My New Craft Area.....

I decided Friday morning that I really needed more proper storage boxes for my craft area, I cannot work in mess (ha ha) and everything out on shelves everywhere constituted mess, so decided to buy some new shelves and storage boxes to put on them, so hunted on the Ikea website and took my daughter to Ikea, she has never been before and was about as impressed as her step dad is, but we got what we wanted.... (or at least what I wanted and she even built the units for me.....)

So not too much has changed on my main desk except I got rid of the trofast storage I had a put a 9 drawer unit in the middle instead, this leaves me more room to work and my monitor then sits on top of it, the drawers under the desk have been shuffled around a bit and my Cricut Expression still sits on my desk, I am worried that if I put it away I would never use it.... lol

This part is where most of the new storage is.... the shelves are kitchen units and I bought glass shelves for them as I thought they looked less obtrusive than wood ones, I also bought all the storage boxes too and there are even some that are still empty, they are the ones without labels in, yes I have finally got around to labelling stuff too... my flowers are piled sky high in drawers (yes I know why does one person need so many flowers and yet can never find what they want) and I got my mini sewing machine out to sit on the desk too..... the small white shelves that I had on my desk before now sit on top of the new white units.

Now this is the storage inside my mirror Pax Wardrobes, the middle sliding drawer holds all my current SU Stamp Sets and believe me it holds a lot, I do have most of them.... the top drawer holds all the SU punches that we have plus other punches too including my Martha Stewart ones... (I also have 2 other drawers of punches under the desk), the bottom sliding drawer holds my 40+ Cricut Cartridges and the white boxes at the bottom hold old magazines, US and non Current SU stamp sets and odds and ends to alter.... the very top shelf holds my PaperTrey Ink Cardstock and the next shelf down has my PTI ribbon and buttons....

This single wardrobe holds a drawer unit which holds tons of 12 x 12 Patterned Paper by loads of different companies, one of the large blue containers holds all my 6 x 6 and 8 x 8 Paper Pads another holds all my SU wheels and handles, another holds chipboard books and boxes, the drawers hold odds and ends like staples and staplers, spare blades for my Fiskars Trimmer, glue refills, small pom poms, just tons of odds and ends....

This double wardrobe holds my Paperwork for SU, including all my Tax Returns, invoices, the SU magazines we get, all my Tim Holtz stuff including paint dabbers, distress inks, stamp sets, all the staples, embossing powders, crackle paint, twisters, masks and anything else Tim Holtz you can think off.... aahh yes if you look carefully you can also see my Watercolour Pencils and on the bottom shelf is my printer labels and photo paper.... My Bazzill Basic Cardstock is on one of the shelves, one of the brown boxes holds all the Scrapbook Kits I bought and haven't used, the other one holds my Bind It All and all the wires and covers etc.... and also on the top shelf are some Scrapbook Albums that I have completed for myself...

The above photo is of all the wardrobe doors shut, I chose mirror doors to make our bedroom look bigger when it is filled up with my Craft Stuff.... ha ha. Unfortunately children finger prints and dog noses have made them not so clean and shiny....

This is my SU Ribbon Storage, it is hung on the end of the Mirror Wardrobes, my other ribbon is in 9 jars which are in one of the blue boxes in the first wardrobe storage....

and this shelf sits beneath the ribbon with all my dies that I have left on it (I sold 100s last summer at a car boot sale)..... Aaah yes my Quickutz dies are in the Paper Storage drawer inside the mirror wardrobe, they sit nicely in 2 big books filled with special QK binder storage sheets....

This is my SU Patterned Paper Storage, my SU Textured Card, Scrappin Kits and Chipboard, plus I have snuck in some October Afternoon and Basic Grey, and my Scenic Route (RIP)... my SU stamp sets and refills sit on top of it....

I have loads of stamps that I need to sell as you can see I am running out of room, so will be adding them to my Copic Marker Stand Post over the next couple of days, there will be a mixture of Magnolia, Sugar Nellie, SU retired and US sets and various other companies that I cannot remember at the moment.... so keep checking back if you are interested....

Thanks for looking, take care xx

A Halloween Card....

My 2 little boys are going to a Halloween Party on Saturday, we don't celebrate Halloween but I don't feel I can stop them going to the party as the rest of their classes will be there, so I have made a card for the little boy whose party it is... not really sure if I should get a pressie too as it was his birthday a couple of months ago, so the only occasion is Halloween. Any ideas or suggestions?

I don't have any Halloween stamps other than the Papertrey Halloween Tags, no images or anything and I have left it to late to buy online as I am unlikely to get anything because of the threatened postal strikes again this week. So had to use what I had here. I find the Stampin Up Cardstock in Pumpkin Pie and Elegant Eggplant the perfect colours for halloween things and so used these colours, and they matched the Patterned Paper I had beautifully (not sure who the paper is from, I had it left over from last year)... I used a Quickutz die to cut out the pumpkin and bats, and I used the Stampin Up Pastels (chalks to us plebs) to colour the edge of the pumpkin in slightly so it gave it a bit of dimension. Again the inside is decorated to match the front....

