All The Pretty Little Boxes!

Wow - I can't believe it's been almost a week since my last post!! This summer has been super busy and it still is. I can't complain, of course, because I'm having the best time EVER - but it does mean that I really have to start allocating specific days/times to updating my blog! :)

A little while back, I bought a scoring board. I never really scored anything before, so it was a bit of a random purchase. I used to not really be that interested in making cards, and there's not a lot of scoring to be done in scrapbooking - at least not the way I've done it. But I've made a few cards here and there, and with the new stamp sets I've been getting, it was so much more fun to do cards too!

But this post isn't about cards - it's about something cute & fun that also happens to be very practical: my pretty little boxes! Here's what happened. After I bought the score board, which has a little compartment on one side to keep the bone folder inside, I realized that there were a couple of instructions listed inside the lid. So I decided to try it and made this tiny little box - which I then, of course, had no idea what to do with because it was so tiny.

After this little experiment, I quickly realized just how easy it is to assemble these boxes - and make them in any size whatsoever! I played around with some cardstock I have from years and years ago and came up with what I think is just so fun & practical: little storage boxes for my small clear/acrylic stamp sets. Up until now, they'd just been sitting in a container in a closet - and because I couldn't really see them all and they were stored in a somewhat impractical way & place, I never got around to using them.

Now, they're both decorative and useful on my desk - and the bonus is that they're right within my reach, so I see them every day and can play around with them when the mood strikes without having to look for a particular set, dig it out, and so on.

Of course YOU can make these cute, fun boxes too! They're perfect as gifts too, to hold candy or other treats, little surprises for kids or friends, and much more :) Here's an easy guideline for making them:

(1) Start out with a SQUARE piece of cardstock. You can use paper if you want or don't have any cardstock on hand, but the box will be a lot more flimsy and may not hold the contents well or properly. The size of the cardstock/paper is up to you - it really depends on how big a box you want to make, or how tall/high you want it to be.

(2) Score the cardstock at the same level on all 4 sides. To use an example, let's start with an 8"x8" piece of cardstock. Score at 3 1/2"; turn by 90 degrees; repeat until all sides are scored. The scored lines will create a center square - this will be the bottom of your box. Fold all scored lines and flatten cardstock again.

(3) On one side, cut along the scored lines up until the point of the scored line that's at 90 degrees to the line you're cutting or right up to the square in the middle. Repeat with the second score line on the same side. DO NOT CUT INTO THE CENTER SQUARE.

(4) Turn the cardstock by 180 degrees. You should now be looking at the side directly opposite to the one where you just cut the two scored lines. Repeat step (3). You should now have cut 4 scored lines, two on each of the opposing sides.

(5) Put glue or scrapbooking adhesive on the little flaps that you now have on the two opposing sides WITHOUT cut lines and assemble box.

(6) Embellish as desired. I adhered ribbon around one box and fastened a matching bow with a brad. Another box got a fun 3D label with the word "STAMPS" adhered to the front, and a smaller one just says "CREATE!" on the front. How fun is that? :)

Presto-change-o! You've got yourself a super cute box!!

Recycled Chipboard Packaging

Ok so today I'm going to show you another project that I made to recycle something. Yesterday, I went to a nearby town for some coffee & shopping with a friend. We went to an arts & crafts store, where I bought a chipboard album (I'll get around to posting a project for that down the line :). Well, as I've said before, I like to try and find new uses for old things - or things you'd normally just throw in the trash or recycling bin. The way I see it, not only is it a personal challenge to my creativity, but it also means that it's one less thing going to waste.

What I particularly loved with this project is that I discovered, after opening the packaging, that it actually said PLEASE RECYCLE under the chipboard album - how fabulous is that??

So you know, I can't resist experimenting with things, and it was like the challenge was staring me right in the face: so, HOW are you going to recycle me??

I started out with more or less the same process I used when I did the Recycled Art Tag in my last post by sanding down the advertising I didn't want, distressing the edges and center that I would cover up anyway, and sanding the clear plastic window where it had been glued down so that it would be easier to glue back down later.

