Let’s Get Stampy!

I know I kinda fell off the December Daily bandwagon this year due to travel but while I was in it I had a really fun time re-acquainting myself with my lovely December Daily stamps. It got me all inspired to break out the rest of my small but special stamp collection and challenge myself to get stampy this month. I know some creatives out there are all about the stamps (ahem, Jennifer McGuire, she is the queen of stamping!) but seriously I forget to use mine more often than not. So it’s time they got the spotlight and I threw some layouts together with a stampy spin.    Because of my stampy struggles my most recently acquired stamps haven’t even seen the light of day on a layout. So I thought I’d start there. I’m talking the oh so beautiful Heidi Swapp Emerson Lane stamp set, my two Heidi Swapp Hawthorne stamp sets and this awesome One Little Bird + Studio Calico collab set that I got back when I did their Summer of Sketches class. It’s seen one planner page (which eventually got covered up) and then no more. I mean come on that xoxo and Good Vibes stamps are calling my name.In the interest of fair play I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to use some of my favourites from years past. Namely these lovely sets from Paper Chic that have the Fly and Happy Thoughts sentiments and the awesome Kelly Pannaci calendar stamp and journaling block sets. I’ve also got these Creative Expressions sets that are from about the same time that have rarely been used that need a bit of attention.In the spirit of what’s old is new that I love so much, I’ll also be giving my oldest stampy sets some air time too. I’m talking good ol’ foam stamps,  these fun rubber stamps (the very first in my stampy collection) and of course giving some love to my very own handmade stamps that I created at Uni – best assignment ever! I want to play with the different effects and mediums that I can get/use with these delightful beauties and do a little experimenting.Then let’s round out the month with some new-to-me stampy supplies in the form of Stamp and Die sets from Kaisercraft which I got as gifts last year from the family. I have never used a stamp and die sets but given my affection for the die-cut I think I’m in with a pretty good chance of loving these. I’ve got a few fun ideas up my sleeve for these two lovely beauties.I hope you’ll join me for this month of stamping fun and if you’ve got any pointers for me in the stamp department I’m all ears be sure to leave me a comment below and give a girl a few tips.

PS I think I might leave finishing off my December Daily for later in the year and do Tracey Fox’s (@scrappylikeafox) Scrappy Christmas in July. It’s just not where the mojo is flowing at the moment.

2018 Coming in Quietly

I like big goals and I cannot lie… I usually have big plans to change this or do that every year and I’m really big on starting the way you intend to continue. Which is why my house is usually spotless New Year’s Eve, but not so this year. I’m changing tactics for 2018, following the John Maxwell line that states “the secret to your success can be found in your daily routine”. Which is why you would have found me in bed at 9:30 last night so that I could be up at 4:30 this morning and why my only goals for January 1st are to successfully make my bed, do my quiet time, put the dishes away and get a load of washing on the line in the morning with a similar evening routine to spend time scrapping, fold my washing, floss and be in bed at 9:30. Obviously, I also need to block out time to write this blog post, feed the people and tick a few things off the to-do list to achieve those like clean the scrap room up a bit. But priority number one is making sure I hit all those points in my routine. It’s not that I didn’t want a spotless house this year, that’s always the goal but priorities shifted with sick kids and my aim for this year is more about being able to maintain things rather than burn out with an all or nothing big push to get-it-all-done.2018 is coming in quietly no fanfare, no hoo-ha, just simple routine and getting stuff done. I want to build a routine that’s doable, that I can be consistent at and that I can improve on over time. My first thought of what I’m looking for from 2018 is aligning my priorities with realistic expectations. Letting my values guide what gets done and see where things fall after that. To assist the building of routine I want to schedule my priorities like Stephen Covey says “The key is not to prioritise your schedule, but to schedule your priorities”. Kid time and kindness over self-seeking and hurriedness. On a practical level that also takes into account the things that I want to do every year that never seem to get done or get done at a less desirable standard because I always try to do them last minute or I don’t allow enough time for them. Simple things like making sure I change the water filter every three months or give the boys a haircut a reasonable time before school photos or having all my Christmas shopping done by December 1st to leave room for the fun activities or not leaving it till the last minute to make their book week costumes.On the creative front, I’d like to obviously keep blogging and spend some time in my Heidi Swapp Memory Planner. I only got January and about two or three additional spreads done in it last year so I’m going to be using it again this year and hoping that I’ll do a better job. I’ll have to find a fix for the days of the week I stamped on and swap the numbered stickers around for each month-at-a-glance. But other than cover up those spreads it’s pretty much a blank slate. Heidi Swapp graciously provided printables for January in her Capture 30 class through BPC back in 2015 (due to the shipping delays that were happening with her planner at the time) so I’m going to be a bit cheeky and reprint January for a fresh start.Yep, she’s a quiet one alright, but here’s hoping I can come back sometime close to December 31st and tell you all about the wonderful things I achieved this year by actually getting things down on paper and going for them one step at a time. Like Elise Cripe says “Big things happen, one day at a time” (Ps Check out her daily goal tracker if your thinking the one step at a time thing is more your style too).

