Dollar store finds & more bargains

I went to the Dollar Tree the other day and found these gems. Grosgrain, satin, and sheer ribbon 4 - 5 yards each roll, $1 each
three glue sticks, $1 each

vellum stickers with rhinestone accents


pack of artist paint brushes
glitter packs

elegant vellum stickers in turquoise and brown swirl design
gift card holders in retro and mod designs (I'll save one of each to use as templates to make cards)
easel backs to make desk calendars for gifts
3D foam mounting squares, 64 pieces, $1
How's that for a bargain? And, speaking of bargains, I'm selling a boat load of scrapbooking, cardmaking, & paper crafting supplies on eBay. You might see something you can use.

Aren't these gorgeous?

5 Fat Quarters of Sandi Henderson fabricSpring Garden Bag by JaniesOneofAKind

Floating About Town by Primpedpaperie

Green Chrysanthemum, Yellow Roses and Cream Gardenia by PetalByPetal

3-Legged Monarch Butterfly Serving Dish by JudyBFreeman

Sahara Print by Jellybeans


Carved Crayons by Pete Goldlust

I'm selling a bunch of stuff

Come check me out on eBay. I'm selling a bunch of cardmaking, scrapbooking, and paper arts supplies at huge savings! I'm adding more items as I go through my stash and upload them (which seems to take me forever). Happy shopping.

How I organize my supplies, part one

Most of my supplies are stored in five white cabinets which I bought from Target on sale for $40 each. I tried to group my supplies by use and type. Here is what's inside each cabinet.

Cabinet One

• acrylic stamps
• rubber stamps
  
• ink pads
• chalks and applicators

I mix the acrylic and rubber stamps together, group them by category, and store them in regular size CD cases inside of blue, dollar store baskets. I labeled each basket using my Stampin' Up scallop punch. I have four shelves of unmounted stamps. The yellow binder on the first shelf is one of two that hold index sheets of my supplies and stamp images. The black binder next to it holds some of my acrylic sets that I wanted to keep in tact and are too large to fit into one CD case.
Below is shelf three and four. The round tin, in back of the green mimi container, holds my foam Christmas stamps. Shelf four holds mini wooden stamps, self-inking stamps, and a Whispers ink pad set on the right.
Here's what's inside one of the blue baskets. I've tried to use broad categories but I got bogged down when it came to the words and phrases. I ended up changing mid-stream and will probably change again as my collection grows larger.
I used my label maker to create labels for the spine of each case. I make an index sheet in front of each case so I can easily see what's inside.
I keep duplicate index sheets in a 3-ring binder and store that on the first shelf (see the yellow binder above). I look through the binder to find the stamp I want to use. Some of my ink pads are inside a Sizzix die storage tower on the bottom shelf. I also have my chalks and applicators in the large white basket.

Cabinet Two

• embellishments
• adhesives
• tools (such as punches, tag maker, bind-it-all, heat gun)

My small embellishments (such as buttons, flowers, brads, etc.) are in bead cases (similar to this) on the top shelf and this, this, and a basket on the second shelf. All are labeled on the side.

• 

The third shelf holds my punches and the fourth shelf has my Creative Memories Custom Cutting System, Making Memories Tag Maker, eyelet setter, paper drill, and embossing supplies.


The bottom shelf holds my bind-it-all stuff.


Cabinet Three

• card making blanks (cardstock, envelopes, & templates)
• alterables
• mini albums
  

This is the messiest cabinet and it's stuffed. Shelf one holds my card blanks and some alterables.
The remaining shelves hold alterables, blank books, and albums.

Cabinet Four

• Paints
• Brushes
• Foam Stamps

The first two shelves hold my paints. I grouped the Making Memories paint by color groups (oranges and yellows; reds and pinks; greens, blues, and purples; blacks, whites, and browns) in the four identical white baskets. The other containers hold different brands of paint.
I've started to "index" my bottle tops with a sample of the paint like this

so it's easier for me to see the color when I pull out the basket. I also have the paints indexed in one of my 3-ring binders (see Cabinet One, yellow binder on shelf one).

The bottom two shelves hold my adhesives.

Cabinet Five

• Idea books and magazines
• Catalogs
• Office supplies
  

I also use the inside of the cabinet doors to hold things.
That's it for my five white cabinets. There's more to come in a future post.

Card Making Ideas

You can get some card ideas from manufacturer web sites such as:

Stampin' Up!

Close To My Heart

Stampendous!

Hero Arts

Inkadinkado

Inque Boutique

EK Success

DeNami Designs

Technique Tuesday

You can also check out some online stamper communities such as

Splitcoaststampers

Two Peas In A Bucket

Stamp n' Scrap

And, of course there are a ton of blogs which feature stamp ideas. One of my favorites is KWernerDesign. She also has a great 3-part Q & A about her card making and technology use. Check it out: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I like her design style because it's simply cute and easy to replicate.

Someone asked me how do I use foam stamps. I use them with acrylic paints to stamp images on cards, scrapbook pages, and craft projects. I used foam stamps to stamp words onto my cork bulletin board in my studio. This is a video from Making Memories on how to use foam stamps. I use the wood handled foam brush instead of the one shown in the video. I also rinse them out and reuse them until they fall apart. Why waste supplies and pollute the environment unnecessarily?

