Flower Arrangements

I have never been one to be able to put colors together.  At least not without the help of a color wheel so one thing I gave up on a long time ago was trying to put together my own flower arrangements. 

My son has been bringing home these beautiful arrangements lately from weddings he has worked (he works for a catering company) Usually they are the center pieces that have been left behind after the guest all left. So they are the perfect size to put on tables around the house.  I have been getting spoiled with having fresh flowers.

Well, last night he went a little overboard.  He brought home the main wedding table arrangement.  This thing was Ginormous!  I would have loved to have seen my husband's face when he was picking my son up from work last night and saw him coming out carrying this huge bouquet.  The nice thing was what he said when he got home.  He pulled two flowers out and handed then to me and said he loved me.  Then he turned to his sister and said the rest were for her since she was not feeling well.  How sweet is that!!!  Sweetness between the siblings is a seldom occurrence in this household (they are 17 and 16). Scrapping moment!

This photos does not even come close to showing just how beautiful this was.  It covered my whole coffee table that is about 3 feet wide and 4 feet long.  There must have been around 3 dozen roses and everything was so well done.  

But this is a little too big to sit in my living room so this morning I had another go at Flower Arranging.  The hard work was already done since a professional florist already put the colors together.  I broke this down to 6 arrangements to put around my house.

 These are 2 vases I have on my coffee table now.

 This is sitting on my kitchen floor in the photo but this went into my daughter's room.

 Some to pretty up the bathroom.

 This is my favorite one.

 And 2 for my scraproom. One by my TV and the other sitting on my desk.

 This photo is blurry but this was another quick one with the leftover roses.  There were so many in the huge arrangement.

And pink is my favorite color so I was thrilled to spread these around the house.

A Page in Time

My heart goes out to all the families that have been touched by the terrible shooting in Colorado.  When the news first started reaching us here, I was in such disbelief.  Who would think it was dangerous to go to the movies?  My first thought, even though we are not in Colorado, was that my son was asking to go to the midnight showing of Batman here in MA and I would not let him.  How many other Mom's are right now thinking "why did I let him/her go?" 

Hearing more about the incident, how the shooter had been planning this for months, buying so much ammunition to start a mini war, Why did he bother with the body gear?  Did he think he would walk away from this and live a normal life? 

Hearing about the young lives of the victims,  the long road of recovery for people in the hospitals, the stories and dreams of lives cut down so short.

We should not live in fear of going to school or to a movie theater or anywhere for that matter. 

Live every day as it may be your last...

Do what you want to do every chance you get...

Dance like no one is watching you...

Sing out loud if this makes you happy...

Tell the people you love how special they are every day...

Do not be afraid to do the things you love.

SSS July 18 Story Time

Wednesday means time to get some journaling in your scrapbook.  Today's prompt is...

The person that made the strongest impact on you... This could be for good or in a bad way.  Someone that effected you enough that it somehow molded you into the person you are today. 

Maybe it was a sports player that made you follow you own dream of playing college basketball...

Maybe it was an aunt or uncle that loved to travel and took you on some trips and gave you the love of adventure...

Maybe it was a boy that loved cars and got you hooked to NASCAR (Joyce, that was for you, ha ha)

What if it was not a good thing, but something bad in your life that changed the way you feel about yourself?

This was a photo of me back then. 

My kids know my story.  It happened a long time ago, (23 years, 2 month, 0 days ago) typing this my eyes are watering up just thinking about it. It is not a happy story but it definitely changed my whole life, my very personality, and I have scrapped about this several times because I don't want it to happen to anyone else.  I recently did a layout about this event and cannot find that page so this is the original story I did.  Sometimes it is just as important to scrap the  bad as well as the good.

These are 8 1/2 x 11 pages in my old "Before Marriage" album,  As you can see it was an extensive story to tell.  Basically the story is about how I met and fell in love with someone, he turned out to be very abusive.  I got out, but not before he brutally beat me to a pulp and nearly killed me.  I had to go into hiding after that happened. I had to leave my job, my family, my friends because he would not stop trying to find me.

To this day I still have a fear in me that I cannot get over.  I will never drive through the town he lives in if fear I might see him. I can't sleep at night if my husband isn't home because I still hear footsteps when I am alone.

