Disaster Areas

Sometimes when projects are plentiful the house can get into a bit of disarray. Sorry folks, there’s just no way around that.

Currently our kitchen table is flooded with cardstock, rubber stamps, ink pads and felt tip markers surrounded mostly done Christmas cards. If there was a way to take up less space I’d have figured it out by now. With so many different supplies needed at your fingertips, it is near impossible to reduce the required square footage. Trust me, I’ve tried. Even when I had the craft room at the old house with a specific scrapbooking/card making station, it still looked like a tornado had come through and tossed everything onto the desk.

Now that we share the office space and craft room, it is less likely to simply see a closed door concealing the contents inside. Of course, I have half the room set up just for sewing currently. My cutting table, otherwise known as a foldable card table with a cutting mat on it, currently has fabric stashes for at least four different projects I’m working on. Seriously I have yardage, bits and pieces of batiks for The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt, various sized pieces and scraps from the Auction Quilt I just finished, the backing and border fabrics, along with the remainder for the Green and Brown Baby Quilt I’m working on, and piles of fabric strips ready to be cut and pieced for final blocks on The Fall Quilt. They are just all over the place on that small table making it a wonder I can use it to cut anything at all!

The obvious thing to do would be to organize it all, but then I’d end up taking everything out again and the process would start all over. So instead I will simply put the fabrics away that I’ve already used and are finished with and fold them into columns onto the bookcase I have in the room to hold it all. That way, should I need to come back to any of those projects, the pile used will still all be together. As for the stamps and cardstock, I just need to finish the damn Christmas cards already!

Addendum: I just walked into the craft room/office because I was trying to upload this onto my blog and lo and behold I remembered I had fabric for a fifth project piled up on top that I scrapped because it was, well, far too uninspiring to even start. Oy.

Christmas Cards

When graced with an abundance of rubber stamps and ink, what is one to do? Make your own Christmas cards of course!

Years ago I was a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator. Basically I used my discount to feed my addiction to scrapbooking and card making supplies. I couldn’t tell you exactly how much of my disposable income (back in the day when such a thing existed) to purchase enough stuff to keep my discount and demonstrator status, but I can tell you that the minimum requirements were three-hundred dollars every quarter and I had no problem keeping that up for at least a couple years. I’m sure you can do the math.

Anyway, my husband and I were talking and decided that we needed to send out Christmas cards this year, if for no other reason than to update people on our new address. I suggested making them since I already had the supplies out for a recent church project. Of course, that meant that we’d actually have to, you know, make them. Much easier said than done. And so yesterday we worked on them together and have them mostly put together. Now we just need to decide whether or not to include a Christmas Letter to go inside.

Of Gifts and Plans

Ideas abound when money is at its least. Figures.

It always seems to happen this time of year as Christmas approaches, closing in faster and faster as if the inertia of a bullet train from Thanksgiving to December twenty-fifth pushes forward at near light speed, that the time to work on projects decreases. What with the random parties and get-togethers and baking is one to do? Well, there are two options. The first is to try and squeeze everything in and in turn go ahead and make a reservation at the nearest mental health institution. The second, and obvious choice to me anyway, is to simply relax and make a plan of what you can actually accomplish.

On the docket for this week? Christmas cards. Actually if I can make them all today after work that would be great. That way I can get them out in the mail tomorrow so people will have our new address. However, I’m allowing myself the rest of the week since I have two quilts to finish up. Now I just need to ransack my rubber stamps and figure out a design. Since this will only require postage, because I already have all of the supplies, it is also something I can do.

Handmade Greeting Cards

With today being Mother’s Day, you might have already picked out and purchased a card for yours. However if you haven’t might I suggest you make her one instead.

Remember making cards in grade school? The time and care you put into them to make sure they were just right and something you thought your mother would treasure forever, maybe even frame for family and friends to gawk at while visiting or a representative from Hallmark will spy your masterpiece and offer you millions of dollars to create cards for them because you were able to capture just exactly what their team of experts have been unable to do? Okay, so maybe not that far, but you get where I’m going with this… right?

It isn’t so much the effort to make the card as the smile on the recipients face when they receive it. A handmade card, whether it be for a birthday, get well, holiday or thank-you, carries a lot more weight than a store bought card in the emotions department, but just because you don’t have a creative bone in your body doesn’t give you an excuse to not try to make one yourself.

For crafters, you probably have a medium or twenty you could utilize to create a greeting card. Rubber stamps, collages, fabric patchworks, photographs, line to fine art, all work well to create a one of a kind card for that special someone. Of course, with the computer you have even more options to play with, but please hand write the message inside. Even if you have horrible handwriting, I still suggest doing so to really make it personal. And if all else fails and you have to come up with a quick card fast, a plain piece of paper with a note inside and maybe a stick figure or flower on the front will work. So let your inner child free and have fun in the process, because if you enjoy making it, the person receiving it will see that in the final product.

Valentine's Cards

With Valentine’s Day just a few weeks away, it is time to start making them, or at least to start thinking about them. If you’ve got kids in school, you know how much fun and dread go into filling out cards for the class, but what about us adults? How many of us take the time to fill out cards for loved ones?

A few years ago at church during our choir’s Christmas music service, one of the choir members told a story of why she didn’t mail out Christmas cards. With all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, that was the easiest thing to scratch off the to-do list. So instead, during the much slower month of February, she would start sending out her thank-you cards in the form of Valentines. This accomplished two things: Actually sending out thank-you cards, and not fretting over what to write inside the Valentine Card.

I’ve adopted her strategy, because I am horrible at sending out thank-you cards or notes. And, it gives me another excuse to go see our friend Sarah so we can make the cards together, even if we do spend most of the time goofing off!

So I hope I’ve inspired you to send out your own Valentine’s Day Thank-You Cards. And before any of you start off with Miss Etiquette’s rule of 2 weeks from the time the gift is received, another rule is better late than never. And yes, e-cards are perfectly appropriate too!