 

 

December Daily 2017: Cover Page

Not having a theme makes creating a cover page decidedly difficult. Having an idea of the direction you want to go, even if it’s vague is certainly a help when it comes to making decisions about what to craft and where to start. So after stumbling along a little bit, I think I’ve kinda settled on a theme of sorts, if for no other reason than it’s right there in front of my face and it’s very convenient. So my theme, to put it simply, is a Heidi Swapp inspired Christmas. I have an abundance of Heidi Swapp product in my kit. I have some decor pieces from her Marquee Lights collections and an amazing array of inspiration via her previous and current Christmasy blog and Instagram posts. Let the Heidi Swapp crafting begin.   If you follow her on Instagram you will have been seeing a lot of posts about her Holiday Create Shop event. It’s times like these that I lament not living in the US or anywhere even remotely close, cos man would I love to be able to attend. Living in Australia means I can’t even order the kit she’s offering this year and at least craft from a short(er) distance, sob. The next best thing I think I can do is to totally let it inspire me from afar and hence the inspiration behind my cover for this years December Daily. I just adore her wooden sign with the red truck but I totally had to do my own version of it. I couldn’t help putting a spin on the whole ‘Farm Fresh’ thing given that we live on a farm and making it a bit more personalised to us while keeping the whole vibe similar to Heidi’s own sign.Oh man was this ever fun. I started with a woodgrain paper from the Oh What Fun paper pad and inked the edges to give it a similar definition to Heidi’s sign. Then I went into Photoshop and created my text layers. I tried to keep the font styles similar to Heidi’s but instead of copying the Christmas tree farm text I changed it up with our names and made it read more like ‘Farm Fresh Christmas Memories’. The hardest part was getting the candy cane stripe shadowing behind the word ‘Memories’. At first, I couldn’t figure how to create the stripes without it being entirely tedious until I found a Photoshop pattern here which I then turned into a layer mask. For some reason, because it tiles the whole layer I think it messed with my layer groupings so I was forever having to work around it to edit my text layers, do-able but not ideal. If anyone knows how to stop the transparent layer from messing with my other layers, I’m all ears.The best part though was creating the ute (truck) Heidi’s truck was purposely created to have a bit of depth and definition so I went with a similar layered-look for my own. I have conveniently repurposed some foam from my kid’s crafty stash to add the dimension and I even went so far as creating the sticker on the side of the truck in Photoshop. Although, yet again my workable but by no means, expert Photoshop skills came into play. Because I couldn’t figure out how to get the ‘Christmas 2017’ bit to be the right way round and still on the text path I just left it looking a bit backwards. Still, it’s good enough and I don’t want to procrastinate in favour of making it perfect. The other fun feature I added was the milk churns in the back tray of the ute. I thought that was a cool touch for this dairy-farming family. My goodness, I love Christmas, I love Heidi Swapp products and I love December Daily, seriously in heaven people! As Heidi would say I’m totally going to have a blast “making pretty ‘holiday’ stuff”!Do you do a theme? What or who is inspiring your December Daily vibe this year?