See, I told you it wasn't a nice story but it definitely molded the person I am to this day.

 One thing is... I will share this story with anyone. and scream from the rooftops,  If you are uncomfortable in any situation GET OUT, do not wait to see what is going to happen, do not try to talk yourself out of a bad situation.  Just get your self out of there!  Any NEVER ever blame yourself.  No one deserved to be abused either physically OR emotional.

Do you have a story to tell? 

Sometimes it can bring back bad memories like just typing up this blog has me crying again, but I know telling this story to me kids, they will have learned my lesson and it will be in their minds before they put themselves into a bad situation.

Hopefully, your influence was in a good way and that is still worth typing up an getting in your scrapbook.

Work from your stash.
Happy scrapping

Sharon

SSS July 16 Moody Monday

Good Morning,

Today is Moody Monday and the prompt is to use something you bought and then later decided you did not like.  It can be a tool, a type of embellishment, or even a type of paper that when you saw it at the store you just had to have it.  then you got it home and tried using it and it just didn't do what you wanted to, or it didn't give you the look you were expecting.

Today's challenge is to find that item and try using it in a project or layout today.

I can give a list of the things I had to have and then got rid of...

Memory Makers Tag Maker
Deco Scissors
Plastic Templates (the original ones from 14 years ago of paper dolls or shapes that you traced and then cut out with scissors) I love the newer templates out now.
Coluzzle Alphabet templates (I love the shape ones but the alphabets always gave me a hard time)
Eyelets!!! (Disliked this so much you could tear my scraproom apart today and I doubt you could even find one of these)
Original eyelets setters, the metal posts and the little hammers. I don't miss that sound at a crop
Slide frames, for some reason I had these in every color made but I do not think I ever used a single one
Foam Stamps, too messy
Metal ringed vellum tags.  Another thing I thought I would love and have lots of but don not remember ever using one on a project
Fastenator- this I won as a prize at a crop and never liked
Alphabet stickers - Some of you may gasp at this one but for some reason I very seldom use stickers for my titles, I generally print something off my computer or cut something with my electronic diecutters.
Stazon Ink pads - The first time I used one I stained my acrylic block so bad I cannot see through it anymore and do not use these ink pads anymore.
Creatopia: this was a biggie.  I got a great deal on it but it is a still piece of crap, Sorry Xyron, but it is.  The only thing that is does do well is add adhesive to things including fabric but I wanted it for all the other things it was hyped up about, cutting embossing, diecutting.  Don't waste your money.
Sizzix Alphabet dies - The thin sizzlet ones.  I still have and still use the thicker original one but I never liked the thin ones but that wasn't until after I bought 15 different sets of them.  These were the days before Cricut came out and I didn't like stickers so felt a need to buy every alphabet die I could find then still didn't use them

If I went digging through my storage drawers I could come up with a longer list, but you get the idea.

Unfortunately, for today's challenge I do not have any of these things I did not like.  When I re-organized my scraproom I had a Major Purge Session going on and sold what I thought I could on E-Bay and what I didn't sell I donated to the local Middle and High Schools for their Arts & Crafts programs.  I literally got rid of about 15 large bags of paper, tools, embellishments etc The old adage One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure.  My scraproom is still stuffed to the gills so I am sure I can come up with something for today's challenge.

What can you come up with.  I know you have something in you supplies that you just do not like,...

 Oh, as I typed this I just thought of one thing I can use.

I have a basket full of mini albums that I have made either at Scrapping conventions, classes, workshops,  or even some are album kits that i liked at the time and bought.  I assembled all these different albums and then when I got them home, I either didn't like the colors, the spaces for photos were too small, didn't have the right theme, etc... Well, these have been sitting all around my scraproom for years looking all pretty but with no photos or journaling in them. 

Back around March or so, my last major cleaning I did in my scraproom, I collected all these unfinished books.  I counted them.  I have 19 mini albums with nothing in them.  Then put them in this very large basket to keep by my feet. My intention was if I looked at these every day, I would start using them.  Here it is the middle of July and I have not touched any. 

So this will be my challenge to myself today.  Pull out one of these albums and FINISH IT!

