WOYWW Again, and my Brad Storage--Wee haw!

I had so much fun doing WOYWW I had to do it again. But there's not a ton of difference in my space. The fall decorations are still sitting there. (And I'm sticking to my story about MEANING for them to be there. Yeah, that's the ticket.) I closed a couple of drawers and a few things have been taken out and then still haphazardly put away because I went to a crop on Friday. I'm still working on putting some stuff away and minor organization, so you can see some of my brads there. Which leads me to my brad storage tip. I was keeping all of my brads in the little drawers of my tool shelves. But I was never super happy with it. I was perusing blogs and I came across an idea that I adapted for myself. I wish I could remember the blog to give credit, but alas, I have no idea. Anyway, I saw an idea to make a mini-album for decorative brads out of foam. Now a mini album for brads is just TOO much for me and a bit TOO cutesy-poo, but a little light went on in my head--and I bet my electricity bill will be sky high next month because of it, but it'll be worth it. I snagged some of that cheapie Fun Foam at Joann's and began to stick my brads through it. And right away I was loving it. I like it because I can see all my decorative brads at a glance and don't have to search through my drawers or through a million packages of them. The foam is easily to travel with--it can lay flat OR roll up into a tube. And it's just beautiful to look at. I swear I look at it and fondle it lovingly every time I see it. It's sort of a pain getting them all on there, and I'm not close to done right now, but it's the sort of thing that i can do when I watch TV. I tend to walk past and do one or two at a passing. I kept my plain colored brads in the shelves and I'm still happy with that system. I love brads SO much. I always say, "When in doubt, use a brad." People look at me really strangely when I'm at the grocery store saying it, but I'm not ashamed of my brad love. They're just too stinking cute.

Don't Try This At Home, Kids

This is a layout that I did at my LSS Paper! Paper! at a crop. She'd found this awesome Little Yellow Bicycle Sketch online and made it a challenge for the day, so because I can't resist a challenge, off I went. Yes, those are indeed silhouetted photos that you're seeing. Back in October of 2000, when I started scrapbooking, I was smugly sure that I wouldn't mind cutting up priceless family photos (and not very well either, mind you) into odd shapes and/or silhouettes. I was also smugly sure that those lovely Paper Pizazz and Precious Moments papers would be the way I'd want to represent my photos forever. As hard as it is to believe, I was absolutely wrong. After my scrapbooking had progressed a bit and I stopped doing 8x10 AND hacking away at my photos, I redid some of those horrible pages and others I just took apart to do again some other day. I rescanned the photos and tried to trim them a bit better and have had to come up with creative ways to sort of fix the horrible mistake I made. So anyway, this long winded description explains what is going on in this page. I can't believe I hacked up photos of me meeting my beautiful niece, Samantha, for the first time. (I'd also cut the bottom of the photos of my mother with decorative edged scissors. Ugh.) So, don't try it at home, kids. It's not worth the pain. Silhouetting your pictures will only lead to heartache. So, back to this layout. I'm also endeavoring to use up old products along with my new. I'm not sure where this paper all came from, but it looks like some old stack papers. I used some of the papers to cover the flourishes, added some lace and used the Cricut for the title. I still look at it and see those blaring silhouettes but what's done is done.

Sleeping the Day Away

Ah, here's another layout of my nephew, Chris, snoozing away after being a general whirlwhind. There's just something precious about kids sleeping. Isn't he so cute? I could just eat him up. I tried that once actually. My brother had to restrain me and then distract me with a hamburger. Kids are so lucky--they can just pass out and be asleep at the drop of a dime, no matter what is going on around them. I'm such a light sleeper that I wake up if a grasshopper sneezes outside. I can also be an insomniac, which doesn't help matters either. Anyway, this is another of my layouts doing pretty old pictures. As you might guess, if you've seen some of my other layouts (and if you haven't, then never mind), I'm working on some 1990-1991 fun. It's nice to travel back in time a bit, even if my mind doesn't quite remember all the details. Since Chris was too young to remember the details as well, I can always embellish the truth along with my pages. I used all Echo Park's new "Boys Life" on this bad boy. I really love Echo Park--in a purely platonic way, of course. I have a harder time using their bright and buoyant papers but they're still stinkin' cute. This is a pretty minimal layout for me, too. It's SO tough for me to leave any sort of space, but in the fight between space and I, space came out the victor. It's so hard for me not to want to put something in every nook and cranny. Even now, I'm pondering changes. But I won't. Because space was the victor, after all. I made the little circle embellishments myself with a couple of punches and those handy dandy Pop Dots. And a couple of brads. Have I told you how much I love brads? In a purely platonic way, of course.

Banners? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Banners!!

When I first saw banners on scrapbook pages, I knew I'd never do a page with them. I remember remarking to my friend, "Why would anyone put a BANNER on a scrapbook page?" I might have even scoffed, though I can't be entirely certain of that. Time went on and I continued to see pages adorned with banners, and would shake my head, secure in my banner snobbishness. Eventually I decided that maybe, just maybe, they'd be OK on a celebration page. Perhaps a birthday page. So the next time some birthday pictures rolled my way, I pulled out a banner, and behold--I was somehow magically converted. Banners have slowly worked their way on my pages, just in time for them to be going out of fashion. It's all good, though--I don' t generally care if what I'm doing is "trendy" or not. Heck, every once in awhile, I'll even pull out some decorative edge scissors or an old Doodlebug Charm. So, until I get tired of them, I'm going to keep using them, by golly. So I added them into this page, all Simple Stories stuff for the most part. I think I've already proclaimed my love for Simple Stories. In some ways, they're actually pretty hard to work with, but in other ways, it's nice to have stuff that works well together and that you don't have to do a lot with to still have it look nice. I added a few little gems to the banner and partook of some of my beloved ric rac and obviously, a button. I had to use a flash this morning because it's a gray and gloomy day, so that's not a ghostly apparition in the bottom picture, just a flash glare. These are pretty old pictures from 1990. And if you were able to deduce that it was Thanksgiving from the "Count Your Blessings" and "November" items on the page, you're doing well. I bounce all around in my scrapbooking (and boy it's starting to hurt my forehead and elbows). I might do pictures from last week one day , then photos from 1987 and my frizzy, scary poodle perm the next. I do put them away chronologically though. Otherwise, it'd be just wrong.

