Scribbles 'n Scraps

I’ve had to kind of shuffle my stuff around again and now we are in the process of actually “building” a scrap room for me in the basement. So I have been scouring photos and ideas to figure out what I want and what will work for me. Two peas is one of my favorite places to look for inspiration – those peas are pretty talented at designing and decorating, let me just tell you. These are my favorite scrap rooms over at Two Peas.

Credits & More Photos from each room:

1. wookiemouse 2. croppin92008 3. fleur-de-lisa 4. kelly-bryan 5. daja 6. 2lilpeas 7. terribradford 8. sewgaby 9.  conniee 10. scraplink 11. terriescrapsinsc 12. jana-eubank 13. pescaragirl 14. puddin-head 15. ki-girl 16. scrapdiva 17. helpmeronda 18. michellemharris 19. winks 20. in-focus

Today’s 2 peas blog challenge is:  Share a picture of an organizational item you have in any room of your house that you absolutely love.

I thought, well I can do that. I have a load of things that are working well for me and that I truly enjoy in my personal scrap space.

My ink pad storage is an obviously borrowed piece. This former tape cassette holder (among its three brothers that are just not pictured) has been a wonderful addition to my scrap area.

It’s now totally full and I have three others. They have been painted all white, but I am eyeing some new ones that are about to be released from CTMH so I might be retiring these guys and trying to find another use. Hmm…

So what’s your favorite storage item that you have?

Wow! This scrap room is to DIE FOR!

Click the photograph for way more photos of it! I wanna live with her.

I promised you guys I’d post the “updated” pics yesterday but I got super busy so today I am sending them. The pics are blurry in some because its a bit darker in here than I would have liked. It isn’t perfect, but it’s mine

As a final thought, I really, really, really hope my scrap room is done soon. We’ve been putting it off because we are supposed to be moving soon. LOL If we stay, we build one. If we move, I get one.

Currently my scrap area is in our huge living room and I love it. I love being in the central location to my family, and the room is so large you hardly notice it – okay, not totally true – I mean when it looks like it does below, it usually is pretty noticeable:

I couldn’t remember if I still had these pics on my computer or if I deleted them. I actually took these about two weeks ago to show a friend so she would come over and help the weekend before last to clean it. Earlier, on the CTMH boards, a lady posted a pic of her scrap area that was absolutely in shambles. Seriously a mess. Makes mine actually look clean (which really isn’t saying much though). So since I am hardly proud of my mess, I thought I’d show it off to my friends. Nobody seemed too shocked, and honestly the room doesn’t look this way anymore. In fact, it looks a LOT better but since its evening now I haven’t gotten any good pics taken – tomorrow AM I will post some of what it looks like now.

BEFORE:

I have two 6′ tables side by side up against a wall with a window. I cannot reach the curtain so I only pull the one side back to enjoy sunlight where I usually work. Those buckets under the table seem to catch all the “extra” stuff and totally needed to be cleaned out and reorganized. I found all sorts of goodies that way. My purse is also not normally placed on my sb table but for some reason its there in these pics. It is ironic to look at it now, because that side doesn’t even resemble these pics anymore.

This pic is my main work area which has not looked this bad since apparently the day these pics were taken! I also don’t typically have my coffee/soda mug on my scrap table because in the next pic you can see my little Chatterbox Tag Along I got in the late 90′s.

The rolling cart in the bottom left of the photograph holds all my stamp sets, so while it can roll under my table, I leave it out so I can get to my stuff more often.

This picture is just further over. That’s all our DVD’s on that bookshelf (that’s been moved too). I moved that around a little so its not right in the “middle” of my scrap area anymore. Love all my shipping boxes there? haha…again GONE! Oh and the missing drawer on the left cart has been returned *giggle*

The bookshelf on the left is MUCH more organized now (and not located there anymore) and I can find everything once again. Funny to look at these pics because it reminds me that I cannot possibly be productive in that mess.

I am perfectly aware that as long as I am scrapbooker and take the amount of photographs that I take, there actually won’t be any “getting caught up”. I am totally fine with that.

I was thinking last night though, there are so many events in the past I still haven’t scrapbooked and really want to. I have goals to get 2007 and hopefully 2006 done by the end of this year. I think I can do it, its a matter of getting the photographs printed.

But the other day I pulled out a stack of photographs. My daughters Kindergarten graduation. That was five years ago and the pictures still sit and stare at me. I gaze at the photographs lovingly. I remember that day. I remember how excited she was. I remember that my mother bought her this huge wrist corsage with carnations and halfway through the graduation, the carnations were falling apart. It was funny. (You know because every five year old understands a wrist corsage!). I remember that my mother also gave her a beautiful cross necklace as well. I remember wondering why she chose that occasion to give it to her, but watching my daughter’s smile, and the two of them together is still vivid. The problem is, I cannot seem to get that all into words. Nor can I seem to sit down and actually scrapbook the pictures. I took a ton, I don’t want to eliminate too many of them, yet I want to make a statement – not just a hodge podge of photos. *sigh*

Guess what my goal is for today? If I get it done I will definitely post it today.

We have to take my daughter to a writing class this afternoon. She dreams of being an author someday so we signed her up for a class at our local book store that is taught by…..a published author. Yay!

Other than that, my day is free for more picture taking and scrapbooking. What are you up to today?

The Two Peas Question is:
What is one thing you would love to have taught as a class?

Well, I could answer this in an everyday life sort of way, but I won’t and I will stick to scrapbooking related. What I’d love to see taught is an entire class on organizing. But here’s the catch. Not just little organizing. I want to see sections of the class. Perhaps classes like:

• Organizing 101: When You Don’t Have a Scrap Area
• Organizing 101: What To Do With Your Scrap Room
• Tool Organization
• Small Embellishment Organization
• Paper Organization (because it demands a class all on its own)
• Organizational Methods: Using a Tote
• Organizational Methods: Cart and Drawer Systems

So you get my point. I could teach a couple of these, but I would love to take them from some that have those amazing scrapbook rooms!

Another great two peas question. I will write more later. Got to get my scrapbooking butt in gear.

Challenge~
How do you keep your creative ideas from magazine’s etc…

This was a challenge for a really long time. Then I found some solutions that others had tried and kind of combined them into my own.

The best way to show you what I did is to show you the peas album that was my final inspiration.

Here ya go.

And if I do use a layout or scraplift it or think I am done with it, I remove it. This makes room for even more ideas to go in.

At the end of each year I go through the magazines from the past year and find the ideas, inspirations and articles that spoke to me. Sometimes a magazine is so full of ideas that I keep the whole thing, but usually I remove a handful of stuff and then offer the mags on freecycle (clearly stating they’ve been picked through). If its too over picked I toss it. Sometimes I get nothing from one. Does that ever happen to you?

Anyway, that’s how I do it.

I’ll be back later on to post some layouts I have been working on. I need to re-learn how to stitch because I’m tried of taking pictures of layouts and prefer scanning them!