Start digging through your supplies and come up with a project using something you are not particularly fond of.  Maybe you will shed new light on something and decide it is worth keeping and using again.

Happy Scrapping.

How to make your own organizing system

This is a re-post.  I was asked how I make these organizing units.

 I have spent a lot of time re-organizing. If I spent half the time actually scrapping that I do re-organizing my scrap space my albums would be full by now and I would have run out of photos to scrap.

My latest project was re-organizing my Stickles. I loved the CD case I had for storage. It spun around and stored my bottles upside down so they were always ready to use, but it didn't even store half the amount of bottles I had so, I spent an afternoon making this storage unit using cross stitch mesh I got at Wal-mart and cutting it up to fit into this drawer I got at Target.

I love how many it holds, even though it still was not big enough for all the bottles I had, it still works better.


The drawer slides right into one of the shelves on my Jetmax cubes.

To find the bottles I wanted easier, I added a blob of Stickles on the bottom of each bottle so I know exactly what they will look like on my projects.  I can fit 60 bottles in this drawer.

What was left I put back into the CD storage case I had. This storage container holds 36 bottles. I really did like the idea of the double layers of storage on this unit.  The top layer lifts up so you can get access to both layers.  Both layers also rotate around so you can see everything. I just needed something larger.  This one is now holding my overflow of Stickles that did not fit in the drawer unit I made. I have 22 bottles in it now.
The above was an old post.  This is how I made these.

I started with plastic canvas you can get anywhere, I got this at Wal-Mart for about $0.39 a sheet.  It is 10 1/2 inches by 13 1/2 inches. You want to get 7 square, this means there are 7 little squares in the mesh per inch. I tried this with 10 square, it does not work as well.

Once you have this, decide what you are going to store your items in; a drawer, a iris cart, a photo storage box, etc.. this will decide how many items you can store and what measurements you need to cut your plastic canvas to.

I wanted to use these plastic drawers I found at Target. They fit perfectly into my Jetmax storage cubes.  So once you know what size you have to work with.  Measure the inside.  My inside measurements were 12 3/4  inches by 6 inches.  So I cut my strips of plastic canvas to these measurements  Height of my strips is 10 squares high or 1 9/16 of an inch but it is easier just to count 10 squares and cut along the next square so you have 10 full squares showing.

Now measure what it is you want to store.  If are are storing these little bottles: Stickles, Re-Inker bottles, or alcohol Ink bottles that 1 inch squares works out. If this fits perfectly into your storage unit then you can start cutting.  If you measurements are a little off, like mine were. I could store 5 bottles one way and 12 bottles the other way but would still have a little extra space so I had to adjust my edges.

I left one block to start with, then cut every 7th block, ending with 2 squares leftover.  This works well for keeping my bottles standing up.  If I cut exact measurements to fit my bottles, they would wobble around in the drawer when the unit was put together.

So count 6 blocks and on the 7th block cut up 5 blocks.  These cuts will be your cross sections to assembly the pieces together.

On the longer strips I started with 7 blocks then cut on the 8 block, (again because my measurements did not match up perfectly so this was the overflow) then for the rest I counted 6 blocks and on the 7th block I cut up 5 blocks.

Now just keep cutting all your strips until you have enough for your project.  To assembly, simply start lining the rows up and add the opposite strip to the top, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.  If you want this to be more supportive, you can add a dab of hot glue to where each piece of mesh meets.

Here are some photos of the units I have made and how I store them.

This is a Jetmax cube or Recollections Modular Storage Cube with the drawers from Target.

 This one took a while to make but I love it!  It holds ALL my cartridges (about 111) with room for a total of 119 stored 7 rows across by 17 rows back.

 This drawer has my Stickles and Stampin Up! re-inker bottles, 60 bottles in each.

The bottom drawer has my glue gun, glue sticks and alcohol ink bottles (60 bottles)

All the drawers slide in and out very easily and if  wanted to take an entire collection of something to a crop these drawers will fit inside in Iris clambox case.
Hope this helps you get your supplies organized.

Sharon
Etsy Shop
Stampin Up

My Outdoor Office

My daughter laughed at me today, when she finally woke up at around noon time.  She came out to see what I was doing. 