December Daily 2017: First Thoughts

My passion for this project isn’t waning one bit even after all these years but my mojo always does. I love the lead up to the silly season and getting my December Daily “ducks in a row” so to speak is part of the fun. For sure in years past its been one of the biggest motivators to get me in the holiday spirit, but over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that when I put so much energy into the set up and “stuff gathering” of December Daily that I kinda feel creatively spent shortly after December begins. It’s like I spend all that time looking for inspiration, deciding on a theme, pinning things on Pinterest and collecting/organising my physical (and sometimes digital) product that once the month hits it almost feels like I’ve already created my album without actually creating anything. Not to mention with all of my creative energy this month having gone on starting/finishing my 2013 album I’ve been trying really hard not to over-do the Christmas crafting. So for this years December Daily I’m trialling something new. I’ve loosely gathered a small selection of embellishments and grabbed a couple of paper pads to get myself started, but I’m not going to create any foundation pages and I haven’t as yet picked a “theme”, that is if I’m going to pick one at all. It’s a bit of a risk, since I know how well I operate with foundation pages, but I didn’t want to burn out before I got to December, so only time will tell if the risk was worth it.The supplies I’ve gathered for my 2017 album are two Heidi Swapp paper pads. The Believe collection from 2013 and the Oh What Fun collection from 2015. I also have about a thousand (okay 10) of the HS Document December kits from 2015 that I picked up super cheap at Spotlight last year. I’m planning on having future DD’s in these albums in years to come (if you remember I already used one album for my 2016 December Daily), but the insides are fare game. I just won’t use the actual album this year, instead, I’m using an American crafts D-Ring with the red cloth spine. It occurred to me as I was going through previous albums during the Festival of Finishing that each of my children’s 1st Christmases is in one of these Red D-Ring albums. I had originally used this particular album for my 2011 December Daily but since I never got around to decorating the front cover I figured I could just switch it out for something else. My 2011 Album consists of a lot of large photos and minimally embellished layouts that are just inside some heavy duty page protectors so it’s a pretty easy switch. In addition to the consistency of having the 1st Christmases in similar albums, it also means I can put the 2011 one in something with a smaller footprint because unlike the rest of my albums it’s not quite so bulky. The only problem will be if I have more children, cos I’m not sure if you can still buy them anywhere, ha! I also have some gold Heidi Swapp numbers from a Project Life kit, which let’s face it was the whole reason I bought the kit. A few washi-tapes from My Minds Eye’s Sleigh Bells Ring collection and a few random older papers from Crate Paper that I have earmarked for specific story ideas I want to tell this year.I figure I’ve done December Daily enough times that I have a pretty good rhythm with it and posting on the good ol’ blog helps me keep accountable and on task with it. So maybe that will be enough to keep the mojo swinging. Another thought is that even when I do foundation pages, I inevitably switch out papers anyway. Maybe the pattern doesn’t work for that day’s photo/story or I have more to say than I allowed for with pre-made stuff. Unlike my pocket page pals who make their albums with cards and page protectors, it can be a bit trickier when you’ve already stuck the papers together or constructed an embellishment. I’d rather save myself the trouble of all that torn paper. But as long as I make sure to write down a story, any story, each day in my December Daily Log and take some photos I can always come back to it if I run out of steam. Basically, for this year I’ve got a few “bits and bobs” as Suse would say and a wing and a prayer…Doing December Daily, what’s your set up for 2017? Write me a comment or send me a link to your ideas for this year.

