WOYWW

WOW how fast can a week fly by?  Seems like it was just yesterday I wrote the post for last weeks WOYWW and here it is Wednesday again.  What is WOYWW?  Go check out on it over at Julias blog Stamping Ground...the directions on how to join is up in the upper left side. 

Been busy this week sorting out the craft room for a move to the bigger room.  Hopefully I can get that accomplished in the next couple of weeks so I can find all the stuff I need for fall crafting projects.  I have so much stuff that are duplicates that I refusing to buy anymore till I get it organized better because I know I have what I need just not accessible.  Example...I bought some paper mache boxes last year that are pumpkin shaped on the clearance bin to make something with this year...I don't have the foggiest where they are at!!  I am pulling stuff out of cabinets and closets and trying to find this or that.   I am an organized person...more or less.  I have all sorts of boxes, baskets, drawers, and cabinets to store stuff in but I have piled it in front of or around other pieces of storage and I have to move stuff to get at it.  SO I am moving.  Want to have nightmares tonight?  Here is an example of what I am talking about...

my color coordinated cardstock in plastic boxes in a rack in front of the cabinet that holds a lot of scrapbooks and tools I rarely use but when I need them I have to move all this crap.

This is a nightmare!  The cutting cart holds dies, folders, and my Vagabond.  It sits in front of a table that I have covered with stuff from the closet I have been trying to find things in.  The cube cabinet behind it is about 3 feet from the cutting cart but has two carts in front of it that hold various and sundry cardstock and 6x6 and 8x8 paper pads that have become a horizontal depository for closet debri!   

Yes, I have a ton of stuff but I have less then a lot of people I know but I can't find what I need due to space issues.   SO the move is on for this upcoming couple of weeks.  Thought about it for a year and it is time to act!

Room is approximately 11.5'x14.6'

This is a diagram of the room I am moving into and an idea I have for placement of things. The carts above with the papers will be housed in the closet and pulled out as I need them.  There are a lot of what ifs with the room but I think I will be able to get everything out where I can get to it.  I have a couple of fold-up tables that I can use when friends come over to play that I can put up in the center of the room because I will have space to spare there!  The expedit will be come my cutting area for my BigShot Pro and the Vagabond will move too and from the desk as needed.  Currently there is nothing in the Expedit or the File Cabinet which is a lateral 3 drawer that I plan to house all my 8 1/2" x 11" papers in plus some of the scrapbooking stuff.   Any ideas you would care to share would be greatly appreciated!  Of course I will take before and after pictures to share.

Want to see what I made this week....Tags of course.

These are the tags I will be teaching in my class later this month!

 I got into the back to school mode thinking about what it had meant to me when my children were small.  I was always up early (or late) drinking coffee and sewing,  making dresses and shirts for them to wear to school.  My son was about 10 years old when he told me he didn't mind me making him pajamas etc but he preferred we buy his clothes for school!!  Okay!  Mom days were on their way out!

That's it!  Thanks for staying with me through the rambling cause it has really helped me get some ideas righted around in my head.  Like I said suggestions are welcome!!!  Have a great week. 

T-Tuesday and Tea!

 Stormy Kitty and I had just sat down with the first cup of the day and I decided I needed to check up on what old friends were doing today.  I went to Altered Book Lover blog to see what Elizabeth and Bluebeard were up to and ran across the T-Today post!  WOW I don't think I realized that T-Tuesday was happening but now that I have found out I think I will post.  Elizabeth lives about 200 miles north of me in Kansas and reading her post it made me think about all the rain we have had here in Oklahoma.   I can't remember the last time it was this green on the 6 August!

My new raised beds are doing awesome and so green this summer.  I think part is the new raised beds and part has to do with the rain we are getting.  I took this picture in the rain this past week. 

