OWH Memorial Day Weekend Blog Hop

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone, and thank you for visiting my blog! I looked through most of my stash to create this card - which was just a little difficult since I'm in the middle of reorganizing everything. I found a bag full of american themed supplies a friend gave to me while my husband was deployed and searched through for inspiration. I found a perfect sized journalling card and matted it on blue cardstock. Add in the flag heart and sticker letters, ink the edges of the card, and here you go!

I hope you like my card! The next stop on the hop is Brittany.. and thank you again for visiting my blog!

Project Organization, Day 15

I haven't had much time this past week to do much organizing... hubby has been working hard and had drill this weekend so I was alone with the boys. I was also busy trying to get the rest of the house back in order.. not that it looks like it right now! Anyway, the latest thing I've tackled are my wooden stamps. Before, I had them stored in a white plastic basket like the picture below... not very conducive to productive stamping! It was so difficult to find a stamp, I'd end up dumping the whole pile on the floor, if I even knew what I had! At least I had one basket for just Christmas, and one basket for everything else which made it a little easier. I really thought about how much I actually stamped. There are a few stamps that I really did love, I just never used them because it was soooo hard to find them. Plus, I tend to use the clear stamps more, and I'm exploring the world of digital stamps. Which made me think... how much space am I willing to use to store these stamps which I don't use very often? I sorted through and got rid of a lot of the stamps.. the picture below are all of the stamps I'm getting rid of....






So then of course my next though was how am I going to store the ones I'm going to keep? I need some sort of flat storage where I can keep them all in one layer. Of course, being the lover of all things Ikea, I already had a few boxes like the ones pictured below (although mine are bigger but I couldn't find them online).

source: www.ikea.com

So here are most of the stamps that I am keeping.. much smaller than what I started out with! There are a few stamps that I got more recently not pictured here... they must be in another box that I haven't sorted through yet, but I don't think I'll need more than this one box. All of these stamps are something I have either recently used, or I have ideas for projects to do with them. I actually may consider buying those smaller boxes at Ikea just to use less space, two should be plenty! We'll see, and for now I'll put it on my wish list with those red boxes!

Gift Wedding Album

I was invited to a bridal shower a couple of weeks ago for a teacher at my son's preschool. Of course, I decided to do a wedding album for her, but didn't finish it until today. I didn't have much time available to put it together, but a page here, a couple pages there, and finally it's finished! I gave the album to her today and she absolutely loved it! I'm so glad! Here it is:

Project Organization, Day 8

GOALS

I just came to the realization that before I can organize my supplies in a way that works best for me, I need to figure out what that is. In order to do that, I need to clearly define my scrappy goals... so here they are:

1. My main purpose for scrapbooking is to document the everyday moments. It's not just about birthdays and holidays. It's about the Saturday morning cartoons and favorite cereals and variety of personalities that I want to capture. To be able to meet this goal, I need to be better about making lists of pages I want to do and writing down the journalling I want in the moment while I still remember. I also need to get caught up with my photo editing and printing, which of course will eventually lead to the dilemma of photo storage, but I will handle that when I get there.
2. I want to participate more in the manufacturer challenges. To do this, it's best to have my supplies sorted by manufacturer.. so all those Bo Bunny embellishments will be stored with the Bo Bunny papers. All other embellishments will be sorted by embellishment type.
3. I need to make my supplies quick and easy to locate. If Collin ends up in the hospital again for another 2 weeks and I only have a couple minutes to grab supplies, or need to tell someone else what to get, it needs to be easy to find. Of course, this is why I have kits to grab, and photos will need to be specifically labelled, but also my most commonly used supplies (adhesive, scissors, paper trimmer, distressing ink, etc) need to be all together in one little tote to grab and run, then I just need to grab a box of photos and a kit or two then I'm ready to go.
4. I need to make inspiration easier to find. I had a whole shelf filled with old books, magazines, and random notes that I never looked at. I need to go through those magazines, get rid of those books I don't use, and consolidate. Of course, I will have a few magazines that I will always keep like the sketch magazines, but most of them I can rip out the particular articles or pictures that inspire me and get rid of the rest.
5. I want to use my tools more. I need to make it easier to get out the cricut or the big shot so that I can get more use out of them. When planning projects, I always forget about those tools because they are so bulky and difficult to use with my lack of space.

While I do have many other goals for my scrapbooking, these are my main ones that directly impact my organization needs. Today was a busy day so I didn't get any more sorting/purging done, but now that I have an outline of a game plan hopefully it will go a lot smoother from here!

Project Organization, Day 7

So I finally decided I wasn't going to take pictures of all the layouts I haven't put into albums yet. It's a good thing too because there was a lot more than I thought there was. After I finished putting them all into the albums, I realized something... I need more albums! I have no idea where I'm going to put these albums, but they don't belong here. I have my other albums on the tv stand in the living room, but I'm not going to fit these others there too.. there's just not enough room! I guess I'll put them in my bedroom closet for now. One thing is for sure, I definitely need to go through all these albums and sort the layouts. Right now they are in random order.... but that's a project for another day.

Project Organization, Day 5

I've sorted through some of my paper and I have it divided into two baskets - one for kits/paper collections, and one sorted by brand. Of course, I have I don't know how many paper pads from DCWV that is going to require a whole different section.

I'm thinking of getting these from Ikea.. and they're red (swoon)!! They would be the perfect size to hold my papers. I'm thinking maybe 2, or if I could fit all my paper pads in there too I'd get a 3rd one. I also went through the paper brands I have sorted and bookmarked the blogs. I know a lot of them have challenges on their blogs and it would be another way to encourage me to use up my stash. I'm still figuring out what to do with embellishments though....

Project Organization, Day 4

Day 4 of reorganization, and my shelves are completely empty now. I remember watching an organizing show with Peter Walsh on TLC where they removed absolutely everything from the room to sort through before bringing it back in to a fresh space. Looking at my shelves, I still had a few things here and there, a lot of empty storage containers, and a few non-scrapping related things. Looking at the space like that, I couldn't see how I would really be able to re-organize everything once I sort through it. So I removed everything. All the storage stuff is in one corner, and everything else is in boxes. I couldn't believe how clean it looked. I am inspired again! I actually managed to finish pages 6-9 of the gift wedding album, and I'm thinking of ideas for pages 10-13 which I hope to get done tomorrow.

Looking at everything piled up in boxes, I really can't believe how much I have! So how am I really going to evaluate what to keep and what to get rid of? Obviously the stuff I don't like will go, but what about the rest? How much is too much? How many projects will sit there undone before I either do them or give up on it? This is something to sleep on and evaluate in the morning when I have a clear head....