Cyber Monday Sale

Cyber Monday sale will begin at 4:00 pm (CST) on Monday, December 2 and will end at 2:59 pm the next day. To shop with me just click on this link: BUSYBUCHAROO.CTMH.COM
It's best to shop early because a lot of these items tend to go FAST.....  I have found that it is best to already be logged in to the website before the sale begins. If you don't see the sale pop up a few seconds after 4:00 do a refresh of the page. (that's the little circular arrow up at the top of your browser window) Click on the Shop Now button to see the items included in the sale. They don't tell us ahead of time what is going to be in the sale, but during the Black Friday sale there were paper bundles, ink pad bundles, wooden banners, ribbons, embellishments and more. There were several Cut Above Kits from our Craft with Heart Scrapbook Subscriptions too. If you are interested in the subscription kits, you might want to check the sale to see if anymore of these great quick kits are available. Good luck and happy shopping!

This Is My Happy Place

The right hand side of the room

I finally found a place for everything and everything is in it's place, if only I could remember where that place is. HA-HA! I must admit that I am going through a 'where do I keep that now?' stage. I am trying not to get frustrated. It's all part of the process. If I find myself always going to a  certain drawer for a particular object I reevaluate where I'm keeping that object and move it to the location my brain seems to think is the more logical spot. 
Can you tell one of my favorite colors is lavender? I even painted my Ott lamp to match. I love my Ott lamp but the bright green color just wasn't doing it for me. Now it matches my utensil holder. 

 The left-hand side of the room

 I love having an L shape desk area now. It makes it so much easier to reach for things. The desk faces the other side of the room and the television, which I plan to mount on a wall.

For my birthday, my mom got me this great cutting table from Ikea. both sides fold out so I have plenty of room to cut my fabric. There are 3 long drawers on each end that hold all of my sewing notions and machine feet.

 My granddaughter, age 3, came to visit. I was showing her my new table and how the leg swings out and the side lifts up to make a table. She immediately crawled under the raised side (which will make a great tent if I spread a sheet over it.)and sat for several minutes. It wasn't until she went home and I was taking these pictures that I discovered what was so fascinating under the table. She found some self adhesive gem embellishments I had dropped earlier and decided that Mims' table was a little plain and needed to be decorated. I think she's right. The gems stay.

It's Coming Together

Before I ever began the process of renovating I took some graph paper and drew out a scale version of the new room’s shape. I then measured my furniture and took a piece of heavy cardstock and drew and cut-out squares and rectangles the size of all my furniture. I labeled each one so I would know what they were. 

This really helped me in designing my space. I must have tried a hundred designs before I settled on what I felt would work best. Before I decided to get my Kallex from Ikea I went online and got the measurements for the piece I wanted and made a rectangle to size to figure out the placement. It turned out to be too big, so I went with the next smallest size.  I also decided to get rid of several items because they were either not needed anymore, or I was able to consolidate my things to fit in 1 cabinet instead of two.

One end of the room complete

 As you can see, it was a perfect fit! I still have some more paper packs to put away, but I've gotten my stash to a much more reasonable amount.

  As I put things back into my newly renovated craft room I asked myself, “Do I really need that?” If the answer was “No.” then I would put it into my give away pile. If the answer was “Yes” then I would quiz myself.  “When will I use it?” “What will I use it for?”  ”How many of these do I really need?”  (you know what I mean!)  This question helped me really narrow down my paper stash. I had multiple sheets of the sane themed paper. I’d keep 2-3 and get rid of the rest.  And in the case of storage containers I asked myself, “Do I have something that will work better or hold more?”

Any paper that was faded, torn or wrinkled I threw away. The good sheets I packaged up by color and gave them to anyone that was interested. The rest I donated to a women’s shelter for their store.  I went through all of my paints, pens, and color pencils. If they were dried out, hard to write with, or I had duplicates they went into my give away box. Once something went in there it stayed in there and I tried to remove at least one box from the house weekly. I sold some of my equipment and furniture on an online garage sale. I’ve kept the money from the sales in an envelope and it’s now my rainy day craft fund.

Renovating My Craftroom

One wall down.
Carpet tacks removed. Ready to start scraping walls.

 I found that by spraying a small section of the wall with plain water and letting it sit for a couple of minutes the texture came off much more easily. Also, I started out with a 3 inch putty knife and that was more work than it was worth. I found this old long handle scraper out in my husband's workshop and it worked much better. I'd put on my earphones, start up a good book on my Kindle and get into the zone.