The new raised beds are awesome!  I love the way everything is contained.  Poor tomato in the back was a yellow pear vintage breed that didn't have the VFN protection and the wilt got to it.  I have since replanted that box with potato sets that I found growing in my garage...yes I forgot and left the potatoes in the garage and hopefully I can salvage something from my mistake.  Potatoes are now $3.58 a 5# bag here and that is too much to waste. In the closest bed I have planted cucumbers, yellow and green squash this week.   Growing season here in Oklahoma lasts till November most years.  Don't know what it will do this year though since like I said I have never seen this much rain or green in August!

A view from the patio.

The plants in the far left box are a second crop of corn.  The rain has caused some rapid growth and it is now twice the height and starting to tassel.  The big leaved plants in the boxes are Sunflowers...Mammoth variety.  I bought a package at WalMart in the spring and planted the whole package and had to thin them down a lot.  The plants are about 10 feet here and with the rain grew a couple more feet and started to bloom prolifically.  Here are some pictures of those Mammoth flowers. 

The plants are about 12+ feet tall now.  The flower heads seem to turn and follow the sun each morning. 

Beautiful!

I didn't realize that sunflowers are like Poinsettias and that the yellow petals are actually leaves not the flower!  if you enlarge this picture you can see the little flowers and stamens.  Learned a lot by planting these flowers this year!  They attract beetles called assassin beetles that love squash bugs.  Horrible looking bugs but if they keep the squash free of creepy critters I am all for them.  

Well lots of things left to do today and I haven't even started to get them done.  Hope everyone has had a more productive day that I have...I laid a bed way too long today but good reason...I was crafting all night!!  Come check it out on WOYWW tomorrow!

WOYWW

My desk is not much different from last week except it has been cleaned up, dirtied up, and is now in the throes of getting messed up again.  Check out Stamping Ground and Julia will give you the deets about the WOYWW!  

This time I am making a monochromatic journal page for a group I belong to and I seem to be stuck as to where I go next!!!

It is hard to see the stars on the top half of the page but I used Dylusions in and then coarse modeling paste with a stencil.  I love the way the paste picks up the color of the Dylusions inks when used over the top of the ink.  Now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the page and stay monochromatic.... any ideas?

Last week was my birthday and DH took me out to supper and to see a movie...RED2...loved it.  I really liked Red with Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, and this time they added in Catherine Zeta Jones and Antony Hopkins.  DS is in boot camp...sort of for officers training to become a Warrant Officer so I didn't hear from him but DDIL called and wished me a happy day. DD is out of town in Pennsylvania at a medieval reenactment encampment so it was a quiet day but fun day.  DD did send these flowers...so pretty and she knows I love purple!  I taught a class at the scrapbook store and had a good time. 

For those of you interested in what the baby book looked like finished here are some pictures of the book. Graphic 45 Little Darlings papers, 6x6 BoBunny chipboard book. 

The babes name is Daniel Thomas Dawson III or v 3.0

I needed some place to put the birth information and when I typed it up and it came out looking like an angel I just added and played with it!  Pages with spots to enter 'firsts' etc in the pocket

This page has a place for a large photo

several mats to hold 3.5 x5 " pictures.  All the mats in this book are approx that size or smaller

More photos

I loved this color and print hope Mom and Dad don't mind the organgy pink in a boys baby book.

Last pages have a cabinet card style photo mat.  I really like the way it turned out!

The doors open!

Okay that is it for me I am off to skip around the blogs.  Have a great week! 

art journal

Just finished another art journal page tonight with the class using Farm House Papers.   They are from their new line 302 and I thought that I would share.  I can't remember the name of the papers individually but it was fun cutting, tearing and pasting them on a black gesso page...I know!  Another black gesso page.  Well, I think I am getting over the fear of using black gesso!

