Let's Get Crafty - Whatchamacallits

Book Marks or Page Markers (whatever you want to call them)

A little back story first.  😀
I've got no problem admitting that I like getting crafty and I like lots of different mediums.  I think I was born with crafty DNA.  My mother was artsy/crafty, her cross stitch (which I've shared on my blog) and her quilts are works of art and at one time she even ran a small ceramic shop out of our house part time, mostly for all the ladies that lived in the housing development we lived in.  Even my father had a artsy/crafty side to him, I remember him painting a humongous Bonsai tree in our dining room back in the 60's.  Granted it was paint by number but still a painstaking project and at one time he owned along with my step mom a plaster shop out in Nevada, so I'm not surprised I inherited the crafty chip.

I've stuck with scrapbooking and paper crafts the longest, this year marks 22 years I've scrapbooked, but I've always dabbled in other stuff too.  Everything from calligraphy, stained glass, cross stitch, ceramics, pottery, batik and when I was still in high school sewed a lot of my own clothes.

One thing that I love is when I stumble upon something really fun to make that is for something else I love, in this case, books and it's even better when I already have all the supplies.  This project takes just two things; letter size envelopes and washi tape.  You will need a ruler, pencil and scissors too.

With the collection of washi tape I have, I have carte blanche in which tapes I'm going to use in making my page markers and I usually have a stack of letter size envelopes laying around.  If you don't, go to your closest dollar store and buy thee a box.

First step - with a ruler, mark off both corners of the envelope.  These will be the page markers. Make your angles as small or as large as you want.  I experimented with different sizes.

Next, cut those babies off the envelope.

Once you have the number of page markers you want to make, get out your favorite washi tape and position the tape on the page marker where you want it and snip off the ends.

Easy Peasy!

You want to make sure that you cut off a long enough piece of tape to go completely across the triangle or position where it will.  You can use as many piece of tape as you want.  It's up to you if you want to do the back side of the marker.  I did a couple each way, just one side and both sides.

Here's one where I use a two different designs of washi tape and how it fits on the page of my bullet journal.

Ta Da!  That's how easy it is to make these fun book or page markers.  You can even get fancier and use colored paper to make the triangles, but I find the envelopes make it just as fun.  It's also an easy, fun craft for kids or even fun to make as gifts for all your book loving friends.

Enjoy!  and thanks for stopping by.......

**Getting Crafty**

I usually get quite crafty in the months of January and February.  This time of the year is usually nasty outside, so I spend more time inside at home and it's the time of year I go to my annual scrapbook retreat and I get quite a bit of scrapbooking done there.

I usually put together a little goodie bag for my fellow retreat goers and this year, I made almond scented bath salts that I put in little glass bottles that I'd been saving when drinking the Starbucks Iced Coffees.  After using Goof-Off to get all of the labeling off the bottles,  I ran them through the dishwasher to get them good and clean.

Mixing up the bath salts is next and it's super easy....Epson salts, baking soda, fragrance and food coloring.  Since I decided I didn't want to paint the caps of the bottles, I went with blue food coloring so the salts would match.  After mixing the bath salts up and filling up the bottles, I got out the following from my craft stash:

• My stash of Prima flowers
• One of my round punches
• Bling
• Zig 2 way glue
• Glue Dots
• Ribbon or fiber (I chose some pretty blue fiber I've had for years)

After I punched out enough circles to cover the lids of the bottles, I used both glue dots and Zig 2 way glue to glue the Primas flowers on the circle and then top each on off with a touch of bling.

  

Using glue dots I covered the lids of the bottles with the flowers. 

 

I also hand lettered some tags to label the bottles "Almond Bath Salts" and tied the tags on the bottles with the blue fiber I had in my huge basket of fiber and ribbon. 

 

I think they looked very pretty!

 

  

I've also been kicking it with my scrapbook pages I'm completed.  I like to keep track.  I don't set a goal for myself because I don't want to put any pressure on working on things just to hit a page total goal, but I do like to know how many I do each year.   

 

Here's some statistics on my scrapbooking that I've keep track of for almost 10 years:

• 2005 - I completed 137 pages
• 2006 - I completed 144 pages
• 2007 - I completed 144 pages (strange that I did EXACTLY the same number as the year before)
• 2008 - I completed 147 pages
• 2009 - I completed 107 pages
• 2010 - I completed 112 pages
• 2011 - I completed 80 pages
• 2012 - I completed 74 pages
• 2013 - I completed 61 pages
• 2014 - I completed 43 pages

So it appears that starting in 2011, I slowed down my scrapbooking which makes sense because I don't think I was taking as many pictures as the kid was growing up and less opportunity. 

