to line up to the sides. So I took a break, and attacked it in a different way, and that worked. We were off and rolling.

Today will be spent at the dog park, and unpacking the few remaining boxes in the garage. Believe it or not, there are still missing supplies out there. Yeah. I thought it was looking a little sparse.
Linda

Random Stuff

Outside of Grey Dog Deli

Once again moving stuff around in the studio

Shake Rag Collage Camp on Friday

Book of Moments on Saturday

I so want to finish my Book of Moments. But all of the metal brads and misc. pieces are packed in totes and boxes in the garage because I thought I was moving. It has now become obvious I am not going to sell this house for what I want from it, so I will stay right here. Yesterday afternoon I decided enough was enough, and rearranged furniture in that room to give me more storage and space. I love this new arrangement on that wall, which faces the door as you walk into the bedroom. Not done yet. Will finish up today and start to put things back how I want them.

My body is telling me that I lifted too many objects yesterday. Another excellent reason to abandon the idea of moving.

In the first class photo, Seth stood on the window ledge to take the picture of the group. For the Book of Moments class, he went up to the balcony that runs along the side of the room. Good angle. Thanks for stopping by.
Linda

Random Thoughts

Dega, sitting on my lap

The first cube

And here we have all 6 cubes completed

Cathy and I have this theory. It's that women who like to craft, scrapbook, paint, do mixed media, etc. secretly just like to organize supplies in cute containers. We have come to this conclusion because we both realized that we spend far more time, effort, and money organizing than we do creating. This could also be because we are nuts. Or not.

It started like this: I had these ancient plastic containers sitting on top of the older, larger 6 cubes above for several months. Looked like crap to me, but I could find whatever I wanted. Most of the time. THEN I saw on the internet somewhere, probably on a blog, that an artist had used old dressers to store her stamping supplies. The light bulb went off over my head, and I started looking for old dressers. Yeah, no that didn't go anywhere. Cathy and I had our eyes on some of those painted dresser type furniture pieces at Hobby Lobby, with loads of drawers. Not super expensive, but the cost was enough to make us think twice.

I happened to stop at Cathy's one day 2 weeks ago, and saw she had 2 of these cubes with drawers in her work area. She had purchased them at Michael's years ago, but thought they were still there. Michael's was having a sale, 70% off the craft storage units. Our local store didn't have them, but leave it to Cathy to find them online. With the sale price, they were $15.99 each, and Michael's was only charging $9.85 to ship all 6 I ordered UPS. Whoa, let me whip out my credit card!!! Take my money.

The 3 boxes, each containing 2 flat and in pieces cubes, was delivered in 4 days. All I had to do was put them together. Right.  THIS is my rant: we all know all of this shit comes from China. The instructions are almost always in English, French, possibly German, and Spanish. Thank the powers that be that there were also detailed drawings, or I'd still be sitting on my living floor muttering to the dogs. Why can't the manufacturers have someone that speaks English primarily write the damn instructions? No, they always have an individual that speaks English as a second language write this crap, and the idioms are weird. But I did figure it out.

The first cube with all 3 drawers took me 3 hours. No joke. From that point though, I was whipping those drawers together in 12 minutes per drawer. I timed myself. Watched CASTLE reruns on TNT and screwed stuff together. Nathan Fillion makes everything easier.

I am loving the organization. Typed up content markers for the front of each drawer. Cleaned out stamps that I have not used in years and gave them a new home. I have 3 drawers still empty, which means I can now shop and buy more stuff.

Life is Good.
Linda

Say what?

Last week I decided to reorganize the craft/studio room. Every day I enter said room, and do something. It isn't finished. It's not finished, because I don't know what to do with all this stuff.

In the past 6 years (since I bought this house), I have enjoyed the following hobbies: scrap books, mini albums which are scrap books, painting paper mache and wood, mixed media canvases, primitive crafts, sewing, stamping, card making, stamping metal and making bracelets, and abstract art.

The card making and scrap books are over and done. Time to move on. But at one point this was a passion, so I hesitate to give away or throw out any and all of those supplies. My thoughts are to put the supplies I am not currently using into containers, place the containers in the closet with labels, and reorganize the room. I did that. Do you see any hope for this room? The key word is "room", as in there is none. It was suggested by a friend that I use the spare bedroom that is actually set up as a guest room for more storage. There is a queen size bed and two dressers in that bedroom, and it is where Gracie sleeps every night. Gracie put her paw down, and said no way. Uh huh. Not happening, mom.

Today I am tackling this again. One more time. There is a solution, I just haven't found it yet.

On another note entirely, I am not proud to be living in Indiana today. The Religious Freedom Act is about to be signed into law. This is a legal way for businesses and the government to discriminate without any threat of being sued. Gen Con, the largest convention that Indianapolis hosts, will not return to the city if this becomes law. I am hoping that entertainers, the racing industry, and sports teams formally protest as well. Sad. A very sad day.

