Paper Whiskers

October Night

It's October! Finally. And as proof, I give you a spooky night:

I took this with my little point and shoot Canon Powershot from my truck. I had the window down on account of fogging, and realized with no traffic, it was the perfect time to capture a shot.

I'll post more photos from the night later, but none turned out as awesome as this one.

Sat. morning breakfast

What's better than peanut butter on toaster waffles?

Peanut butter on Star Trek toaster waffles, that's what.

hee.

4.5x7 Embellishment Hideaway - Hacked

In my quest to get more organized, I found this Cropper Hopper storage box on clearance at TwoPeas:

 

I found no information on what the inside looked like, so went ahead and got it anyway, gambling that it would have the space I needed. It fits perfectly where I planned to put it, and I could easily stack another on top (which I may still do, since they are still on sale). But I was really hoping that it had no dividers at all.

As you can see, it does have dividers. Lots of them. By the time this came, I had decided to use it for stamp storage - the ones that I always forget to use because they are sorted into drawers. Those 3x3 slots weren't going to cut it.

So, I hacked it.

 

It's actually very easy to do, because it's made of chipboard, covered in fabric on the outside. I used an xacto knife to trim out the first divider and glued down the loosened pieces that came up when I pulled out the inner pieces. Then I picked out paper:

 

and started trimming liner pieces. I ended up using the left two papers (Fancy Pants Designs) and cut them to these measurements:

6.5 x 6 3/8 for the base (cut 1)
6.5 x 3 5/8 for the sides (cut 4)
6.5 x 1.5 for the scalloped strips to top the sides (cut 4)

I glued them in this order: base, scalloped strips, sides. I used fabri-tac for the scalloped strips, since they were being glued onto fabric, but I don't think it's entirely necessary. I think the Scotch Quick-Dry I used for the rest would have worked just as well. I used liquid glue, over red-line tape, for durability. Liquid glue bonds the paper with the chipboard, whereas red-line tape (strong as it is) just sits between the layers and doesn't have the same absorption property. But that's more information than anyone cares about, so moving on!

When I glued the scalloped strips in (and later the sides), I used clamps to keep pressure on the middle and corners, to help the bonding process along.

Once I had everything glued, I realized that I needed a better handle than the one that's on it. Luckily, there are two handy holes pre-drilled in the handle, so you can add ribbon or tags or whatever. Nice. I decided to use a fancy fabric brad from my vast collection of brads, that matched the insides perfectly:

 

Pretty!

And here's the final product, put to use:

 

The brad might get put back into the stash soon, because I'm not quite sure it's going to work as well as I'd thought. I may end up using ribbon after all.

:)

Labor Day Weekend Labors

I spent the weekend sorting, cleaning, organizing, and purging my scrap/craft/spare room. It's not done, but I have a clean worktable, more places to put things, two boxes of rummage sale-bound stuff, and more logical arrangement of key supplies. I'm still working on it, and have lots more paper to purge (mostly cardstock at this point). I also went through my stamps pretty ruthlessly, and for the first time, my Magenta stamp collection (ouch!).

I also pulled out a bathroom cabinet kit that I'd had kicking around way too long (because I discovered after opening it that it needs to be wall mounted) with the intention of putting it together. That's when I rediscovered the wall mount problem, not to mention that it was missing the hardware. And know why? Because the box it's in, isn't the box it came in. Weird. I've had it so long, I have no idea why. I'm sure it made sense at the time.  lol  So now I think I'm going to have to make a trip to the hardware store to find the screws, and doorknobs. I still have to figure out how to get around the wall-mounting, though.

There was one crafty thing I did this weekend. I finally catalogued my paint/Stickles glitter glue/alcohol ink bin. I used some cardboard pieces I was originally going to recycle, plus a stack of white cardstock tags that have been kicking around. I made them into tags, and hung them on a binder ring, which I then hung on the bin. The other tag booklet is one that I made at CKU a couple years ago, in a Tim Holtz class. It has instructions and examples for several alcohol techniques.

I have been wanting a way to be able to see these things in action, all in one place.

For the Stickles and alcohol inks I stamped an open circle with room to write in the color names. I figured this would be a good way to see them at a glance. The alcohol inks are actually applied to clear epoxy circles that take the color beautifully. I intentionally left spaces blank, for future acquisitions. ;)

 

Glitter Mists are another supply, like alcohol inks, that are impossible to really know what they look like without having a an sample. I used Eclipse masking paper to cover the tag as I was spraying each color, so they wouldn't get all mixed up.

 

And this photo shows the examples for Lil Davis Designs metallic paints and Ranger distress crackle paints.

So, I procrastinated a bit, by making this when I probably should have been working on something else, but I had a lot of fun and I did get lots of other stuff done, too. And now I have something that will help keep this stuff top of mind when I'm working on a project. I have so much stuff, that it's easy to overlook things that later on I realize would have been a good addition.