Christmas cards for a good cause

There are quite a few philanthropic activities over the year at the company I work for. My favourite good cause to support is a children's home. They host a Christmas market each year for which I have normally made cards to sell. This year there are some more colleagues who want to help, so we currently spend 1-2 lunch breaks per week making cards for the market and for sale to our colleagues in favour of the children's home.

The ones for the market will all have a French greeting, and for the preordered cards we consider our colleagues' language preferences.

Here's our first lot:

Some more layouts

I have completed the 24 layouts before Christmas challenge :-) In an attempt to decrease my stash of supplies I added a little extra challenge to include at least one supply that is over a year old. Admittedly I am not going to run out of supplies any time soon, so there was no considerable decrease, but at least I have completed this mini-challenge as well. Some girls included a "no shopping" mini challenge, but since I have subscribed to a kit this was out of the question for me, plus I needed a new album, as I was running out of space to file the layouts.

Here are some of the layouts. The first one is about pistachio cream, which tastes a bit like an even better version of Nutella (chocolate cream) but looks a bit like its extraterrestrial version:

I have no idea why I always prefer limited edition perfumes and shower gels. In most cases I don't even notice that there are limited until I want to buy more but can't because the product is no longer available. In this case my clever friend included a bottle of my current favourite shower gel in my birthday present, so I can continue my iced strawberry dream for another 500 ml. This layout is actually the result of coincidence - I only thought about it when I wanted to throw the empty bottle away:

And here's my confession of being a Downton Abbey addict:

Most other layouts for the challenge include photos of friends and family, which I do not want to share on the blog - sorry about that.

Autumn beauties

At the moment there is challenge on my favourite forum to complete 24 layouts before 24 December. This my 11th layout for this challenge and includes supplies from two lines I like a lot these days - "Shimelle" and "Notes & Things".

Luckily I managed to take these photos on 1 November - the mushrooms were broken off a day later:

Time to use the DIY embellishments

The DIY embellishment box was overflowing - time to actually use them. I also used some older scraps as well as some of my current favourites - the "Shimelle" collection by American Crafts and "Dreamy" by Heidi Swapp.

I have also recently added a few new mists to my collection, which so far only had flat and non sparkly sprays. I still love Dylusions and will continue to use them a lot, but the dimension of the Tsukineko IrRESISTible sprays looks great, and so does the Heidi Swapp Color  Shine.

The IrRESISTible spots look black on paper, but they are actually grey. I think I prefer this and will not buy the black spray for the time being - might be too much of a contrast.

Some more DIY embellishments

There are really too many paper scraps in my drawers, so I am now trying to get rid of them. This obviously does not mean that I through them away, so here are some things I did.

Pieces that still have the full 12" width remain in a ziplock bag. I have used up some really narrow ones, either as borders or by punching butterflies and die-cutting arrows and flags. I have then offered a few RAK envelopes full of punched pieces in a scrapbooking forum.

Smaller pieces were cut into 4x6" or 3x4" pieces for Project Life. I usually print my PL photos on a Selphy printer and they are slightly smaller than 4x6, which is why I add some paper on the back to get to the full 4x6" size.

Any pieces smaller than this were punched into butterflies, arrows and flags again and most of them also ended up in the envelopes. The rest either went into my now very small box of leftovers or assembled into new embellishments:

Although I have a sewing machine it never gets used, as I am really unable to use it, so I had to hand-stitch on some of these. Not that difficult with a template for piercing the holes first.

Now I need to actually use them!

Storage Ideas

Oops, it's been quiet again for some time here, so it's good that someone asked me to post photos of some of my storage solutions when we talked about them. I am sure that there are a lot more fancy ways of storing supplies and tools, but they work for me and I think they are easy to customise to the needs of scrapbookers, cardmakers and other creative people.

Most items are not specifically made for crafting, and whilst I do not intend to promote any specific shop you may find that  IKEA or Dänisches Bettenlager (if you live in or are close to Germany) are worth a trip. Aldi (again in Germany) also sometimes has great things.

Let's start with a little tour of my favourite room of the house - clockwise:

The shelves are from IKEA - they are discontinuing the Expedit line and replace it with shelves with thinner frames, but apparently the same inside measurements. The drawer unit (Alex) and the wooden trolley table are also from IKEA (Bekväm). The Expedit on the left used to be my bookshelf in the living room and the trolley table used to be in the kitchen before I moved. The small white cart is from Aldi and the turquoise trolley is from IKEA again (Raskog) - see my earlier post.

More Expedit - two of the 2x2 units are cheaper, more flexible and easier to assemble than the 2x4 unit:

All furniture is IKEA again. The drawer unit on the left is great for 12x12 papers. The lower drawer originally has two inside drawers. I have just put one of them in to have enough room for papers in hanging file folders. The TV is ancient (got it in 1995 and it is still working) and the piece underneath also used to be in my living room. The Billy shelf was a new addition for the craft room.

I love the cart for hanging file folders, which I got from a friend who no longer needed it - again perfect for papers. I keep my kits in them.

 Now off to some detail on storage. I have shown my Project Life box in an ealier post:

 I just added a bit of embellishment to a cardboard box I got at Aldi's for 5 EUR or so. Inside divicders were easy to add, and I now have drawers for 4x6 cards, 3x4 cards, mini kits (including the box) and assorted embellishments and little things (aka decorative clutter). Aldi has these about twice a year.

This is another size of the cardboard boxes (three drawers), and the fit into the Expedit inserts with a little bit of extra space left:

I keep my ink pads in the top one and scraps in the lower ones.

Two of the Alex drawers:

The other drawers hold glue, border punches, Chipboard and spare page protectors, plus of course a bit of clutter. But overall Alex is reasonably tidy. By the way, the Prima greenhouse at the top is originally made for cutlery and available from Butler's (Germany).

