My craft space is shaping up ever so slowly, but better since I was able to get a cabinet to hold/showcase lots of my stuff last week (early Mother’s Day present.) We were at IKEA and I noticed a red “Bergsbo” cabinet setup there. It had nothing in it but a light installed in the top on each side. It’s a cabinet that has glass in the doors, and several glass shelves and some red shelves. Most of them re-positionable. (Just the bottom and then one set of fixed red shelves non-move-able.)

I thought it’d look nice for my scrapbooking supplies, to get them organized finally into something. My hubby liked it, and a couple days later he wanted to go back to get it. So we did. I’d rather have gotten it the first time, but oh well. In any case I put it together taking 2-days to do it. I had my 14-yr-old son help when I needed to stand the unit up. It was hard the first day, getting some of the parts together, and it wore me out, thus the need for 2 days to complete it.

I don’t have everything in it, plus everything that is in it isn’t arranged rightly yet. Some is, some isn’t. I need to get some things done, bought, made, etc. to get embellishments better sorted and organized to use, acrylic stamps … I have a kit to put together from Bind-It-All to make an acrylic book that will hold my stamps. I need to clear my table of extraneous stuff and get some lighting down there before I can accomplish putting that together. My scrapbooking space is just one side of the walk-out-basement that isn’t really big enough to function as much of anything, it’s a walk through to a future 3/4 bathroom, just not functioning yet, but there is SOME space to utilize, it won’t be my permanent spot though. There is another room that is currently housing the extra cats we have. Once we have them straightened out then getting the room cleaned up is priority, getting new flooring down, painting, and my stuff will move into there. (I’ll have to share the space with the desktop computer & children’s art stuff of course, and will probably house most of the education stuff in there too for homeschooling.)

So anyhow, now I’m trying to reacquaint myself with what paper I have, and get all my scraps in one place arranged usefully too. I have some paper in my Berbsbo cabinet, I have lots of paper in another sort of organization thing, made for scrapbookers, holds 12×12 paper or whatever, like 6 plastic drawers with lids attached that slide into a plastic frame one on top of the other. Now that I have some real space to use I can move paper around until I have what I want in that plastic organizer, figure out where it’s best used, and then organize the remainder of the paper.

I have a nice set of things we got at Costco once, it’s got 2 albums and lots of paper and embellishments for a complete album setup. Thing is it’s too cohesive and lovely for me to figure out what to put in it! It’s all in a plastic tote box (that fits under a bed, for instance.)

Recently I’ve been looking at scrapbooking videos online, and have seen enough of the “make your own albums” variety that I know I’d rather make my own post-bound albums and other kinds of books myself, rather than buy them. I love the idea of book making, and I do also have a Bind-It-All to make wire bound books already. It’s one type that is really nice to have, and I do like a variety of types of books to scrap in (just not the kind I have the most of: Creative Memories strap albums, yuck!)

I haven’t done much scrapbooking over the years, though I have been into scrapbooking since late 1995, and I have made cards for a long time too, mostly on the computer, some with scrapbook supplies, mostly that since I got my Cricut Expression a few years ago.

Today my baby was sick. So I made him a crown to wear using my Once Upon a Princess shape cartridge, and a cute card made from dark red cardstock with “feel better” welded from Jasmine font cartridge in yellow over black shadow pasted down and then I wrote his name with embossing pen and embossed it with clear powder. Inside I wrote a message to him with an opaque white writer pen (looks good on dark red!) and put a pair of lips that I cut out with the Cricut from the Forever Young shapes cartridge. I cut a shadow in black, and then colored the main lip piece with red embossing marker and embossed that a couple of times with clear embossing powder. When cool I pasted them together and pasted them into the interior of the card. Just something fun to do to make him feel better. My daughter donated a few gems to put on his crown. He helped to press them down.

That’s the project I did and I liked doing it, but it was really crazy as my table was full of all this stuff that had to go elsewhere, so I was realigning piles to get space and getting rather frustrated at the whole convoluted process, though it went rather smoothly compared to other projects I’ve done in the past, planned or at the drop of the hat. My new cabinet played a role in making it go better.

I did get a bunch of new embossing powders at Archiver’s on Monday. I had a gift card from hubby to use. There are these little paint can sort of containers at Archivers with vials of several colors inside, exactly like these kits, but in pails. Pastel Party is one, the other one is called “Razzleberry Embossing Powder Pail Kit” and it’s not on the Stampedous site. There is a similar one called “Merlot” but it’s not it. The colors in mine are all opaque and named: Wild Plum, Sky Blue, Lettuce, Grape, and Midnight Black.

My Pastel Party pail of colors are: Blush Pink, Peach, Sunny Yellow, Baby Blue, and Lilac.

I was looking for a detail clear embossing powder at Archiver’s and didn’t find any, but I do see on Stampendous website they do make it. I really want some. The “Deep Impressions” stuff I have already had and the new one I picked up on Monday are just too thick for some things I want to do. I have had “detail white” for a long while and love that one. Clear like that is exactly what I am looking for.

I also got another distress ink pad “Tattered Rose” was added to my collection of one: “Tea Dye” … my daughter actually got three of these sort the last time before we were at Archivers. Her’s are different colors. I need to add to my collection as well, and also get some other inks. I have several things now, but such a mixed lot and it’s rather a confusing mess of ink pads, I must say.

Stamping is one of my favorite things to do. One set I got at Archiver’s is totally due to the dragonfly in it. It’s part of a series of things that is totally different from anything I have, and it’s a totally different direction to go in for something, and it’s exactly where I want to go, Glimmer screen stuff by Tattered Angels. This is a the actual stamp set. Anyhow I love dragonfly images and that clear stamp is wonderful, and the rest of the pieces in the set are great too. Archiver’s has one area setup with Tattered Angel stuff and it drives me nuts to have to pass it all up most times since I only have so much $$$$ and need other things first, which never seems to end.