 I need to figure out how to gesso between the binder rings without getting it oozed down on the pages before and after.   After priming the page with the black gesso I used a punch and punched out the circles so I could use them as a stencil on this layout.  I then used coarse grit modeling paste and made the polka dots on the page.  Love the different cards, bookmarks, bits and pieces of memorabilia this line has!   Chipboard bits finished it up and I think I like it.  Farm House is an Oklahoma owned company out of Tahlequah, Oklahoma and they create awesome vintage papers.  Don't you just love the blue telephone...princess phone I believe they were called.  In my first apartment I had a phone just like that! 

WOYWW

Happy Wednesday!  I remembered this week and hopefully won't be last in line again. Go visit Julia at Stamping Ground and come play with us hoping from blog to blog around the world sharing our desks and projects we are working on!

My desk this week is a mess but I am in the middle of making something for a young friend who just had her first baby last week. I had a left over 8"x8" pad of Graphic 45 Little Darlings paper and some chipboard bits so I thought that I would make her a baby book she could take to work to show her new baby off when she goes back.

I don't have a lot done...pages covered with paper, front of book laid out and partially glued down and a start on the first page or two.  I think I will make some pockets so she can mat up more then one picture on a page. 

I was rather surprised to find that most of this paper pad was blue and orangey pink so I think I will be forgiven for using those colors together.  Here is a picture of the new guy take by my husband...I am holding him but he doesn't look at all happy with it does he?  Robyn found out she was pregnant with little Danny at the same time Will and Kate found out they were expecting so we have all been following the royal pregnancy and waiting to find out what they had...boys must be in the stars this week cause last week 2 friends became Grandma's to little girls!

Here is the proud Mom and Dad...btw baby boy is III in the Daniel line and when parents wanted to put version 3.0 on the birth certificate rather then III they were told  it wasn't funny and couldn't be done...

So sweet!  T-shirt says Storm Chaser in training!  Dan and Robyn are both PhD meteorologists at the University of Oklahoma!

Well that is it for me so I will sign off and head back to the craftroom.  I am busy finishing up a few more of the ATC to mail out and hopefully all will be done this time next week.  I apologize but this summer has been amazing as far as getting things done in a timely manner!

October Calendar

Another page bites the dust!...Doesn't this look like a fun calendar page!

Should I tell you I screwed up on this page?  Sure why not I will even show you the screwed up picture I took!  I got the page finished and asked a friend if she could see anything wrong with the page...did it look too linear, was it off angled somehow and even Kim couldn't see what I had done wrong...the page looks great by itself but it isn't a calendar!  Yes!  I had forgotten the calendar and it was while I was photographing the page I came to that realization.   How could you forget the calendar on a calendar page?  Leave it to me!  Then the light came on and I realized...

 OMG!  glue was dry and I had messed up big time, what to do, what to do!!!  So I tore up as much as I could without totally destroying the page and voila the new page!

 

What do you think?  Not too bad and I like it better!  Two more months to go!

September Calendar

I finished the September page of the Graphic 45 Place in Time calendar...
I am going to be really sad when I get all the way through December and don't have any more calendar pages to do because I have had a tremendous fun making these pages and seeing how each one turns out.  Even though they have begun to look and awful lot a like to me in someways each one has taken on their own personality!  Doesn't the little girl swinging look like she is going to take advantage of summer as long as she can and that little red school house brings back memories!

 I didn't add anything new or special to this page and everything on it was from the layout, cut apart pages, and the chipboard embellishment sheet.  Graphic 45 did an awesome job, in my humble opinion, with the design of these papers.

Now on to the garden...Yesterday when I woke up Chuck had already been outside hard at work harvesting what was available to harvest in the garden...WOW!  I think a bountiful harvest too considering the size of the 'corn field'...4 rows about 5 feet long and there is still a few left to be harvested.  The tomatoes are just starting to come in and I am really looking forward to it cause they are so yummy!

Okay off to the craft room to see what I can get up to today.  I have a young friend that just had a baby boy and doesn't have anything to document it in so I think I might whip up a chipboard book and run over to her house and do a foot print for her with my ink pad...ink is not toxic is it?