On the trolley table there is drawer unit for screws, nails etc., which I use for punched items, metal embellishments and various other little things. The little jars mostly hold wood veneers.

IKEA has a very cheap storage solution for Thickers - with a handy handle in the middle. It also fits into the Raskog cart.

The handle is useful if I need to open the bottom drawer of the screws box:

There is extra space for tapes on the side of the Raskog cart - the hooks are from Tesa, held with removable, but strong "Power Strips", which are available in supermarkets. The black things on the side are intended for kitchen racks, but they are cheap, they fit and are therefore great.

The divided plastic holder in the middle is also from IKEA, perfectly divided for Project Life cards or other items up to a length of about 6 inches.

The two boxes below are from IKEA's Samla range and also fit perfectly into the cart. I normally don't need the lids so they are just kept underneath.

Another repurposed item from IKEA is this cable sorting thing, which is normally fixed underneath a table, but you can also nail it to the wall. I used V-shaped nails for this, as it seemed more secure.

You can fit any number of items on there, such as IKEA kitchen rack accessories, and S hooks come in very handy:

You can see on the first picture that this rack is fuller now. On the right you see a glimpse of a fabric organiser for children's rooms, which I attached to the shelves with Power Strips hooks.

I was also looking for a solution for storing ephemera and large wood veneers that don't fit into the glasses. This unit is available at Dänisches Bettenlager. I can't remember how much it was, but it was less than 10 EUR.

The drawers are quite high, and if I threw little ephemera pieces in like that I would have a fine mess, so I made some pizza boxes with slightly amended measurements so that they fit. The original instructions for these can be found here and you can easily adjust the size to your needs.

A little hint: add the eyelets and ribbon before glueing the box together. And yes, I found out the hard way.

Last but not least a little view into the chest of drawers in front of the craft room:

There are fabric boxes inside, again from IKEA. I think they are normally intended to fit into Pax wardrobes to keep socks, belts etc. organised.

This particular box holds small stickers, enamel dots and other little pieces.  I usually get this box on the table for the finishing touches on a layout or Project Life page.

That's it - I hope you have enjoyed the little tour, and I would love to see your storage ideas and craft spaces, too. Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog.

A few cards

Not in chronological order of production, but here are a few cards:

(For a colleague who has just had a baby girl)

(For a colleague who is getting married)

(For two girls who suggested wording for a t-shirt print some friends and I wanted to do - we promised a little RAK package for the person whose suggestion was chosen and did a raffle among the other participants)

(For a friend, just because she sent me a nice card instead of simply writing an e-mail - the card base is 6 x 12 inches and folds in three so that there was a lot of room to write)

Reflections

When I am sick I tend to reflect on things, most recently on kindness. I do believe in kindness and two people I had considered friends for many years made me doubt a lot of things last year, including kindness. To this date I have no idea what I could have done wrong and why they have treated my the way they did.

It hurt to bump into one of them the other day when I left a shop. She looked at me like a rabbit in the headlights when I came out, smiled at her and said hello. She nodded a little bit and rushed into the shop.

I still believe in kindness. But I have come to the conclusion that I sometimes need to be kind to myself.first.

Thank you, S. and especially F., for comforting me the other day.

Treasure hunt

At CAR I admired Barbara Haane's albums and saw how great old typewriter font can look on layouts and Project Life cards. Knowing that my parents have three old typewriters I went treasure hunting in their basement. 

Typewriters 1 and 2 look nice and vintage but were heavy monsters, one without ribbon and the other with a non-functional one. Plus I had no clue who to change ribbons in these, nor any idea where I could get new ones from.

Typewriter number 3 not only came with its sturdy original case but also with a functional ribbon. It is admittedly very old and you can barely read what is written, but I might even like the look. So here's my new old friend Monica:

This typewriter is also a part of our family history. My dad learned to type on this machine and my mum wrote countless test papers for her students on it - sometimes as blueprints when photocopying was not common yet. I remember being fascinated by this typewriter and happily typed random letters on it, using up the "good" paper against my mum's request to use scrap paper.

Then I found an office supply store which still sells brand new ribbons for this typewriter. The ribbon arrived today and I was concerned that I might have damaged the mechanism that lifts the ribbon when you type. The first lines on the paper are actually only coloured by the leftover ink on the types. Luckily I then discovered that the colour setting (see the small lever on the right of the machine above the shift key) was on white (= correction), which means that the ribbon would not lift. Moving the lever up then produced acceptable results.

I should probably clean the types, but I actually like the smudged look.

OCPD - or how Monkish am I?

My colleague claimed this morning that I have OCPD tendencies. At work I would rather say that I keep my desk tidy, but I quite agree in some other ways:

- I always keep my Project Life cards in their original order and use the top one first if I have the same card multiple times. Even when I store the cards cut from 12x12 sheets they remain in the same order as on the full sheet - "A" side up of course. Cards with horizontal alignment must have the bottom facing to the right of vertical cards.
- My kits are always stored in date order.
- Distress Ink pads are always put back in their proper place in the stack.

Outside the scrapbooking world:

- A roll of toilet paper must have the loose end coming down at the front. If someone visiting me starts a new roll and lets the loose end fall down at the back I change it the other way round.
- My towels are always stacked in the same order - neutrals from dark to light on the right sight of the shelf and colourful ones stacked from blue to yellow to red.
- Clothes - all tops on clothes hangers are sorted by sleeve length from left to right (tank top to full sleeve) and within these sections by colour (light to dark).

So yes, B, you totally have a point and in fact this will probably result in a scrapbook layout. As so far I have not freaked people around me out completely I am quite ok with my quirks.