Feline Friday

 

Don't you wonder what your cat might be thinking? In this case, there can be no doubt! It's a bird...it's a plane... no, it's SUPERCAT!

Craft Room/Office Progress: More from the Closet

More progress to report from the closet! I made a trip to the hardware store this week and had Plexiglas cut to fit on top of two wire shelves to make them more functional than they've been for the past several years. Both shelves hold binders and other small items, so the Plexiglas will keep them from tipping over. You can see in the photo below that the Plexiglas is very thin -- 1/8", to be exact.

It works GREAT! Unfortunately, it's not cheap -- $24 for two pieces -- but it is worth it to have more functional shelving. I'm not a fan of wire shelving, so this makes me much happier!

  Everything now sits perfectly on the shelf with no tipping!

I've also been making labels for my binders and other storage containers. I'm using text boxes in Word, filled with black and printed on white cardstock.
  

 Now my green bins (from the Target Dollar Spot) have a real function...and they're labeled! My labels in badge holders, hung with ball chains, make me sort of giddy. They match the badge holder labels I made for my canvas bins awhile back.

Stay tuned for more progress! My new table should arrive next week, so I'll be able to wrap this project up fairly soon!
Janet

Craft Room/Office Update: Re-purposing

 I hope you haven't given up on me! I'm still working on the closet of my craft room/office. I had to take a couple of weeks off and tend to "real life". But I'm back at it and am making some real progress now!

 I love re-purposing things that were destined for the landfill. This rolling computer cart was going be trashed so I snagged it and brought it home several months ago, thinking it MIGHT work in my new organization plan. Even better, it was already the right color and in decent condition, with just a little wear around the edges. A good cleaning was all it needed.

Turns out that the cart fits perfectly into the small "alcove" at the side of the walk-in closet. The space is 26" wide -- and the cart is exactly 26" wide, so you know it was meant to be!

Once I determined where the cart would go, I knew that it would be perfect for my larger tools. The shelves pull out and the wheels allow it to be easily rolled out into the room (although I don't anticipate needing to do that). Having the tools in the closet means less clutter out in the room!

I seriously wish manufacturers would produce tools in neutral colors. Not all of us like pink, and it certainly doesn't work with all color schemes!

Stay tuned for more updates on my craft room/office project. Don't give up on me! I will have it wrapped up sooner than later -- I can't live in chaos much longer!
 Janet

Found on My Phone

 Going through my phone pictures earlier today, I was reminded that I need to make an effort to DO something with them! Here are a few recent ones:

 Bailey helped me finish up a mini-album project from my recent trip to CHA, the Craft and Hobby Association convention in Chicago, so that I could take it to Memory Bound as a sample to go with the new line we ordered.

I'm wading through the pile of odds and ends from my craft room/office closet and recently unearthed a box of floppy disks...the original large REALLY floppy ones. While she remembered using the small disks, Bailey didn't remember seeing a large one before.

We had a huge box of small disks. Why were we keeping them? We obviously don't have a computer that will even read them these days!

Also on my phone: A photo of the Wienermobile which we spotted at a gas station a couple of weeks ago. Although I've seen it before, I was pretty excited! For some reason, Bailey would not let me go any closer. I'm sure she was afraid I'd end up inside it...or worse yet driving it!

Feline Friday

We are going to sit here and stare you down until you feed us. 
We mean it.

Back from CHA

 I had the opportunity to attend CHA again this summer with the great folks I work with at Memory Bound. It's such a treat to see all the wonderful new paper-crafting products and take classes from manufacturers.

One of my favorite aspects of the show is seeing how products are displayed. Everywhere you look there are beautifully detailed displays which catch your eye and pull you in!

Of course, anything Tim Holtz touches is incredibly textured and detailed.

Tim uses lots of vintage pieces to enhance his product displays. The big shelves provide structure and order to a huge array of new product.

Graphic 45 has surely one of the most beautiful displays. Their design team does an amazing job of creating incredibly detailed samples, including lots of home decor pieces covered in their unique papers.

Bella Blvd's booth is clean and simple with light and airy layouts clipped to wire lines. The pinwheel "flower" border at the bottom of this display really caught my eye.

It was a huge treat to attend CHA, and we're all excited to get to work on some new projects for the store. Lots to do! Hope I can get my work space pulled together soon...I think I'm going to need it!

Janet

Mid-July Report

I'm not quite sure how July managed to get this busy! I've had several big classes to prepare for in recent weeks, and it's keeping me hopping. For example, I'm just putting the finishing touches on 48 kits for some Christmas card classes, as evidenced by the photo below. On Sunday (oops, that's today!) I'm off to the big trade show with one of our store owners and some of my co-workers. We're all extremely excited to be going to CHA to take classes and choose new products for our customers. I'll be on the lookout for great class ideas!

Meanwhile, progress continues in the closet of the craft room/office space. My cardstock and patterned paper (full sheets and scraps) are now in one spot (as opposed to three) which will be very convenient. I've also organized and re-labeled my photo boxes and magazine files (not shown) and moved them into the closet. I've also recycled a LOT of papers which were previously taking up closet space. I'm being very careful about what I put back in the closet AND how it looks, since the closet is now more visible from the room. I used to absolutely detest the closet, but now I like it so much that I think it will be one of my favorite parts of the room!

I'll quickly share a couple of organization tips for those of you who have the same geekish tendencies as me. I'm labeling items with a consistent font/style in an effort to visually tie things together just a bit more. The labels you see on the paper holders are similar to those that I made awhile back for my canvas bins. The drawers shown above house my patterned paper and cardstock scraps -- in rainbow color order, of course! I cut strips of black cardstock to cover the inside front of each drawer to give a neater appearance. It seriously drives me crazy to see the contents of drawers! I've had my drawers "dressed" like this for years and LOVE it.