After about a week of scraping on and off I finally got the walls and ceiling finished.

The walls are painted and the trim is up. The paint came from Ace Hardware and it's called Romantic Blue. It looks like periwinkle to me. It's almost identical to the color on the walls before and it makes me happy.

The laminate flooring is from Home Depot. It's Hand Scraped Saratoga Hickory. Of course we had to purchase enough to not only finish this room, but our bedroom and hallway too. 
Now for the fun part. Setting it up the way I want.

 

Before the Renovation

From the door

Along short wall

End of Room

Tall Wall

built in shelves

Main work area

Back to the door

Dilemma: I have too much stuff for this little space. 

  Solution:  Get rid of a lot of stuff. Create a larger space. I'm going through my stuff now, but as a Close To My Heart consultant, I have and need a lot of it. Fortunately? there is always something I've out grown, stopped using or don't like. So out those things go. I can't widen my room. I can only lengthen it. My husband is going to knock out the wall with the door and absorb what is now our current office.

Office

The office hasn't always been this crowded or messy. I have started moving things out of my craft room so I can prep the walls. The wall with the picture on it is the wall that separates my craftroom from the office. It is the one that will be coming out.

My Craftroom Makeover

Main work area in 2010

My Cricut Lair

Recessed shelving.

I got my craftroom when my husband and I renovated the attic for another bedroom. The left over area became my craftroom. It measures a cozy 6' x 12' but it's all mine and I love it. I painted it periwinkle blue with white trim. It started as my sewing room. Then, in 2012 I got a Cricut for Christmas and my husband renamed my craft room, my Cricut Lair.
Stay tuned to see my latest craftroom make over.

Embossing Powder

Shaker card using Red Tinsel Embossing Powder for the sentiment.

Red Tinsel Z4251

I’ve been experimenting with heat embossing again. (See my post, Embossing on Wood ) I just got a jar of Red Tinsel Embossing Powder from Close To My Heart. I love the cheery red color. This stuff is shimmery, bright, and sparkly.  I had fun playing with it and found out a couple things that might help you too.

Anti-static pouch A4220

 The first is, don’t forget to use an anti-static pouch. If you’ve never used one, this is a great tool that you wipe across your paper before you stamp and pour on the embossing powder. It helps keep the embossing powder from sticking where you don’t want it to stick. I forgot to use it on my first attempt and had extraneous little red sparkles all over my card. It’s not very expensive and it’s a must have for your tool box.

  

Second is, don’t thump the back of your card to get rid of excess embossing powder. Instead, use a gentle shake and a light tap. I’m not sure why, but when I thumped my card a lot of the powder fell off and I had to reapply it. I use Versa Mark when I’m embossing because it holds the powder really well, but for some reason the tinsel didn’t hold as well. Maybe it’s heavier.

  Third, you may need to run the heat embosser over the powder a little longer than normal for the embossing powder to melt. I had a difficult time telling if the embossing powder was melting because I don’t have adequate lighting in my craft room and the powder is sparkly to start with, so I had a hard time seeing if the embossing powder melted or fused or whatever the magic is that it does.  

  Forth, wait a minute or two before wiping or rubbing your hand across the embossed area. It needs that minute or so to setup and if you wipe to soon the powder wipes off too. The good news is, if you have some stray specks you may be able to wipe them away before it sets up or drys.

As I used the tinsel powder it got me thinking about other mediums I could use to emboss with. I have mostly white, stardust, the red tinsel and a clear embossing powder. But what if I wanted another color or less of a sparkle effect? I’ve heard people say that they sometimes use pigment inks to emboss with because they don’t dry quite as quickly as water based inks do. So I thought what the heck! I’ll try both and see which works best.   I used a pigment ink I had on hand called Check Me Out Red, by Megan Elizabeth. (I don't believe it is available any longer.) Then I tried a water-based dye ink, Candy Apple a true red by CTMH. You can see the results below. I first stamped my sentiment on a circle of cardstock, and then I quickly poured clear embossing powder over the ink while it was still wet. I shook off the excess powder and using my heat tool heated the embossing powder. It melted quickly on both inks and left a nice shiny red surface. The pigment ink is a little smoother, but I like the water-based ink the best. It seemed to give a more crisp image and the slight bumps gives it a more textured look.

 

  I thought I'd enter my card in the CardzTV-anything goes challenge #73