Little Sweetie

I just want to clarify one thing--no animals were hurt in the production of this scrapbook page. Except for her pride, of course. These photos are of my little chiweenie, Keigan, last Valentine's Day. I was searching for some way to photograph her that would be cute and original, and instead I came up with this. I cut a little X into a cardstock Valentine and pushed her head through. You could see the delight in her face at being my canine Valentine. The look of adoration in her eyes, however, is for the biscuit I was holding in my hand. She's ALL about the biscuits. I think she'd wear an "I Love Cats and I'm Not Afraid to Show It" T-shirt for a biscuit. Before I got a dog, I chuckled at people who dressed their dogs up in costumes and told myself, "I'll never be one of THEM." And when I did, people looked at me and pointed because I was talking to myself. But then I got Keigan and one thing led to another and now she has a closet full of clothes and matching accessories. Not really, but it makes a better story. She DOES, however, have a Christmas dress, and has been a pumpkin, a cheerleader and a witch for Halloween. I'm still trying to work out how to get her into a low cut black silk dress with pumps, though. Maybe I'll have that worked out by the time prom rolls around. She's sort of hoping to be invited by the Schnauzer across the street. But back to the layout at hand--this is all REALLY old stuff I used in here. I mean, there's KI Memories paper in here! I'm planning on using lots of stuff from my stash in the near future. World look out--here comes my STASH.

WOYWW, or Holy Crap...what a mess...

This is my first time attempting "What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday", so please be gentle. And I know it's pretty bad but I'd actually taken off a good chunk of what's on there yesterday afternoon. Now I have the remnants of the aftermath of a 12 hour crop on Saturday which I haven't unpacked from and one of the 75,000 different organizing projects I'm working on. It seems like I just get things organized and I suddenly come up with something new that I tell myself will revolutionize how I'm going to do things, but instead just takes weeks of me plodding through my stuff, admiring it and finding something new to do with it. But on the other hand, I am a bit weird in that I LIKE organizing certain things. Not the important things like my kitchen cabinets or my sock drawers, but certain things that I own and love, I can classify and organize and just spend hours on it. Then I'll finish a project like that and say that I'm NEVER GOING TO DO THAT AGAIN. And I don't. Until the next time that I do. Anyway, here's my "workdesk." I just noticed that there's a fall decoration up at the top. I MEANT for that to be there, so I can keep the spirit of Autumn in my heart each and every day. My scrap "room" is actually a pantry. We live in an older style house and the minute I saw it, I knew that's what I wanted to do with it. To the back, I have tons of built in shelves and then this huge...well...counter, I guess you'd call it. It's tough to put a chair there to work, but I don't mind standing by it. A lot of times, since I work at home, I'll have a layout out there and will walk past and just do something on it, then move along on my merry way, probably whistling a merry tune. I keep all my brads, buttons, punches and basic tools up here so I have easy access to them. You can tell I've been easily accessing stuff because the drawers are all artfully askew. This counter also has built in drawers and things like that so I can fit a lot of stuff. And, in case you were wondering (and how could you not?)--I have A LOT of stuff. I sometimes think that I could take all my paper, go out in the backyard and build a small fortress. From this fortress I could then survey all the land and if anyone dared get too close to my Crate Paper or Echo Park stash, I'd use my Cricut spatula to hurl brads at them. Those little spikes could really do some damage, and would teach those coveting my Stickles that they'd need to just move on. I probably won't do that, but it's nice to dream.

Vintage Valentines

I can't blog about a layout today because of Vintage Valentines. I'm a seller on ebay and I was searching through a box of stuff and came across a veritable buttload of old, vintage Valentines that I had totally forgot that I had. So I spent the evening taking pictures of them. But then, after spending an amazing amount of time doing so, once I uploaded them, I thought the quality on them really stunk. After scolding myself sternly, I went through and rephotographed them to much better result, but in the meantime, used up all my batteries for my camera before I'd even finished. Of course, it then dawned on me that I could have just used my scanner the whole time and avoided this whole sordid tale. Anyway, I woke up this morning and even though I put my camera under my pillow, the Battery Fairy didn't leave me any, so I was unable to snap a layout photo. And I'm clueless about a stitching program for my scanner, so that's a hopeless cause. The world will now never know exactly what I'd truly meant to blog about. Until tomorrow, I guess. Anyway, I do so love Vintage Valentines. They definitely don't make 'em like these anymore. I remember being so very careful to choose just the right card for the right person. My best friend got the sweetest one, the boy I liked got the coolest one, the nose picker got my least favorite one, etc. And I loved opening mine and wondering if there was any hidden intent behind my friend's choices--"Hmmm..a card with a girl with flowers. Does his heart REALLY go upsy-daisy for me?" I even kept the most special one I received in grade school--fourth grade to be exact, from Scott Kavli. A bear with a jar of honey, where he'd circled the word "honey" for special emphasis and had added into the envelope a small piece of paper saying "I like you, do you like me? Circle yes or no". Scott was in a band. In fourth grade. Ah, Valentine win. Anyway, I'm now planning on spending the day listing all these vintage valentines--some from the 1930's even and hope that they'll bring someone else a little bit of Valentine happiness.