So, why have I been away. Well, we built a house in Indiana on 15 acres. We started in Jan of 2013 to be exact. On June 28 we moved in, and then I started the whole process of getting the house together. One of the nice things about building a house is that we could incorporate a man-cave AND a mom-cave. The mom-cave is a very nice scrapbook room.
Then January of this year has brought all kinds of challenges for me. Frozen shoulder affected both of my shoulders to the point that I spent about six months in therapy. Then my husband and I went through some problems we needed to work out. And right after that, my company gave notice to 30 people that we were losing our jobs. My job of almost 16 years was gone. But the good news is that the day before I was supposed to leave, they offered an extension to my job and it looks like the extension is going to turn into a different full time position within the company! God is truly a great provider.
So even though 2014 has been one of the worst years ever, it has turned out to be a good end to the year. My scrap room is complete (well - I may need another shelving unit). Ha - it never ends, does it?
So to celebrate coming back to the blog, I've taken pictures of my scrap room to share with you.
This is the entrance to the Scrap Cave!!! I love the barn doors. And when it's a mess, I can shut the doors. There's a large television to the left of where I am standing while taking the picture. So I can watch whatever is on the television in the main room while I am sitting at the table.
My room is 13 x 30 and these shots are the part to the left, center and right of my room. On the other side of the double doors is a supply closet that is 8 x 13.
On one end is the sitting area and apothecary counter. I store stamps in the cabinet. There's another television in this room and my husband can watch television with me instead of the main part of the basement. Or if he's watching television in the main room and I don't like it, I can shut the barn doors to watch something else in here. But, it is kind of nice to have him in here with me while I sit and color. My dogs also lay over there since there are some dog beds on the floor. They like the love seat too!
This is my first table which is regular height. I have an Ott light there, and this is where I like to color. I can get almost all my markers in the Copic bag. I like them organized AND portable, so the C's, N's and W's are stored in another container.
There is another table that is identical but counter height to the right of it. I got these tables from Archiver's when the local store went out of business. They came on iron legs, but my husband removed them and built new legs. I LOVE they way they turned out.
And yes, that's a piece of fabric on the left window. I'm trying to figure out what kind of window covers to get. The sun sets just to the left of it and sends quite a glare into the room. So I covered it temporarily until I can decide what to put there. Oh well, someday I'll get to it!
This is the front and back of my counter height table. I wanted it counter-height because I love to stand when I piece together my projects. This works out great for that. There is a counter height chair against the wall that I can pull up if needed.
Underneath the table is a cabinet my husband built for me. He just finished it last night. I had painted the drawers but he had to sand them down to get them aligned with the drawer glides. So now I need to paint them again, but I was too excited. I will paint them while the cabinet is under the table. Hmmm...maybe this will be like the curtains. :-) The cabinet holds all my tools like cutting board, envelope maker, scorer, cutting pads, watercolor papers. The open front makes it easy for me to pull them out when I need them. I put things like paper crimpers, other paper tools and stamp blocks in the drawers.
Because this is where I do most of my assembling, I bought a large piece of Ranger craft paper to protect the work service from glue, tape, embossing powders, paint and that kind of stuff.
The shelf on the end of the table is where I hang scissors, and the lazy susan holds things like tape, and the heat gun also hangs off the shelf in a carrier with other embossing tools.
On the other side of the wall is a long section of counter space. I have my computer and printer on one end. I also have a smaller Cricut out here in case I don't want to go into my supply closet. The left side has two revolving stacks of ink pads and additional ink pads are stored in the drawers. All my embossing inks, glitter, stickles and pearls are in the large drawers.
This is where I want my husband to put a framed shelf in so I can put embellishments on the wall. Hopefully this is his next project. Remember that man cave I talked about earlier? Well it's a wood shop...so this would be a perfect "Next" project.
Now a peek into my supply closet. This is where I keep more stamps, all my paper, punches, dies and a cutting station. There is also a large supply of embellishments in here. But I store a bunch on a shelf over by the lounge area!
Just to the right of the doors is a little table where I can also cut paper. The drawers store paper pieces from past projects and they are sorted by color. There are also drawers for tape and cutter supplies. On the shelf are my paper pads that I don't want to stack too high. This gives me the ability to pull a stack out without much effort. Then all my 6 x 6 pads are just to the left of them. I can pull them out and set them on the table while I look through them. A cutter in here lets me cut pieces down before I take them into the main area.
The other side of the table is additional storage for paper. On the second shelf are my Stampin' Up stamps...well some of them. These are just the ones that came in the CD box.
This is to the left of the door. I keep stamps in the bins on the bottom. Punches hang on the wall, and I have two containers on the floor storing more punches. There are also a couple of those plastic drawers with punches in them.
The CD containers (plastic towers and black boxes) house CD cases with stamps in them as well as the green boxes.
Just on the other side of the wall is a drafting drawer I got a long time ago. This is my cutting center. My vagabond sits on top of it, but I can pull my Big Shot and other cutters from the shelf if I need them. All my dies, embossing folders and Cricut cartridges are stored in this area.
I like to keep things organized. I made envelopes for the dies and numbered them with orange labels. When I want to find a die, I search through the binder with die images on the shelf and look for the one I want. It tells me which envelope it is stored in. I go to that envelope and pull the die out that I need. The dies sit on magnetic strips cut to the size of the envelopes. All the envelopes are stored in an Art Bin container that I got from Joann's. There are some borders that are too long and I have them stored in a binder, organized by number.
I organize my embossing folders the same way, only I cut 4 x 6 card stock and run them through the embosser. I put the 4 x 6 sample into photo sleeves and number the image. Then I put numbered labels on the embossing folder and store them in bins. When I need an embossing folder, I browse my catalog and cross reference the number to its location.
Oh and inside the drafting drawers...
...more stamps.
Since I have so many stamps, I found an inventory software called Lignup MultiCollector Pro. It allows me to search an image through my database of stamps. I created a library for each image with information like Manufacturer, name of image, price and then a picture of the image. It also allows you to keep tags of the image. I numbered all the containers the stamps were in and created a unique number for each stamp or set. In the software, I list the location and the number of the stamp. This allows me to find the stamps easily. Now I type in "heart" and it gives me every image I tagged with the word heart. When I find one I like, it will refer me to it's location. It allows allows searches on the other pieces of information like manufacturer or name of set. This can also be stored on Drop Box so I can search my stamp images when I'm at a store or convention to see if I have anything like it or not. It is well worth the investment if you want to inventory your collection.
Now that my room is put together and everything is organized, I can finally just color and scrapbook. I hope you've liked the tour of my room.
XX,
Jo
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