Ribbon Storage, Valentines, and more!

This is kind of a hodge podge post. I've got a few things to share with you today, so get ready! The first is that ribbon storage I have been talking about sharing. I joined a ribbon share and got 30 colors of grosgrain ribbon in 10 yard segments. I looked around and settled on this storage solution. I love how Karen did hers and it was relatively cheap with sales and coupons. I got mine at Hobby Lobby. I only bought one drawer and not all my ribbon will fit. I had about 6 colors left over that wouldn't fit in the drawer. So I either need to buy a second drawer or hurry up and use a bunch of ribbon so I can squeeze more in! Anyway, I totally needed something to fill the space that my background stamps used to fill when they were stacked up....so I put the drawer there. It's right next to me, easy to reach and it's really light so I can just pull it out and hold whatever I am working on right next to it to color match. Anyway, I got the drawers, the white cards and the clips at Hobby Lobby. They were all on the same aisle too.

Next I have a little valentine to share. I made this last night while I watched Scrubs with Matthew. Scrubs is only the best show on tv. It is completely our sense of humor. Anyway, here's a card I made while we watched. I used another $1 stamp from Michael's and Basic Grey Blush papers. I cannot get enough of the blush papers, and Recollections cannot keep them in stock! I used the mega scalloped punch for the striped Blush paper and sponged chocolate chip around the edges. I stamped the image on white cardstock, punched it out with the jumbo circle punch and sponged the edges with chocolate chip. I used markers to color the image. Then I stamped a strip of chocolate chip cardstock with paisley (in chocolate chip ink) and used the paper piercing tool to pierce along the top and bottom of the strip. I added pink organdy ribbon to that and mounted it on more Blush papers (also sponged in chocolate chip ink). Then did some more layering and voila! It's simple, but kinda shabby chic.

The last thing is another little gift set for a friend who is going through a hard time. I used more Basic Grey Romany on this set. Just a quickie Target notebook, monogrammed post-it holder, and a beaded pen. I hope it will at least cheer her up!

And tomorrow - the beaded pen tutorial will be here!!

We have a WINNER!!

I enjoyed reading all of your favorite things over the past few days! There are some great recipes in there as well! There seemed to be some common threads amongst our faves too. Our families, chocolate, stamping, reading, reading blogs, chocolate, etc. Thank you for sharing with me!

And now, for the winner! My 6 yo, Andy, picked the winner for me today!

Ara, you are the winner! Please email me your address and I'll ship your goodies out to you!

Here is what she said:

Ara said...
Wow Emily, another freebie, COOL!!Well, one of favorite things has to be mornings at my house...the kids inner alarm clocks are set for 8 bells, and they sometimes come in earlier, or later, but mostly at 8. And we snuggle and watch Curious George!! It is wonderful!! Thanks Emily for allowing me to share!!Ara
January 27, 2007 11:03:00 PM CST

Thank you all for commenting and reading my blog! Here's to many more hits!

And a little something cool to share with you. My husband asked what we could do to organize my room a little more (He meant it to be helpful, but I thought he was making fun of how messy it is!). So we got a shelf from Target and put my background stamps on it! I love it! Now they are off the table, the are not stacked up - which is supposedly bad for the rubber, and they look so nice! He has promised to figure out my label maker and label them along the side too! He's the bestest! And here's a pic of my new shelf!

Confession Time....

So I felt the need to confess something. It has been brought to my attention how organized and neat my stampin space is. Well.....it's just not true, lol! It's usually a disorganized mess. I am afraid my photos were a bit misleading. If you'll notice, some of them have cream walls instead of green. That means they were taken over a year ago. Probably the last time my stamp room was clean, in fact. So I just wanted to get that off my chest. No, I am not that neat of a stamper! In fact, right now, you can't even see the tables cause they are covered with junk. Ok, I feel better now.

Also, I wanted to show off my closet. This used to be a regular closet that had just one rack towards the top for hangers. Matthew put shelves in over Labor Day this year, you know.....cause he needed to do some labor. So now I've got my mailing center shelf, my finished projects shelf, my alterables shelf, and then some 'other stuff' shelves. I love it and it really has helped me get more organized. LOL! Seriously, it has helped the mess in here. Those of you that have been in my stamp room are laughing your butts off right now....but it is better. Honest.

My Stamping Space

I promised pictures of my stamping space today, so here they are! This is my actual stamping area. I have two tables (one 6ft and one 4ft) in an 'L' shape. The ink pads and paper file box are in the center of the 'L' so that two people can stamp at the same time and be able to reach most of it. My husband painted my room a lovely shade of moss/celery green for my birthday present this year. It was a total surprise because I came home after spending a week at my mom's with the boys and there it was! An awesome surprise birthday present!

This is the "office" side of the room. I am pretty much the only one who uses the computer at our house (aside from the boys sometimes) so the whole room is really mine. I am the Correspondence Secretary, as my husband says, so this is my space to keep track of all of that. I love that furniture...I got it at Target when we moved into this house. Simple and easily moved around if I want to change things up. I even built it myself!

This is my work area. I have it set up so I can reach most of my stuff from my chair. I have several of the drawer sets from Walmart and they work great for storing little things like brads, eyelets, and snippets of ribbon. I got the ribbon rack (and the punch one shown in the other photo) from ebay about 2 years ago. They are fabulous. MyCraftSolutions has a great store on ebay with lots of different configurations. They are very very nice and were great to work with. Unfortunately, my area is rarely this clean, lol!

This is a close-up of my ink caddies. I got these from a place called dzyntec.com. They ran a great deal of 10 caddies for $90. They said they were moving to a new location and didn't want to move the inventory. Well, they never reopened that I know of. I love love them though! I have them on an acrylic turntable that they sold. So I have a caddy for each color family. It holds all the ink pads and reinkers for that color family. I also have three more caddies lined up against the wall behind them. I use these for craft pads and other ink pads.

And last, but not least, my stamp storage. I have the crop in style store in style cube storage. I have two that have shelving. One I use vertically for stamping magazines, SU publications, etc. The other I use horizontally for extra cardstock, there is one shelf for each color family and a space for the neutrals and in color as well. The cubes with doors on them are for my stamp sets. I have them semi-organized by type: word sets, floral sets, animal sets, etc. It is not the most efficient way of storing stamp sets, but I don't ever have that many sets so it works for me. I try not to have over 80 or so sets at one time. I find it overwhelming and then I don't use them. So if I find I don't use a set, I get rid of it and get something else. I like to refer to it as recycling. Now most days, you'll find 5-10 of these sets stacked up on my table, lol!

So there you have it! That is my stamping space! I have found that having my own space and not having to put it all away each time (as I would if I was using the kitchen table or something) has been the biggest factor in my growth as a stamper. I don't feel so much pressure to create quickly because I can always leave it and come back later.

Now I promise my next entry will have an actual stamped item in it!!