Take a peek at how I organize my scrapbooks & albums

As I mentioned before, I am currently taking Stacy Julian's online Library of Memories class at the Big Picture Scrapbooking site. I totally love her view of scrapbooking and it's freed me from the guilt of feeling behind in keeping up to date.

Since I started scrapbooking using the Creative Memories approach (back in 1996/1997), I have a bunch of scrapbooks that are chronologically organized by year. I also have some that are organized by theme such as school, portraits, vacations, and Christmas. I have condensed all of these into about 25 scrapbooks.



I have mostly 12" x 12" scrapbooks but also 12" x 15", 8" x 10", 8 1/2" x 11", 5" x 7", and some specialty mini albums. I wanted to imprint each Creative Memories album spine with the year and/or subject like this
but after doing some research on the internet, the best price I found was $7 a spine multiplied by about 25 albums and that was more than I wanted to spend. So, I found an alternative.

I lifted this idea from some ladies on the Library of Memories class board. I used a Stampin' Up! scallop punch for the base, a Creative Memories large circle punch for the center, punched and set eyelets at the top and bottom of each tag, using my Crop-A-Dile, threaded 1/4" ribbon through the spine, and tied it in a bow. Using my American Crafts photo marker, I hand wrote the titles on each tag. I like this system because it's easy, very do-able, and cheap. I was able to use my paper scraps to create all of the tags.

The scrapbooks you've just seen are all completed and reside in a bookcase in my family room. I also have some scrapbooks in progress in my studio.

These are 6" x 6" albums that will be given as gifts. Most of them are mini school albums destined to go to grandparents and godparents.


Then there are some miscellaneous theme albums and one chron album.


And, finally there are my Library of Memories albums which are all organized by topics and color coded as taught in the class. Currently, I'm using 8" x 8" We R Memory Keepers post-bound linen scrapbooks.


Each topic group will share the same color scrapbook. For example, all of the pictures about my immediate family will go into black albums and labeled "All About Us". Within each album are section title pages for each of my family members and a title page for layouts that include two or more of us. So, there is a section with just pages that focus on me and another section with photos that focus on our pet and so on. As a section grows and gets too large to fit in this particular album, I'll create a new black album to house just that one section. The new black album will be have the title of the section such as "Pets".

I also changed the way I organized my photos, based upon the Library of Memories class. Stacy Julian has a two-part system that feeds into the scrapbooks. The first part consists of traditional photo-sleeve albums that are organized by yearly seasons. So, you would have all of your Spring 2008 photos in one album, Summer 2008 photos in another album, etc.
Because Winter rolls over into the next year, I decided to split my albums into quarters instead of seasons. For example, one album will have Jan - Mar 2008. Then the next album will have Apr - Jun 2008, etc. Stacy has so many pictures per season that one album is needed to hold one season. However, that's not the case for me. I have several years housed in one book. I have Jan - Mar 2000, 2001, 2006, 2007, and 2008 in one album with each year marked and divided within. Also, to make it easier to put each album back after using it, all of the albums are numbered sequentially as well.


I wanted to make some cute tag labels to go on the spines of my photo albums (like the ones on my completed scrapbooks.) I didn't want to go with the same scallop tag so I created these tagswhich are made of scrap white chipboard, covered with My Mind's Eye pattern paper, topped with chipboard numbers that were painted with Making Memories paint and then sealed with Stampin' Up! Crystal Effects glaze.


The Crystal Effects makes the chipboard numbers look like glass.


I did all of this work but the tags don't fit on the spines well. So, I've got to think about how to solve this problem.


The second part of the photo system cosists of drawers of photos filed by topics which match the broad topics of the albums. I have my categories in JetMax drawer cubes.
JetMax makes a cube that has four drawers in one. These were on clearance at Target and they were all sold out by the time I decided to get one. So, instead I have these that have two drawers and a large basket.

Here's a look inside the "Things We Do"drawer which is further subdivided.

I still need to move the rest of my pictures either into the albums or drawers. The rest of my loose photos are in these four boxes (by Creative Memories and other companies).
And, finally I have a bunch of negatives that I need to sort and file.You've seen how I store my scrapbooks and photos. In a future post, I'll show you how I store my supplies.

I wanted to share some thrifty tips

I read in one of the scrapbooking magazines that you can take this
cut it into strips, run both sides (top and bottom) through this
to make an alternative to this


I haven't done the math but I betcha that this homemade version is a lot cheaper than the pre-made version. And, you can make the foam adhesive in a bunch of different colors to coordinate with your projects! How neat is that? Just think I was going to get rid of a stack of fun foam (that I had for over a year) because I didn't know what to do with it. I hurried up, dug it out, and started cranking out homemade 3D foam adhesive.

Did you know that you can take an EK Success Corner Rounder Adorner punch, remove the plastic guard around the base, and then use the punch to create scallop edges on your paper or cardstock? I've been wanting to do this for a bit and finally bought this punch. It works but it takes patience and practice to line up punches right. Now I can make scalloped edges out of any paper for cheap!

You can keep paper scraps and use them to create cards. I try to keep pieces that are at least 3 3/4". If I have a lot of larger pieces, I cut them into 4 1/2" x 6 1/2" rectangles which are a perfect size mat for 4" x 6" photographs. I keep a stack of them ready to use whenever I want to mat a photo. This saves time, money, and makes the most of paper scraps.