This is what I started with:

And this is what I ended up with! How totally awesome is that? Not only did I save something from being thrown out and turned it into a piece of artwork I can now display - but on top of that, the plastic window works as a kind of shadow box. I would've loved to have had some piece of three-dimensional memorabilia to put into the "shadow box", but I still think this is pretty cool. :)

Love Is...Never Having To Give Up On Your Dreams

Wow...it's been one of those days. I had a pretty good time crafting & chatting with a friend. We plotted our plan to take over the world with our fabulous Stampin' Up! goodies and crafty genius, laughed about everything under the sun - and punched out WAY too many cardstock tags. But later in the day it all went very, very wrong.

I was feeling bored with my blog - the layout and design wasn't really representative of my creative personality, and I'd gotten to the point where I thought: what's the point? Enter a new Blogger feature, which immediately got my attention. And being a little trigger happy, I clicked before I thought it through...and my entire blog layout was messed up! I was tried to change it back and couldn't easily revert it to the previous format - so, having already felt a little frustrated, I stupidly decided that I would just delete this thread and start with a new template. Not realizing, at the time, that deleting the thread meant deleting the entire NAME of the blog!! In the split second it took me to realize the fallout, my surprisingly fast browser had already processed my action. My blog was completely gone. I was devastated. I'm so new at this and still trying to find my way, still trying to upload pictures and turn this page into something that represents me as an artist and as a person.
So I tried to retype the blog address - which of course came up with something along the lines of "blog not found". I then decided I would just start a new blog thread with the same name - but it wouldn't let me do that. EEK!

Fast-forward a few hours and my husband called me to say that he was coming home from work. I told him about my mishap, and he said it was no big deal, that he could figure out how to retrieve it - but I wasn't buying it. So imagine my surprise and delight when, simply clicking on a button on my Blogger dashboard, revealed the magic words that turned my whole evening around: UNDELETE THIS BLOG.

It's strange how something so seemingly insignificant can be so important on a particular day...Either way, I'm so happy that I was able to recover my blog, so I'm going to make an effort to post more regularly and start putting my artwork on here so that, hopefully, I can turn this blog into something fun, creative and inspirational! :)

Friendship Cards

I had a bit of an AHA! lightbulb moment a few days ago. I kept trying to figure out how to add pictures to my post and feeling a bit dense. I kept thinking, wait a minute - there's like a million bloggers out there, ranging from tweens to octagenerians, you'd think I could figure out how to add some pics! But because I was adding some YouTube videos, I kept writing my posts under the "Edit HTML" tab - hence complete missing the picture button right in the middle of the screen under the "Compose" tab. D'OH!

So, without further ado, my blog is now actually going to have some pictures - YAY! This being my first picture, I wanted to post the very first thing I made with my Stampin' Up! starter kit. Now, I don't really have a lot of experience with card-making, and I was trying to make sure I used only Stampin' Up! products so that I could, if I wanted to, put them on my demo website. I love the way the leaves came out, that color is definitely one of my favorites from the still-current range. I love mostly colors that have a bit of a vintage or retro feel, and this card definitely has a bit of a retro feel to me. I got the Vintage Vogue set in my starter kit because I loved how different elements had a pattern within them - so that the stamped image is a little more interesting than just a plain letter or floral design. The flower in the card is actually double-layered with dimensionals between the second and third petals. I love love LOVE using dimensionals - it makes everything more fun! :)

I also made another, simpler card using the Vintage Vogue set more prominently and stamping one of the bigger blooms from the Petal Pizzazz set as a background image. I got the VV set in a clear-mount to fit with the price range in my kit. Initially I was definitely apprehensive about the clear-mount stamps. I've found that acrylic stamps, to me, don't get quite the same image resolution at times as rubber stamps do - especially with craft/pigment inks, which you really just have to get the exact right amount on there. But I was very pleasantly surprised - the clear-mount stamps are easy to use, and since they're still made of rubber instead of acrylic, they give you the same resolution - but take up much less space because they're housed in a DVD case.