Linda

Here we go again

It's January. That time of year where we all start new projects. New eating regimens. An exercise program. So of course my friend Cathy and I are once again enrolled in the Documented Life project. Of course we are.

The Documented Life Project has been evolving on the net for the past few years. It is four artists who are friends, and lend their talents to the 'verse for free. If you are interested, please visit their blog here. You can register for the academy, and for emails concerning the weekly posts. What is this? It is free (always nice) prompts and demos on art journals. For example, each individual artist posted a video on their individual blogs this past week for the first journal entry. The prompt was to use book (actually any text) paper, and the phrase "Be Your Own Goal Keeper".

This year we are using the Dyan Reavley large journal. You can use whatever you like, but of course because it's Cathy and Linda, we had to spend money on new art supplies. I bought one journal yesterday to get started (my other two were full), and a second journal is on order. One of the artists, Lorraine Bell, demonstrated a black pencil called Blackwing. We had never heard of this, so Cathy found it on Amazon. 22 pencils are on order, because hey! one can never have enough pencils and that was the way to get a deal.

Cathy is now intrigued with the new paint line by Dina Wakley for Ranger products. I have one tube of this paint and yeah, it's pretty neat. I like it. But I also have 68 bottles of craft paint, 14 tubes of a slightly better quality of acrylic paint, and 20 bottles of Golden paint, which is expensive and my favorite. Various other brands are mixed in. How much paint do I need? A rhetorical question, because I know damn well paint will be purchased or ordered shortly. It's the way we roll.

This is my hobby. This is also somewhat of an obsession. There are stacks of blank canvases, containers of paper products, baskets of punches, die cuts, bags of alphabets, drawers of stamps and stamp pads. Speaking of which, I watched a demo on Youtube on how to carve your own stamps. So I tried it. So easy. I can see how this could become an addiction. The part I didn't like was using the stamp I carved. I had ink everywhere because you don't have a lot to hold onto. Will that stop me? No, of course not.

My drafting table is set up next to the north window. The only window.

Uh huh. No surface untouched.

Pathetic

The 2015 art journal front cover

The back cover

 In my defense, it is only the dogs and I living in the house. I close the door when I'm done for the day, and rarely leave the door open. I have quite unintentionally locked dogs in this bedroom. There is a feeling of freedom to be able to physically close the door on the mess, and know that it will be untouched until I return.

So. Does it appear I need more supplies? No. It does not. Will that stop me/us? Nope. In fact, there are two packages in transit to Cathy's house. She is practicing restraint. If she wasn't, there would be 5 packages in transit. Trust me, I have been down this road before. It's always nice to lose your mind with a friend....
Linda

alisaburke: moveable walls

alisaburke: moveable walls: My creative business is growing and evolving which means my creative space has been overdue for some changes.  My dream for the studio ha...

Alisa Burke is one super talented woman. She runs her business from her home, and this post on her blog about making their own moveable walls is inspiring. Thought I'd share it with you. Just love what she did, and the entire idea. Unfortunately, I don't have a large space where this would work.

However. Grin. There is always a "however". I am now thinking that painting a wall in my own studio in patterns/flowers would be so very cool. I have been wanting to redesign how I use the space. Hmmmmmmm!

Enjoy!
Linda

The Scrap Room

My bargain shutter in the studio

Details

Several months ago I saw a photograph of a scrapbooking studio where the woman had propped up old shutters, and was using them as storage. I loved the idea. I like the shabby look anyway. So I talked Cathy (yeah, right) into going with me to a local antiques/primitives store to browse for shutters. We found this one. It didn't fit into my car, so Cathy had to deliver it the next day in her truck. She has kicked herself repeatedly for not buying the mate to mine.

The general idea is that you can stick envelops of embellishments into the shutter openings. As you can see, it works rather well. This, of course, is not all of the embellishments I own. Good grief, no. I joke that I could open my own scrap store right out of my spare bedroom. In the first photo you can also see white bookcases to the left of the shutter. The baskets on top of the bookcases hold embellishments as well. This third bedroom is nothing but scrapbooking/card making/craft supplies. It has a double closet that is full as well. Along with a drafting table, a 6 foot table, and a 4 foot table.

I am out of room. Seriously? I could use a space twice as big as this bedroom. It is jammed packed. However, I know where everything is (kind of), and it definitely helps me to be organized when I am in the mood to create something.

Gracie is not allowed to touch anything. Nor is Jake. That doesn't stop them from dreaming....as you can see in the above shot.

Have a good day. It's raining here. It's cold. It is a good day to work in this very room.
Linda