 

Here's a sampling of some of my favorite pages I've done over the last few months.   I'm a year behind with my scrapbooking, but being "behind" never bothered me because I never want to run out of things to scrapbook.

 

 



 

Have a great weekend!  It's been incredibly beautiful weather wise here and I've been trying to get outside after a very long two months of icky weather!

 

 

 

Too Crafty for my Own Good :)

Now that the holidays are over, I can share with you one of the things that I did for a Christmas gift to my sister and her husband AND a new pen caddy that I made for my craft room work table.

For ten years I sold Longaberger Baskets & Pottery, so needless to say, I have quite a stockpile of products from my time as a consultant.  Most I use either functionally or in our home décor, but once in a while I'll part with one as a gift to someone.

The basket was another version of the magazine basket.  The difference is this basket sits on legs and has a wooden lid with a toggle clasp.   For many years, I used it to store magazines and or articles from magazines in it, but I had cleaned it out a couple years ago and it had just been sitting in our spare bedroom unused.  I had also somehow got acrylic paint on the lid that marred it a bit.

I decided to give the basket filled with goodies to my sister and brother-in-law for Christmas.  I came up with the brilliant idea to paint the wooden lid with chalkboard paint.  Chalkboard paint is very on trend right now and after I took the plunge, I was so glad I did!

 

I taped off the leather hinges before painting and it did take two coats of chalkboard paint to get a nice coverage and I did both sides of the lid.

 

The finishing touch was writing "Stuff" in chalk on the lid and then it was filled with the other goodies we had bought for them.

The other DIY project I worked on was a pen caddy.  I needed to figure out a way to corral all of the pens, pencils, markers, etc. that I have on my craft room work table.  Not only because I have so many of them, but so I could "see" them too.  I had been collecting bath tissue rolls for another project when I came up with the idea of using them for a pen caddy.

As you can see, I have a LOT of pens and that doesn't even include the Copics and more Stablio pens in their own storage containers.

 

The basket in the below picture on the left is is the basket I decided to re-purpose as a pen caddy for my craft room.  Funny story about this basket; I don't even remember where I got it, but it's been around for a long time and has literally been used in almost every room in our house for some function or another.  Now it's got a permanent home in my craft room. 

 

The first thing I did as you can see in the photo below was to cut a piece of chipboard the dimensions of the bottom of the basket.

Next thing I did was round up the number of bath tissue rolls I was going to need to fill the basket.  In my case, I needed 12 tissue rolls.

 

Since I would see the front three tissue rolls, I went to my scrapbook paper stash and found a patterned paper to cover the three tissue rolls in the front.

Once the front three rolls were covered, I hot glued them to the piece of chipboard I cut for the bottom of the basket.

 

Once all of the tissue rolls were hot glued to the bottom chip board base, I placed the whole thing into the basket.



All that was left to do was fill up the various tissue rolls with my pens and markers.  Pens are really suppose to be stored horizontally, but I have so many that I could never use all of them in a lifetime so I don't worry about it too much and my pens and markers seem to be fine.

 

I was also able to tuck a few other tools in the side of the caddy for easy access and another benefit is that it is very light and portable.

I've also been busy around the house since the new year and have some fun things to share and some really good recipes that I've discovered.

Thanks for stopping by.......later!

 



My Life Craft

I thought this might be a good time to talk about something that really truly changed my life.

Eighteen and a half years ago, my mother brought me over a memory photo kit that she had purchased at Michael's.  Our son was only about six months old and I had just gone back to work.  I had always been an artsy-fartsy, crafty type my whole life, even as a child and it certainly continued into adulthood.  I was always working with some type of medium, whether it be sewing, drawing, calligraphy, stained glass, ceramics and cross-stitch AND I had always had scrapbooks, so my mom thought I'd have fun with it.

Little did she know that she awakening a sleeping giant.....LOL

I fell head over heels in love with the craft of scrapbooking.  I liked that I was actually doing something with the photos I was taking and it was satisfying the creative side of me also.

