A few more days of dining room table bliss

My husband is out of town on a business trip until Thursday, so I have taken over the dining room table again for craft space. I am bummed at the prospect of packing it all up because it has been so productive to have 3 projects going simultaneously. And it makes my own craft table look so clear and empty and inviting!

I am loving working on the dining room table and loving my stash. I keep thinking of ideas for things to do and am totally patting myself on the back for already having the necessary supplies and not needing to go out and shop for it. In fact, I will confess, I was in Archiver's on Sunday and actually felt somewhat uninspired by the products and was anxious to come home and play with my own (old) stuff rather than bring home new stuff. I think that is a first for me. It has taken years, but I have finally grown my stash to a point where I feel I have everything I need and it inspires me.

Here are some close-ups of some of the things I have out:

Day 24 of my December Daily album, with a sneak peek of the ribbon and metal tags I used on the cover. I bought the gold tags and envelopes on clearance last year at Paper Source because they were an amazing deal - it was fun to finally break into them and use them! You can also see some fabric from a quilt I am working on - more on that soon.

Some cool resist ink paper from Stampin Up that maintains the white image when you ink it. I used chocolate chip ink and a brayer to get this look. It will be for Day 10 of my December Daily album.

In our next house, I definitely need a bigger work surface for crafting. Or at least more shelf/storage space so that I can keep my supplies off the table but still within reach.

Another Ali Edwards Project

You might notice the new blog tag on the upper left corner. I am participating in Ali Edwards' December Daily project this year and I am so excited. She just posted the sneak peek of her album foundation and I LOVE it. All of the transparencies are gorgeous and I wish I had even half the collection that she does. I have already picked my album (in Real Red) and size (6x6). I have almost all of my Christmas supplies pulled together in one place. Now I just need to figure out how I want to do my foundation! We are currently in Wisconsin, so I won't be able to get started until October 18, but you can trust that I will be dreaming up ideas for the next week.

A peek at my process

What it looks like when I can monopolize the dining room table! You can see at least three layouts on the table - this post focuses on layout 1 which is in the center right and layout 2 which is in the upper left corner.



Here's a close-up of these two layouts in their "early stages":

Layout 1: Black/Red/Swirl line


Layout 2: Orange and Navy


For both of these layouts, I started with the product first. Layout 1 is a set of patterned papers that were all sold together and that I absolutely loved at the time that I bought them. I bought the ribbon at the same time, but it's not part of the original line. I already made two layouts using these papers (pictures to come soon), and I have been keeping all of the papers together to continue to use them together, especially since I didn't use the ribbon on either of those first two layouts. Recently I decided I was kind of done with this paper (I bought it over a year ago!) and would do one more layout using the coordinating products (plus the ribbon) and then distribute the papers into my organization system, which is organized by color, not by product. I tried to think of some pictures that would go with the styling of the paper and decided on these from our trip to Prague in 2007. Here is the final product:



For layout 2, I had it in my head that I wanted to use orange and navy together. I pulled out everything that I had that was orange and navy and started to scheme up a layout. Then I thought of a picture that would coordinate and have an upbeat feel (something I associate with orange) and got this:



You might recognize it from this blog post.

Recent layouts - trying new things

Finally spending time with my paper again! Here are some of my latest projects:


Title: Nurture this relationship

There are several new-to-me techniques in this layout:
1) Write your journaling about something other than what is conveyed in the picture. The picture is from our trip to Canada, but the journaling is more about how my sister and I want to live closer to each other.
2) The 6x12 size.
3) I used Tim Holtz distress ink in Antique Linen to dye the paper that I journaled on.
4) I purposely used ribbon in a new way.
5) Not a new technique, but a new mantra - I am trying to use up what I have. The "nurture" epoxy sticker is part of a set I have had *forever* and I am glad to finally be using it!



Working Title: Grape Stomp

Trying something different with this one as well. I used brown rhinestones to continue the strand of lights in the photograph and clustered my photos in a way I don't normally do. I am debating whether this needs a title above the rhinestones -- I don't know what it should say though and none of the letters I currently have would work. I don't really want to hand write it either, so I'm leaving it as is for now. I consider it an experiment in white space : )


And a sneak peek at Week in the Life in its current form - I'm getting close to done!

Travel Journal

I just finished making a travel journal for an upcoming trip we are taking, using writing prompts from this post on the Daily Digi. [okay, to be fair, just = July 24, but it took a while to get a picture!] I purposely didn't put too much effort into the journal because I am the type of person to not write in something if it is too "fancy". I bought a Moleskine Cahier Large Blank notebook from Amazon (in blue) and stamped a few things on the cover - I was inspired by this journal on etsy. Then I wrote in the prompts for each day. I am hoping that this will make it easier to journal on the trip and scrapbook it later. I tend to journal a lot in the beginning and then fizzle out as we are having more and more fun. I also tend to feel obligated to record all of the details in chronological order and I am hoping the prompts will help me let go of that. For instance, one of the prompts is "What made you laugh today?" I can totally answer that without having to feel bogged down in recording all the details of the day.

Another fabric interlude

I want to share a quilting project that I discovered going through boxes of fabrics that used to be my mom's.



I think this project was started by my grandmother, given the age of the fabrics. It is possible though that all of these hand-cut and hand-stitched blocks were done by my mom on the jumpseat of an airplane. I know that she would hand-piece on flights (she was a flight attendant), but I remember her showing me some of the stuff she had worked on and this does not look the same. I could be misremembering though what they are "supposed" to look like. So age of fabric and project is unknown, but I am guessing it is at least as old as I am (32).



I went through a whole pile of cut triangles and half-pieced blocks before I realized what the design was supposed to be.



I unearthed this finished block at the end of the pile and it made sense what all of the other pieces were for. I kid you not, I cried when I found this block. I don't know if it was the emotion of finding a project that belonged to my mom or grandmother, or the frustration of not knowing the puzzle left for me, a combination of the two, or something else, but seeing how all these pieces came together triggered something I just wasn't expecting.



I think I am going to take the three blocks that are closest to being done and make a table runner out of them. There isn't any more of the white background, but there is a lot of the red, whites, and blues, so I will most likely use those. I'm not feeling adventurous enough right now to seek out a replacement white and make the rest of the blocks. Who knows, though, maybe that will change by the time I get around to making the runner.



And on another note, after several weeks of quilting, I have picked my paper trimmer back up again and worked on some scrapbooking layouts. I haven't had a chance to take pictures yet, though, so I will just have to post them another time.

What I did on my summer break, Part 2

Two plus years ago, I started a quilt for my sister to have guests sign at their wedding. I got all the blocks pieced together in time for the rehearsal dinner, which is where we had everyone sign. It has taken me TWO years to sew on the border strips in between and around the blocks, a relatively easy peasy task, but something I haven't gotten to for ages.

Finally, this summer I sat down at the sewing machine, loaded up a bobbin with white thread, and got those borders on! This is the finished top that I was hoping to get done for their second anniversary, but that has come and gone, so now I am aiming for Christmas. I am trimming the threads and sending it off for quilting with the Russian quilt! The back will be the light green fabric you see in the four center squares and four corner squares, and the binding will be the same as the border fabric. My awesome mother-in-law has agreed to piece together the back for me and put the binding on, so my work on this one is almost done!