Workspace and Craft Room Rehab: Embellishments

This was most definitely the lesson that was needed in my craft space and also the one I was most looking forward to. I love, love , love me some embellishing and getting to paw through my collection of pretty things is pretty darn close to heaven in my world. Making them organized and accessible – oh yeah, lets start singing the Hallelujah Chorus! I really love how Carson broke down this section – Alphabets & Chipboard first, onto Stickers & Ephemera second, Washi & Wood Veneer third, then all the other bits and bobs. Embellishments are such an eclectic mix of supplies that you’d be hard pressed to be able to list them in all their various forms. For a lot of crafters those middle four certainly seem to be the ones that are in large supply in most crafting spaces these days and depending on the amount of time you’ve been crafting, you may also have quite a number of supplies that are no longer in vogue… ahem, eyelets and brads anyone… I may have been a little on the eager side to break into the Embellishments. Alphas were a great way to warm up before Stickers and Ephemera. I knew I’d bought some assorted alpha packs years ago at a cheap $2 Shop and it was about time a bunch of those got moved along. They must have been misprints or ill-aligned prints/cuts which didn’t bother me all those years ago but now they just needed to go. I also find when alphabets are a bunch of different colours they are so, so  hard to use, at least six sets of rainbow Alphas didn’t make the cut. They always seem to make words where you use two or three of the colours and not in a pretty alternating way, but in an odd way and it just always ends up looking weird to me. I picked a few sets that are pretty much used up but that I still love which I’m going to challenge myself to use on upcoming projects or else they’ll get binned and four sets whose fonts seem a little dated to me got moved out of my general stash and into my Epic Exchange Album kit to be used with some of the older product already in use there. As far as chipboard goes I really only have 12×12 sets aside from a  handful of loose generic shapes and the 12×12 chipboard lives on my paper rack so those were assessed during my paper purge which meant I pretty much skipped over that portion. So it was onto my favourite crafty supplies for a freshen up. I will admit that I am a bit of a sticker freak, none of the featured crafters in this portion of the class seem to have quite the same size sticker-stash as mine but I’m pretty sure just judging from some of the comments that there are other crafters doing the class that have a fair few more stickers (or other crafty supplies) than I do. In any case the tips and info given in the entirety of the class are pretty handy for coming up with solutions to tackle your own unique set of circumstances. Carson chooses to identify her stickers as either alpha stickers (as opposed to Thicker type materials) and image stickers and that works for her size stash. I on the other hand do not differentiate between materials used for Alphas and lump them all together as one (sticker, Thicker, rub-on etc) having purged and organized those in the last decluttering round. My image stickers on the other hand are sorted by theme and stored across three binders. I think this has a lot to do with the focus of our crafting efforts too. I am purely a 12×12 story focused, stash diving scrapper, she is an eclectic crafter who’s efforts run the gamut of cards, Project Life, layouts, mini’s & more. Sticker’s and Ephemera are my go-tos. Where as she (just from my gallery gazing) seems to work more with stamps, pocket albums and Studio Calico kits. Given the variety of sizes and themes of stickers I find binders and page protectors keep them corralled, view-able and easily accessible so I can identify the stickers I want to enhance or tell my story. Carson tends to have more similarly sized sticker sheets (probably from kit clubs) and given the smaller quantity can flick through in a matter of minutes to decide on what’s right for her particular project. So how’d I go decluttering? Well I’m pretty pleased with the amount of stickers I have on their way out of here. After my initial decision making efforts I was left with four different piles. Stickers that I either need to use or lose, stickers to pass on to my soon-to-be crafty friend, stickers to donate to my church and then stickers to go to the kids (in other words the ones that were as good as thrown out because they were about to be used up on art projects, the furniture and the inhabitants of our house in a matter of minutes). My binders seem thinner and that’s a plus but oh how I want to use them up. I have so many stickers that I could tell stories from and wrote a quick note on the back of some for later reference. They just spark all sorts of ideas for me and there are stories of my childhood, stories about my kids and so, so many others that were sparked just by going through them all. As I said above the concepts for organization in this class can carry over from supply to supply, case in point my new method for organizing ephemera is taken directly from an idea shared for acrylic stamp storage in the previous portion of the class Craft Room Rehab: Stamps and Inks. Rianne