That's all for now! Hope to post some from the trade show!

Janet

Feline Friday

 

 

Da best part of dis painteen project iz da ladder!

(I have to agree that Lily looks pretty cute perched up high!)

Craft Room/Office: Closet Update

 I just finished a major task on my craft room/office to-do list: painting the closet. What a pain! Although I wish I'd done it at the time I painted the room, it wouldn't have been any easier then.

Trust me: Unloading the closet was NO FUN at all. I'm sort of amazed at how much stuff was in there, and it's all now occupying the better part of the room. I'm not even going to share a picture with you, as it might be too much for the faint of heart!

Let's just move on to the painting part. The closet has several wire shelves which made this job very tedious. I'm not a fan of wire shelving but it was installed when we bought the house, so a few years ago I had Spouse add more shelves to make the closet more functional. This wall has three very long shelves.

These four shorter shelves were previously hidden behind the door. The door opened IN, so you actually had to go inside the closet and shut the door before you could reach these shelves. We removed the door and installed a curtain so now they're exposed and much more accessible. YAY!

I removed the shelves but did not remove the small brackets so I had to paint around each one. UGH!

Good thing I had supervision.

Yes, Tinsel, it was alarming, wasn't it?

After the first coat, the closet was already starting to look better. (The photo makes it look a strange color, but it's actually the same color as the rest of the room.)

After a second coat, things really improved. This time I bought the really WIDE painter's tape for the ceiling. I'm not a very good painter, so this kept MOST of the paint off the ceiling.

Spouse removed the tape for me (I'm not very good at that, either) and put up the shelves since he knew I'd bang up the newly painted walls. (I'm not very handy, as you might have guessed.) Again, the closet and the room walls truly are the same color, so don't be alarmed by the colors you see in this photo!

As painful as it was, I LOVE the painted closet! 

 Now comes the very difficult part of figuring out what to put back and what to part with or store elsewhere. Stay tuned!

Janet

Craft Room/Office Update: SPRAY PAINT!

 In case you've given up on me, don't worry...I'm still working on the craft room/office re-make. We're taking a side-trip into the closet at the moment. Over the weekend, I painted the inside of the closet the same color as the room. We still need to put the shelving back in, so I'll post pictures after that's done.

You know how one thing leads to another in this sort of project? Since we removed the door and installed a curtain, the walk-in closet is now going to be more visible, so (in addition to being organized) I want the storage containers to coordinate with the room. How do we do that?
SPRAY PAINT!


Before we start spray painting everything around here, I thought we should do a test of the paint on the surfaces in question. First we tried Krylon Fusion paint for plastic on the lid of a Rubbermaid tub. No sanding, no prep...can't beat that!

 It's also nice to have a daughter who seems to like spray painting. :) The paint worked GREAT and covered the lid in one coat. (As a side note, look how dry our grass is. We desperately need rain around here.)

 I also had a couple of these blue bins which she painted lime green. We tested the Rustoleum 2X Ultra Cover paint which also works on plastic. It also worked great. I love how the green bins look!

 

 

 

 I also have several photo boxes in assorted odd patterns. Sure, I could purchase new ones to match but these boxes are nice and heavy and it's certainly cheaper and more environmentally friendly to paint the outsides then to buy new. She started with this plaid box, circa 1997...

 

 and covered it completely in black Krylon Indoor/Outdoor satin-finish paint. This paint also covered perfectly, and now the box matches my color scheme!

 Next up was this slick-finish box with old-world globes. She used the Krylon Fusion paint on this box to see how it would adhere to the glossy finish.

 Again, perfect results!

We've got a lot of other stuff going on this week so I hope we can get back to the spray painting project soon. We are making progress, slowly but surely. Thanks for hanging with me on this project!

Janet

Feline Friday

 

 

Life is hard. Then you nap. ;)

Craft Room/Office Update: A Bit More Progress

 I have made some progress in the craft room/office space. I will confess that it seems to be taking much, much longer to put things back in place than to remove them. That's because I'm trying to sort, consolidate, and edit as I put items back into the room. So keep in mind that these photos are very preliminary!


 I have decided not to put all the furniture back into the room. I really like the open feel of the room as is, and adding more pieces just makes it feel cluttered and closed in, which was part of the issue previously. The main concern right now is that I still don't have a work table. (Of course, I like to work on the floor anyway, and now it's much easier to do that!) The small table shown at the left corner of the room is going to function as a die-cutting station, so I'm on the lookout for a bar-height or counter-height table which will sit where you see the stools below.

My Target cubes are situated at the left of the room. I initially thought about buying more cubes but then decided to just purchase enough canvas bins to fill up the cubes I already have. So I bought 3 additional dark brown bins and ordered 3 spring green ones which will give me quite a bit more storage space. Of course the challenge with these bins is to figure out how best to use them. My current bins have small containers inside them and labels hanging from each bin, and that seems to be working well.

 Spouse moved my computer and printers back into the room, so now you can see how the desk turned out. You may recall that it was initially forest green and I painted it black. While I love the way it looks, I'm not thrilled with the way the paint is performing. In fact, I'm pretty frustrated with it. After three weeks, the paint on the pull-out shelves still feels tacky. I'm going to have to figure out a solution for this problem in the near future.

 

 In the area not pictured, we've installed a closet curtain (LOVE IT!) and positioned my comfy chair and small table. Bailey hemmed the curtain for me (YAY!) and is going to be making a couple of small pillows in my favorite striped fabric, so I'll post pictures of this area of the room (including the walk-in closet) once it's a little further along.

Aside from all the things that still need to happen, I'm very pleased with the floor and the wall colors as well as the overall feel of the room. It's a big change from the previous space and I know I'm going to love it once I get it finished up!

Janet