Tuesday, November 23, 2010

My New Craft Room

Let me start with: I have the best husband! When we were building our house he didn't mind if I took over the entire extra bedroom as a stamping space! He only requested one of the little nightstands and a space for his printer for school use and he put the rest of his school supplies in the basement! I know lots of stampers are teachers and if you are, you understand how much of a sacrifice that is for him! So I thought I would share pictures of my space!
This is my favourite wall in the room! It shows of all the colours of my papers and my decor elements frames that I love!
Here's a better look at my paper storage system. I have labelled all of the shelves with the paper it holds so I can easily find what I am looking for. The drawers on the left are filled with embellishments and alterables! I love this storage system although it was a costly investment (I did wait a long time for a good sale to come along too)! All of my ribbon sits on top of this system in the SU holders.
My desk sits just underneath the window, which I love because it's great to look out while crafting and I can get a good sense of how well the colours really work together! In the drawers I keep my punches and adhesives. The bottom drawer of my dresser is a file drawer in which I file all my scraps of cardstock so I can keep them separate from full size pieces. Also, in the file cabinet to the right of my desk I keep retired colours of cardstock.
Finally, here is how I organize my stamps (not the best photo). They get lined up alphabetically in my Ikea shelving system. To the right you can see our printer sitting on one of the nightstands where I keep extra supplies and my circle cutting system.

I do also have some built in storage in another area of the room, but I haven't quite figured out how to organize it yet! It just contains storage systems for all of my already made cards and cricut items!
  
Hope you've got some ideas for organizing your space! Overall, I have to say my label maker was my best friend when organizing this space!

ETA: I purchased my paper storage system through http://www.treasuredmemoriescanada.com/ when they were on sale. However, they can also be purchased through the maker of them http://www.bestscrapbookshelf.com/. I know I got them on sale but just looking at the prices now, they seem much more expensive then when I got mine about a year or so ago. The specific ones I ordered are 3 of OC Kit D1 and one of OC Kit D3.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Thank You Cards

Grant and I wanted to give small thank you cards to the two salespeople that we worked with throughout the home building process. I knew I wanted to use the fabulous "Good Neighbors" stamp set that is now retired from the Sale-A-Bration promotion earlier this year and then I saw the front card here and decided to make my own version of it using some of my favourite retired items from Stampin' Up!
This first card is for our direct sales person. We dealt with her on at least a weekly basis from March until getting possession at the end of October. She helped us to pick out what things we wanted to build our dream home.
This second card is for another sales person that we dealt with quite often when we came to check up on the progress of our house and she was just as willing to help us out with any questions or concerns we had. On both cards the houses and roofs are raised up on dimensionals.

We're still getting settled in the house, unpacking has been on hold because we both have bad colds right now so our heads just aren't up for it! It doesn't help that they are digging the lots up on either side of our house to finally put up houses! We were hoping it would have been at least started by them time we moved in but no such luck; at least they are doing both lots at the same time so the noise is all at once! 

Here's a peek at our house for those who are interested!
Supplies:

Heartfelt Gratitude Card
Stamps: SU good neighbors (retired), fabulous phrases
Ink: SU not quite navy, old olive, bashful blue, chocolate chip
Paper: SU not quite navy, ww, maine blueberry dp (retired)
Button: SU old olive corduroy button (retired)
Punches: SU 1 1/4" square
Misc: SU dimensionals, embroidery thread

Kind Thanks Card
Stamps: SU good neighbors (retired), fabulous phrases
Ink: SU regal rose, pretty in pink, so saffron, chocolate chip
Paper: SU regal rose, ww, georgia peach dp (retired)
Button: SU old olive from playground designer buttons (retired)
Punches: SU 1 1/4" square
Misc: SU dimensionals, embroidery thread

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Getting Settled and 30th Anniversary

We're getting all settled in to the new house with not a lot left to unpack. It still doesn't feel like it's ours since we've never owned a house before but I'm sure that will come when we start getting the bills for it! Anyways, the point of this post is to share the card I made for my parents 30th wedding anniversary (which was on Monday)! Congratulations to them!
This card was inspired by this beautiful card by Lynn. I had to make it work with different stamps since I don't own that one. For the flowers I used  the set Cottage Garden, cut them out and raised them on dimensionals. For the stems I used the set For All You Do and used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to line them up the way I wanted.

Stamps: SU Cottage Garden, For All You Do, Everything Nice
Ink: SU basic black, regal rose, pretty in pink
Paper: SU basic black, ww, regal rose, pretty in pink, pink pirhouette
Brads: SU pretty in pink
Ribbon: SU 1/4" black grosgrain
Misc: SU dimensionals