Alonte, one of Carsons crafty contributors to the class, uses Avery Elle storage pockets for all of her acrylic stamps, while this may not be a new idea she further identifies them with washi tape and labels to denote brand and collection/stamp name. I thought it was genius, it makes my little organizational heart happy. I had already considered before class started that a more uniform Ephemera/Die-cut storage system was necessary and that Avery Elle pockets may just fit the bill but I am yet to order some. So for the moment I just went with what I had on hand and used some ziplock bags to coral my diecuts and organized them by brand using Rianne’s clever washi idea then added the names using my trusty labelmaker. It looks and works so much better already. It is beyond easy to find the exact set of ephemera/die-cuts that I want and get them on my layouts. I suppose I’ve kinda cheated on this one. I did remove a few excess ephemera pieces during my clean up but the majority of the ones shown were separated out to be used for happy mail and other things of that nature when I bought the packets. I’ve got into the habit of removing die-cuts I don’t like/don’t suit my style upon opening a new pack just so I don’t have to look at them every single time I want to find a die-cut.Washi and Wood Venner were certainly the easiest supplies to cover for me. Washi tape is not really a big supply issue I have about 30 odd in total, all sweetly arranged in an apothecary jar right in front of my cutting mat and I love the mix of colours, and just like ephemera pieces they make me inspired and happy just looking at them. I removed five sets and in what is fast becoming a trend around here the kids ran off with at least one roll before I could say “But wait…”. As far as Wood Venner I still don’t own a single piece so instead I chose to peruse my collection of metal charms/embellishments instead however I didn’t feel the need to remove anything from there at this point in time. It feels so good to have parts of my stash like that, that are only filled with things I know I love and will use on layouts, now if only my entire craft room could stay like that, it would be wonderful. And finally we got to the what the Marie Kondo of Scrapbooking might call Komono. All that miscellaneous other stuff that we amass, the bits and bobs, the extras. For me this includes things like enamel dots, frames, rub-ons, assorted one-off paper embellishments, paper fasteners (like shaped paperclips or those little metal tear drop things), sequins, doilies, flowers, twine and of course my collection of brads, eyelets and ribbon. Not a lot went from here either. Two orange doilies and a couple of packs of sequins was about the extent of it. Perhaps I am burning out a little on the decluttering or maybe I really do just like all this stuff. But for the moment I am happy with the level of decluttering that’s gone on around here and the amount of supplies that have been moved on to other places.Grouping my decluttering efforts by type rather than location like I did in my last decluttering effort in 2015 has really made it clear that I have quite the abundance of different spots where I house things of the same category and none more so than my collective haul of embellishments. They live in binders, drawers, baskets, jars, and even a lantern. Certainly it works for the way I craft and think of supplies but I have found myself jumping all over my craft room to work on this set of supplies or that set none of which seem quite as neglected as my paper/flat embellishments drawer. It’s where I house all the odd sorts of things that are one-offs or in limited supply and I rarely think to use them. The most used would be my supply of doilies but even my rub-ons are massively neglected when it comes to being the selected embellishment.While Carson has hinted that the next installment will cover tools (including dies, punches, adhesives, embossing supplies, along with others). I can only hazard a guess as to what else may be covered in the class in the future. She may have a portion on Mixed Media and while I have already covered my ‘wet media’ I neglected to think about my mixed media tools like stencils and masks, paintbrushes, mats etc. so I’ll add those in to the next section too. I’m not sure how many sessions of Craft Room Rehab will be made available in the end but I have determined that as far as I’m concerned other topics that may come up or that I need to cover are Resources, ie magazines & idea books, printed class materials. Kits, because I don’t subscribe to any kit clubs these will be the ones I’ve created for myself. Albums and Mini book supplies, including page protectors, binding materials, construction materials. Planner supplies, a lot of which have been covered in other sections but I wouldn’t mind creating a designated spot to house items I specifically want to use in my Memory Planner like particular stamps, stickers or washi rolls, even if it’s just as much a pencil case or something. Photos, Memorabilia and Other crafting (sewing, cross-stitch, knitting or whatever your side crafting hobby/hobbies are) however I suspect I will need at least another month to sort through a lot of that so some won’t be tackled in this round or crafty decluttering in January.