I started at a table in our attic, then I took over the dormer in our attic and here I am almost 19 years later with a small craft room to call my own.  I don't even want to try and estimate the amount of supplies I've had over the years, but I think that comes with the territory of having a hobby...hoarding supplies.  :)

I've never stuck with a hobby other than reading longer than I have scrapbooking.....going on 19 years and in that time I've done 30 scrapbooks, 26 mini albums, 12 specialty albums and countless gifts for friends and family......I would have to say an estimate of scrapbook pages would be around 1500!

As everyone else, the way I scrapbooked changed over the years also.........I laugh and laugh when I look back to those first years of pages, but I wouldn't change them for the world.  

Here's a page from the early days of Connor's 1st birthday and the cake we let him "explore"....so much fun!

When Connor was little, he loved snakes and had lots of stuffed snakes he liked to sleep with.  Here's a page a did with a favorite photo commemorating the memory.

That was during the time I was still doing an 8.5 x 11 format....I think I changed over to 12 x 12 a few years later.....I needed more paper real estate to work with...lol

Here's a page I did of Connor's first six birthday cakes.  Back then I matted EVERY STINKING PHOTO of my pages, some more than one layer....do you know how long that takes?  I finally got over that obsession with matting photos and now I rarely do it....

I've been organizing some of my photo CDs and DVD's and I came across a bunch of things I forgot I had.  Here's some photos of my first craft space.  This is in the finished attic of our first home.  It was cozy and in the winter time I loved looking at that window at the snow falling.  Connor had a play area on the other side of the attic and Fred's computer desk was up there too.....lots of evenings with the three of us, up there playing.

It was located in the dormer of our finished attic and it's fun to see what I was using a decade ago.  My craft space has certainly morphed over the years and once I get it back in shape, I'll share my space as it is currently.

Another thing about this craft that makes it more special and important than previous hobbies and crafts and that is the friends that I have made through scrapbooking, both in real life and even online friends.  My scrapbook friends are amazing, smart women and my life has been enriched by knowing all of them.  Even if I was to ever choose to not do this hobby any more, the friendships I've made would still continue and for that I'll always be grateful to the craft.

More to come.........

Operation Craft Room Week

This week (my 5th week of retirement.....I'll stop doing that at some point) it's "Operation Craft Room Week with side jobs of homework and a stack of magazine reading" week.

I've been a bit remiss in my blogging but that's because I was entertaining a longtime friend who came back to Iowa to help me celebrate my birthday/retirement.   We had such a good time and I was sorry to see her leave so soon, wish she could have stayed longer.  My father also made a surprise visit to celebrate with me, so I was also distracted with his visit too!

On top of the celebrating and house guests, I had my first college class test in 21 years, so I had to fit in studying five chapters during that time also.   I think I did pretty well, but I won't find out for a few days.

This week, I'm going to FINALLY get into my craft room!  I've been putting it off because there have been other things that were more of a priority, but I have a crop to attend this Friday at my friend Judy's office (her boss lets us use the conference room....really comfy chairs...lol), so I need to put some things together to work on.  It's quite a mess in there and since I need to get my stuff ready for Friday, I'm going to clean up too.

The table in the foreground is usually clear of stuff and as you can see, I have piles on it.

My work table has also been a mess for a couple of months.  I've been working on Christmas pages throughout the summer and the one on the table has been there forever.  I AM GOING TO FINISH IT THIS WEEK.....I'm just yelling to reaffirm my intention.  :)

I started an 8 x 8 album for my oldest long time friend Dianne in honor of our 50 years of friendship and I'm still not done with it so I'm going to take that with me on Friday to see if I can get it finished up.  It has some pretty important pictures in it.....from when we were growing up to milestones in both of our lives.  She knows I'm doing it and has provided some of the pictures, but she hasn't seen what I'm doing yet.  I can't wait to give it to her!

In between cleaning up my craft room, I going to tackle the stack of magazines that has collected on one of my reading tables......I don't subscribe to a lot of magazines, but I have multiple issues of the ones I do I haven't read yet.  I let them stack up this summer......PLUS more homework and I have a feeling that my class is going to be ramping up with the homework as we will be starting to put together our 25-35 page business plans....yikes!

Here's a couple of scrapbook pages I've done recently and I thought I'd start sharing some of the things I'm working on here.

My husband and son caught me napping Christmas Day with my sock monkey that the son gave me that day.

This page was done to tell the story of a very important piece of cross stitch that my mother did for me not long after I left home.

Have a great week!  It's a great time of year!