Can you see the little googly eyes on the top bat? How cute are they and finish the card off perfectly methinks.

And this is the inside of the card, and even the little ghost has googly eyes.

I have been trying to make myself a watermark today to put on my cards but since I upgraded to elements 6 I cannot get any watermarks to work. I used to have PSP and my watermark worked brilliantly, then I changed to elements when I got my graphics tablet and my watermarks have never worked again. They are transparent until put onto the cards and then they are no longer transparent. Can anyone help me out here please... I would be very grateful.
I have wasted all afternoon on this, and I have used 2 different tutorials and ended up with the same result. Transparent until added to my picture.... grrrrrr!!!

Anyway, need to get dinner started, we are having Chilli Con Carne and Rice tonight, not sure I have any rice, so will check before I start and send one of the children to the shop if I haven't... why do I always forget the most important part (well apart from the mince of course.. lol).

Have a good evening all xx

I thought I would get a lot done today....

But then I realised I had to take 2 of my boys to the dentist for fillings, and then my Stampin' Up! parcel arrived which I needed to pack and take the parcels to the post office, then I had to go and get worming tablets for my 3 dogs and give them to them, oh yes, and the 3 loads of washing I have had to do, the forms I needed to print off and explain to someone and the school run, and here we are, nothing has been done and I have a great big pile of ironing to do... well I guess I could start a card now, but by the time it is finished it will be too dark to photograph, so I may as well get the ironing out of the way whilst it is dark which gives me a day tomorrow to make..... or so I think at this moment in time!! lol

So I thought I would show you a card I made a while ago, I used to do a lot of Sugar Nellie and Magnolia images, until I started selling Stampin' Up! of course and now I rarely get to use my old stamps, so here is today's card...


Sugar Nellie Stamp, Basic Grey Patterned paper, leaves are quickutz die cuts and flowers and brads are from my stash.

So that is about it for today, nothing exciting to report, quite boring really... hope you all have a good evening, take care xx

A Little Boy's Birthday Card...

Today I am very proud of myself, I have actually made a card for a little boy whose party my son is going to on Sunday.... yep Sunday, and today is Friday, I am organised, how thrilling is that!! And I have the birthday present too, so no last minute running around in Tesco on Sunday trying to find something for this little boy just before his party starts... I hope I can continue this way. I have also needed a couple of thank you cards this week and all I needed was to reach into my box and lift one out... what bliss!! Now I hope that I can do my 12 card order so smoothly AT THE BEGINNING of next week instead of rushing to finish them on Saturday. Aaaah so what am I waiting for you want to see the card of course...

My photographic skills have gone way down the pan this week, doesn't matter which camera I use, so it is obviously down to me... I have used a Stampin' Up! Stamp Set for this card called All in The Family and the little Rugby Ball is from Family Accessories... The patterned paper is Scenic Route Metropolis, cardstock is matching Bazzill cardstock BUT the bigger hearts have been punched out using the Stampin' Up! Star Punch. "Ben" has been die cut using my Quickutz Ginger alphabet.

I have a very busy weekend, we have a loft conversion and have loft cupboards that aren't very accessible but just enough that you can load junk into the cupboards. This weekend our task is to tidy out one of the cupboards and list anything we dont want on e-bay... one persons junk is another ones treasure, or something like that. I have lots of annuals from when I was young in there, not sure what I am keeping them for so they can go if they dont appear to be worth anything. Then I also need to get two punctures fixed on my car, one is a slow puncture so have had it a while and now I have another one, so will have to get both fixed, and the boys all have a Pantomime to go to, The Wizard of Oz.... oh no they haven't, oh yes they have. Plus my little boy wants to be enrolled next week at Beavers, so we need to buy him his top and the place where we buy it is only open tomorrow.... looks like I will be getting up at 5am....

Hope you have a less busy weekend than me, take care xx

Finished... WooHoo....

As you may have noticed, I am absolutely thrilled by the fact that I finished all my Christmas Cards and thy are now posted to everyone they need posting to... I even made a special one for DH's Boss.... his wife runs a chicken business advising people on how to keep chickens etc, so here is the card I made for them....


I sponged on a lot of the the Blue SU inkpads, and used the So Saffron and Pumpkin Pie for the moon. I used the Lovely As A Tree Stamp Set which I stamped in versamark and embossed with black embossing powder... I drew snow around the trees with the SU White Ink Pen. The sleigh was made using my cricut and the chickens are quickutz dies... the gold "reins" is the gold elastic from SU.

I also made another card using the Lovely As A Tree Stamp Set, it is just so versatile and can be used for almost any occasion...


I used Kraft and Real Red cardstock and Bashful Blue Patterned Paper, I embossed the trees using white embossing powder. The swirl is from the Hodgepodge Hardware set and the brads are from Stampin Up... the sentiment is from Verve Stamps...

That's all I have to show you today, if you would like to check out more of my cards, then go take a look at my other blog www.agaggleofgadgetsandscrappingtoo.blogspot.com.

Have a good evening all xx