Each day I have been bringing more and more things outside with me so I could enjoy the warm weather.  This is what my outdoor office is looking like

I start at about 7:30 in the morning once my DH goes off to work. I make myself a cup of coffee and bring the laptop out to the gazebo.  Today I decided to bring my printer out, as well.  That ended up being a waste of time because it was out of ink.  But I was able to organize my silhouette shapes and type up my inventory of some markers and ink pads I have.

 Then I have my scraprack out here as well so I can work on my daily scrapping prompts for the Summer Scrap Your Stash Challenge.  I stopped bringing this in.  Now I store it outside and have it ready to go.  I store it inside the big gazebo that zippers up so it is protected over night.  Not that I think any squirrels or racoons might be trying to get at my scrapping supplies over night.

I like my outdoor set up.  Once I get too hot I can jump in the pool for a quick swim and go back to what ever project I was working on.  The only thing missing is the Cabana boy that can bring me lunch or cold drinks.

Ink Storage Directions

I wish I can remember who first posted this so I can give them credit for the idea.  I got the idea from a photo I saw on a Scraprack group I am in.

I went with the idea and figured out how to to this on my own.  She may have come up with an easier idea to assembly hers, but I will share how I did mine.

Hi, here is how i made it.

I took the larger piece of foam board and simply placed a stamp pad on it to judge how deep my shelves had to be.

for Stampin Up ink pads 4 inches worked

for Tim Holtz Distress inks 2 1/2 inches
for Close to my Heart and amuse Studio ink pads I did 3 3/4

Then using a metal edged ruler and exacto knife I cut the whole sheet in strips for whichever size I was making.

You can see some of my long strips in the photo above, along with some of the little 1 inch strips I also cut up.

Then I took one of the strips I just cut and then cut that strip into 1' sections, these are the little pieces you see in between each ink pad. This was very easy for me, I have a big rotary trimmer and the foam board fits in it so I cut all the little tabs with this trimmer. Otherwise you can use your exacto knife again to cut these.

On my long strips I still have. I again placed the ink pad I was making the storage for, on top of it to judge how wide each section had to be for my ink pads.

Stampin Up 4 inches

Tim Holtz Distress Inks 3 1/8
Close to My Heart and Amuse Studio 3 1/2

I drew a line so I knew where to add a strip of hot glue.

I added the glue to one of these drawn lines at a time and glued down a 1 inch strip. the hot glue dries almost immediately so you have to do this quickly

Once I have a whole strip with the little tabs dividing each section, I put it aside and grab another long strip and did this part all over again until all my long strips had the little tabs glued on.

The assembly was the most challenging and there may be an easier way to do this. this is how I did it.

I tried to add some hot glue to the top of all the tabs and quickly stack another strip on top, but like I said the glue dries very quickly so I had to go back and touch up some stops where the hot glue did not stick.

After making the one I showed in my photo for the Stampin up ink pads, I went back to the store and got some more foam board. I then made one for the distress ink pads.

 and I added a couple of rows on top for my Amuse Studio ink pads.

  I was planning on making one of these shelves for my CTMH ink pads but I have too many to fit in the window sill I was making this unit for.

This is what my storage unit looks like right now after added the 2 extra rows i just did for this "how to" explanation. The unit sits inside a window I have in my scraproom that use to look into the kids playroom.  It was great when the kids were little.  Us moms could scrap in my scraproom and keep an eye on the kids playing in the room next to us.  Since then my teenage son had converted this to his bedroom and there was no use for awindow anymore.  So at least now I can make use of the window space.

A life gone too quickly

We heard some sad news this morning and it shook me up a bit.  A friend of my son drowned yesterday swimming at a pier that is very popular with the teenagers in my town.  The boy was only 18 years old and moved here from Jamaica less then a year ago.  He would have been entiring his senior year of High School with my son come September. They played on the football team together. 

The news reports state that he was not a very good swimmer and that the current must have pulled him under.  He was doing chores with his dad and some friends stopped by to ask if he wanted to go for a swim.  His Dad said OK, but told him to come back soon so they cold finish their chores.  He jumped off the peir and never came back up.  A young life gone in an instant.

My heart breaks to think about it.