I was commissioned to create a good-bye, good luck card for a great friend of mine. She's pretty awesome and a very talented crafter herself, so I feel quite honored when she asks me to create something for her! I think this little owl is just adorable! I made it w/a die cutter when I had a crafty slumber party on my last visit to Cincinnati to see Karie. We stayed up all night making owls! LOL! I think I'm going to buy that die myself and make some more cards like this. elements:
cardstock: Papertrey Ink, Archivers, Stampin Up
patterned paper: Basic Grey
ribbon: scrap, so I'm not sure...maybe May Arts
Update: I'm continuing to use scraps of patterned papers and cardstock for my cards. I did cut fresh patterned paper for this one, but I loved it and had to use it. But the cardstock, except for the base, is all from my scraps stash!One last thing...I jotted a sketch down that I used for this card and for the life of me can't remember where I got the sketch. I'd like to give credit but I need to figure out where it's from first. 
I have to share my craft space with our guest room, so organization and storage are very important. I’m the type of person that likes to have a space and container for everything. It makes me happy to look in a room and see order :D When I’m in creative mode I’m so messy, I have stuff scattered about as I create scrap pages or cards, but when I’m done, I want it to look like something you’d see in a catalog picture. Now I know you won’t ever see my room in a Pottery Barn catalog, but I try to make it look photo worthy. If you’re a faithful reader of my blog (thank you!) you know that we try our best to be as green as we can. I try to carry my green ways into my crafting, including it’s storage. I try to reuse any container/tool in my house that might otherwise go into trash or donation piles to keep my space organized. Below are some ways I stay organized along with some other ideas I’ve come across and are keeping in my head for future use:- Glass Jars - sauces, pickles, salsas, cold coffee drinks, etc: Use to store buttons, ribbons, flowers
- Mint Tins or Baby Food Jars: Use to store brads, eyelets, beads, any small embellishments. Use address labels or a label maker to mark outside of tin with color.
- Hanging File Folders: Use to store paper scraps sorted by color
- CD Jewel Cases: Use to store your clear acrylic stamps. They cling to the jewel case just like they cling to your acrylic blocks. Then you can use a CD tower to store your stamps.
- One piece type clothespin: Use to wrap your ribbon around and then toss into a basket for a cute way to store your ribbon and a nice decorative piece in your craft area.
- Over -the-door pocket shoe organizer: Use to store all your paper punches
- Baseball Card Page Protectors:Use to store single non-mounted stamps. They’re perfectly sized for all those $1 clear stamp sets.
- Old cassette tape organizer:Use to store your in pads. Those small white garage sale tag stickers are perfect to mark sides of pads with color to quickly find desired pad.
- Kitchen Utensil Carousel: Perfect to store tools you use every time you sit down to craft…adhesives, rulers, scissors, markers, etc…
If you have any other storage tips, leave a comment and I’ll edit my post with your idea!
Using a few more scraps of patterned-paper and felt from my #1 scrap supplier Paula I made this card. I added the ink border on each piece of patterned-paper to give it a bit more dimension but I'm not sure how I like it...still deciding. I need to get a machine and sew the lines instead of faking it with marker all the time. Once I have room for a sewing machine I just might give it a try.
The 3 R's....a song by one of my favorite artists, Jack Johnson; it's also a mantra that our family tries very hard to live by. We definitely don't have it down pat but we try. I have been trying extra hard over the past year to use The 3 R's in my crafting. I've been Reducing by not buying so much paper, embellishments and new gadgets and supplies that hit the market. It's tough to resist all the pretty papers and whatnot, but it has forced me to use what I have. It's also made me discover some of the items I purchased, put them in their proper storage container and forgotten about.
Reusing...sort of hard, but my version is using my scraps of paper. I save pieces of cardstock or patterned papers that I cut off and don't use on a scrapbook pages or cards. Those pieces go into hanging files, sorted by color family and they are my first go-to place when I'm ready to make a card or scrapbook page. I do cut into some fresh pieces of paper, but it's only for card or page bases or it has to be a piece of paper that I currently have in my stash.
Recycling...this one is easy. If my paper scraps are too small to use on a card, page or for die cutting, they get tossed into the paper recycling bin. I've also been known to take ribbons off of items before they go into the garbage, recycling or donate piles and toss them into my ribbon stash.
Last year I made a crafty resolution to only use what I had on hand, to cut my stack of scrap papers in half and only buy new papers when I really needed them. For the most part I stuck to that resolution. I am also making the same crafty resolution for 2009.
To start my year off right, as far as my resolution goes, I'm going to recycle all those holiday cards we received over the past few weeks. Rather than tossing them into the recycle bin I decided to make gift tags for next Christmas. Last night I cut the cards up to make the first half of the tag. Now I'll be going through my cardstock scraps to cut a back for them and all I'll have left to do is add some ribbon.
Now, what to do with all those picture cards and photos we receive from everybody? I can't bear to throw them out, so I think I'm going to do some cropping and make a layout for our scrapbook with all the kids pictures. I need to start doing this after each Christmas season so we'll be able to look back on each year and see how everybody has grown.
I've told you my 2009 crafty resolution; do you have one you'd like to share?