Mail Call!

Much to my surprise, I'm happy to report (no, not happy - ECSTATIC is more like it!!) that my Stampin' Up! Starter Kit arrived in the mail today. Woohoo - I am now officially in business! I feel a little bit like the squirrel in that hilarious animated movie Hoodwinked; right after they give him coffee. Stamps! Ink Pads! CARD STOCK! It's all just too much excitement. :)

This is the part where I'm going to tell you how I came about becoming a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator. My husband is in the military, so we move where Uncle Sam sends us. This is sometimes annoying (such as having to sell your gorgeous 1950s house with the immaculate refinished floors and imported Mexican tile...sigh!), but also has its advantages. Aside from the fact that you get to live in places you might otherwise not even have traveled to, you also get to meet lots and lots of different people. At times, this comes with its own challenges. You get along with some people, not too much with others. You miss your friends from your last duty station. You wonder how old your best friend's children will be the next time you see them - and whether they'll even remember you. But it's all part and parcel with being married to a soldier!

I've always been a very creative person - I love to write and I have a collection of amazing collaged shoe boxes that stem from the time before I left home for college. But I was never really into papercrafts at all - admittedly in part because I wasn't really aware of that whole "world" until after I got married. I was too busy living life!
After I got married and moved in with my wonderful husband, I met lots of great, interesting women - one of whom told me she was a scrapbooker. At the time, that really didn't mean anything to me. Scrapbooking? EH? Might as well have been Tagalog to me! So when she and I went over to someone else's house one evening and I worked on an embroidery project, she set up shop on a large dining room table - and within minutes you couldn't see the surface anymore. And then there was this strange-looking piece of luggage that, apparently, served as a storage device for all her "tools of the trade". I laughed to myself (although not nearly as much as I do now at the recollection) because I thought, quite honestly, that the whole thing was completely ridiculous. Of course it's not nearly as ridiculous now that I have entire storage containers devoted to stamps - not to mention the prerequisite wheeling tote that is a total must-have for any "respectable" scrapbooker!! ;)

But I'm getting ahead of myself (you'll see this is a recurring theme). Three years ago I met this woman called Carol. I don't really remember how I met her - I think it was through an online group and because she offered me a ride when my car was in the shop. The how, where and why is really not that pertinent. Carol was a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. I had no idea what that was - but when we started hanging out, I saw some of the fun & creative projects she did...and I liked what I saw! Here was a hobby I had totally underestimated. Scrapbooking had seemed like a rather dull hobby - you know, crop some pictures, glue them on a piece of paper, slap some stickers on, file away never to be looked at again. But stamping suddenly gave what had seemed like a mundane pastime a totally new dimension - now the possibilities seemed endless! And before you could say "unmounted stamp set" I was totally hooked.

Now I love papercrafts. I don't consider myself a scrapbooker, or a card maker, because I love experimenting with all different aspects of crafting. I've done some mixed media projects, altered journals, artist trading cards (ATCs) - and I continue to do scrapbooking and make cards when the mood strikes. Sometimes, the desk in my "studio" (or rather "box room", the appropriate term in the local vernacular) ends up looking like a bomb exploded - and I look like the "before" picture in a Lysol commercial. I've had an ink cartridge explode in my face (really rather hilarious, although not quite so funny when I tried to explain the splotches that I couldn't scrub away for days), glitter all over my clothes, paint and glue on my hands...and I love it! I admire people who are organized, tidy crafters, but I sure am not one of them. When I get into a project, I go all out - I use my hands, my tools, my desk, everything around me. I love trying to find new uses for old things - whether it be vintage notions, pieces of packing or scrap paper that most people would throw away, or everyday items that seem destined for the recycling bin until I have an AHA! moment.

So today I'm particularly excited, because I'm looking forward to experimenting with my new craft supplies! :)