Category: crafts

SOE Live Prep: Geek Badges

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When normal people prep to go somewhere, I imagine they write a nice list of all the clothing and toiletries they need to pack, are ready to go a week in advance, make sure there’s someone to take care of their home while they’re gone, drink a glass of wine for their nerves, drive around asking people for Grey Poupon, and so on.

Luckily for me, I’m not a normal people. Sure, I have family to watch over my home, and my kids and cats will be safe and happy while I’m away. Beyond that though, my life is zany, and I really can’t stand the taste of wine (I’m a mixed drink girl). When I prep for a trip, I do two things. First, I overprepare. Second, I underprepare.

But… but.. those two things don’t go together! Of course they do! Just think, how many times have you gotten somewhere just to realize that ONE thing that you REALLY needed but totally forgot? Oh yeah, now you get it.

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Craft Room Organization, Part Two

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Did you miss Part One of my craft room organization? Be sure to check it out here!

My crafting storage needs have expanded a lot over the course of the past year. Not only does my bead collection continue to grow, but with me adding in other projects such as hair clips and activity boxes, I seem to acquire more and more varying items every day.

More IKEA Organizers
While looking around for some storage ideas on Pinterest the night before my last IKEA trip (it’s a 4-hour drive downstate to the closest one, so you make sure it is worth the time!), I saw a few rooms that used magnetic boards and pails hanging on rails. I cross-checked them on IKEA’s site and figured out which would be best suited for my corner of a room.

In the end I settled on a Spontan magentic board paired with Grundtal containers. The board is just large enough to evenly fit 21 of those containers, which is seven packs of them (they come in packs of three). These containers hold a respectable amount in them! I fit every single one of my embellishments for hair clips and bottlecaps, and even extra buttons and some other assorted items inside of the containers.

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Craft Room Organization, Part One

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Check out part two of my craft room organization, featuring the rails, magnetic board, and beading storage!

In June of 2012 we moved into our current home. Before that, my “craft room” was my bedroom–I had everything stacked into a corner and just pulled things onto the bed or over to my computer desk whenever I wanted to work on something. Moving into a much larger home that actually has a spare bedroom is still an amazing concept to me.

This spare bedroom isn’t just for my crafts; we also use it for a workout room, and my husband stores most of his supplies (molds, dyes, and scents mostly) for making soaps here. What takes up the most space is the large, empty space we need to leave for working out! That meant that while I was organizing I needed to condense as many of my craft supplies as possible into one corner of the room. Eventually this became a matter of building up, not out.

The desk I’ve owned since I was a teenager. It’s survived several moves now, though the chair had to be reupholstered a couple of years back. The shelving runs from the window casing on the right side of the above photo, all the way across the wall until it meets the closet, which is a ways off from the left-hand side of the photo. Those shelves are lumber that my husband cut to size and stained ebony, with scrollwork brackets from the Home Depot–looks great, doesn’t it?

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Korker Earrings

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Today I was lamenting my current slump in making earrings. I’ve been trying several ideas to try and introduce a new, creative, and fun style to my repertoire, but only one has worked and I’m on the fence about how much I like how they came out (the Double Loop Seed Bead Earrings, pictured right). I tried my hand at chainmail earrings over the past week, but I couldn’t produce any that I was proud of.

While sitting around in lament, I eyeballed the two shoeboxes almost stuffed with korker ribbons. I love to make them–not only is it funny when the kids run around yelling that mom is “cooking ribbon in the oven!”, but they look fantastic and make really fun hair bows. The bows take a good bit of work (it’s one of the rare occasions where I actually sew) and are great for a rainy day project. While looking at the boxes I had a thought.. what if.. no… could I? Combining two of my current crafting loves–making earrings and working with ribbon–seemed so logical that my mind was blown.

I grabbed my shoeboxes and ran off to the crafting room, where the korker earring was born. The first pair (yellow with white dots, pictured below) came out a bit rough, but by the second pair I had a better grip on what I was doing. I can see so many combinations possible with these! Not only do they look fun and are lightweight on their own, they can be paired up with beads, charms, chainmail, bottlecaps, and much more to create customized touches.

My fun summer project is here!

Thrifty Thursday: Hair Sticks

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I’ve grown to be a frugal shopper, and whenever I’m out, clearance stickers always catch my eye. I usually pause to at least glance and see what the item is and how much it is discounted. My husband avoids going to craft stores with me because I’m known to get distracted for hours while there.

Usually this habit ends up with me just walking away from the item after admiring the sale price. One day while in Jo-Ann Fabrics I happened upon two remaining packages of 7″ hat pins (3 count each package). I had no idea that hat pins existed, what they were doing in a beading section, nor how large of a hat you would need to make use of a 7″ hat pin.. but there they were, on clearance and marked all the way down to $0.97!
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