 

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Workspace and Craft Room Rehab: Technique Types

Let’s do this, another batch of scrappy stuff to go through and sort, purge and organize. Today I’m lumping all the Technique type supplies together Stamps, Inks and Mixed Media supplies. These are the things I tend to use infrequently or in spurts of creativity, not necessarily the things I reach for on an every-day/every-layout basis. In Craft Room Rehab: Stamps and Inks which I’m using as my guide for the purging part of redoing my Workspace my technique stash is probably what Carson would consider as a small stash (30 sets or less). My stamping supplies took about half an hour to sort through – for everything – and my technique/mixed media box even less. So yeah it’s on the small side. I keep my everyday collection of clear stamps in an A5 Binder and use Kaisercraft Ziplock storage pockets to keep them in. The binder was just one I found floating around the house and the pockets were clearanced somewhere years ago, so it’s a pretty economical storage solution. It’s pretty much at capacity but the acquisition of a Heidi Swapp background stamp in my last purchase meant that I needed to ‘swap’ out another stamp to make room for it. The only one that wasn’t working for me was this butterfly and flower set. It’s not a quality stamp set and to be honest I don’t really like it anymore. I did however cut out the large butterfly that was on it because it’s probably the only image I will use in future. I also discovered I had an extra stamp set from the Kaisercraft Chartuese Collection so I’m passing that on along too. In addition I have another five Christmas sets that just permanently move from December Daily kit to December Daily kit so it might be an idea to find a more permanent home for them in the future, but I’m okay with how they are for now. The rest of my stamp collection lives in some photo boxes and for the amount of times I use these things most all of them could be moved along (except for the ones on the acrylic blocks which I made myself, I’d totally keep them for sentimental reasons) but I figure in the grand scheme of things, the box isn’t needed for anything else right now so they can stay. It’s a bit of a hodge-podge of foam stamps, rubber stamps and wood-mounted stamps. I also have a set of Making Memories Foam stamps and a Typo DIY stamp kit that are stored with my acrylic blocks in their packages. I’ve probably used the Making Memories set the most of all of them but I am yet to settle on a design and carve my stamps from the Typo kit. I took out seven stamps that were never going to see the light of day and passed them on to the kids who promptly got stamping with them and the ink pads I discarded as well so they’re already getting more use than I ever gave them. Next in line was all my ink pads and stamping equipment. My Ink pads got a bit of a tidy up and I threw out a dodgy black ink pad that never created a clean image for me along with giving the kids three others, cheap ink pads all of them, so it would seem I’m becoming a bit of a stamping snob now that I’m buying Stayz On inks (ha). Of my stamping equipment two acrylic blocks didn’t make the cut because I had three of the same size. But they’ll work nicely being passed on to my new scrappy recruit with those stamp sets. I also have my most used inks in the Kaisercraft desk unit – a black Versafine and a Moonlight White Dew Drop ink with some little planner stamps and acrylic blocks, that I use for noting down tasks and marking off goals. When it comes to mixed media I didn’t get rid of much here either, a dried up tube of red paint and a green paint pen got thrown out, a bottle of orange puffy paint, some clay tools I had to buy for uni and never used and some metallic media for using with dry embossed images got passed along. I would have given the kids a large bottle of blue paint too until I realized I didn’t have any small tubes of blue paint. But as soon as I restock it’ll move on out too. The only things in my accumulation of stampy stuff that saw no change were my roller stamps and my alphabet stamps. I have a total of six roller stamps and four of those are the handy October Afternoon Daily Flash Decade stamps which I use for dating all my layouts. In the Alpha stamp department, there’s three that are ear-marked for a future purge but that I do use on occasion for my Exchange Album as a matter of continuity and like my random stamps, their presence in my scrappy stuff isn’t a problem cos they don’t take up much room and I don’t need the space for anything new. It was nice to have a bit of a breather with some easy stamping discards after all the paper purging/decision-making I did in the earlier class, in fact this blog post took longer to write and edit than it took me to go through all of these supplies but next up is Craft Room Rehab: Embellishments which will certainly take a chunk of time. So I’m steeling myself for another round of purging, processing and then I might reward myself with a bit of playing with some of my rediscovered crafty stuff before I move on to any more decluttering efforts.

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